Hilary Barrett, I Ching

I first read this story in Women Who Run with the Wolves, and it was one of those ‘scribbling hexagrams in the margins’ moments for me. You can read a longer version of the tale here, but this is the core of it: Vassilissa was a beautiful young girl who lived with her father and [...]

The Vessel, ding, is the name of hexagram 50. It refers to a particularly beautiful and sacred bronze vessel, fit for food to be shared with the ancestors, strong enough to inaugurate a dynasty. You move your ding by inserting a carrying handle through its ‘ears’, loops on its rim. Hexagram 50, line 6, says [...]

In my latest members’ survey, I asked: “There are times for everyone when talking with the I Ching doesn’t feel as spontaneous and easy as it could be. The natural flow through asking, receiving an answer and integrating it into life gets blocked somehow. I’m interested in how you experience this: What’s the single biggest [...]

Hexagram 30, Clarity, has a lot to say about understanding transience. The fourth line is especially emphatic: ‘Sudden, Comes, Burns, Dies, Thrown out.’ Here is something that flares up brightly, but dies away for lack of fuel. Wilhelm sees someone who ‘rises quickly to prominence but produces no lasting effects.’ Stephen Karcher sees ‘an omen [...]

If you’re interested in storing (and maybe also casting) your readings in Yijing software, you have a range of very good options nowadays – much better than a few years ago. The venerable San Shan Yijing is still available, with its outstanding functionality and contents somewhat obscured by a counter-intuitive interface. (You can judge this [...]

I’ve been revisiting the idea of the ‘non-people’ in hexagram 12. The most helpful way to understand them, most of the time, is as people we regard, for whatever reason, as not quite ‘like us’ enough to be real. Most of the time, the problem is with the labelling and consequent failure of communication, not [...]

In case you missed the notices in the forum… the Words of Change Yijing glossary is available now from your membership information page. It doesn’t yet have a formal sales page, but you can read a little more about it here. Just for this week (until Saturday 10th May) it’s only available from the membership [...]