A variation on this ‘just an oracle’ idea (…I think this post is going to become an all-purpose rant…) is that since divination is so self-evidently shallow, the wise ancients couldn’t possibly have been interested in it. So it’s said or implied that the Yi isn’t really an oracle, or at all events not merely for divination.

Well… brief review of the history… the Yi was written as an oracle. Texts were joined with hexagrams because hexagrams are something you can cast – something that directly emerges from the quality of the time and embodies it.

I believe this is why people have been fascinated with the book for the past few millennia: not so much because of any ancient concepts it contains as because a cast hexagram, or the relationship and tension between two hexagrams, has this power to describe and embody present truth. (And because of this it has a unique power to breathe life into concepts we come up with long after it was originally written – not least the pairing of yin and yang.)

Yi, the oracle called Change, is still doing what it has been doing for 3,000 years or so: helping people to see reality. It helps ordinary people to see and think differently as they navigate their ordinary lives.

My most recent reading is a pretty good example of that. For a while now, I’ve been trying to build some relationships with other bloggers and practitioners online. I’ve been searching out people to follow and trying to think of something worthwhile to say in response to their posts, and I haven’t really created any momentum at all. So I asked Yi for advice, and received hexagram 1, line 3:

‘Noble one creates and creates to the end of the day,
At nightfall on the alert, as if in danger.
No mistake.’

From this I can glean a couple of practical hints: work harder, and be on the alert later in the day (which makes sense, because nightfall for me is prime working hours for the American people I want to connect with). It also completely reverses my whole idea of what this is about: following and trying to respond is the stuff of hexagram 2 – Earth, the Receptive – and I’ve received hexagram 1, the Creative. Create, create!

So here I am this morning writing a post instead of searching for a place to comment… and you might be thinking that when writing a rant about the non-trivial nature of divination, I could have found a better reading to use as illustration. Well, yes… and no.

This is not the obviously life-changing kind of reading. Most readings most people do are not. They just allow us to understand ourselves and one another a little better, to see things from another point of view, to notice the current of things so we can spend a little less effort struggling against it, to liberate a little more of our potential. We might end up choosing a better car or having a more skilful conversation with a colleague.

There is something disconcerting about this, isn’t there?

From the Dazhuan as translated by Richard Rutt:

“Yi, being aligned with heaven and earth,
can wholly set forth the dao of heaven and earth.
Yi looks up to observe the patterns of heaven,
and looks down to examine the veins of earth.
Thus:
it knows the causes of darkness and light,
origins and ends;
it comprehends the meaning of birth and death,
how form and essence fuse in an entity,
lasting till the soul departs in alternation.
Thus:
it knows the condition of spirits and souls.
Being in accord with heaven and earth,
it does not go contrary to them;
its knowledge embraces all things,
and its dao assists all under heaven.
Thus it does not err.”

And Yi is also really helpful when I need to rethink my approach to social media.

This is not an easy gulf to bridge, between the greatness of the Yi and the trivia of readings. Only… if I divine about trivia, does that make divination trivial?

Here is what I have found still more powerful in readings than the help and insight they offer: the immediate experience of connection, of being part of the whole. You ask a question, you do something wholly random… and suddenly, something is speaking directly to you. You find you are seen and acknowledged; you might burst into laughter or tears in response. There’s a sense of wonder and belonging at the same time. Just an oracle.

An oblative oracle is one that’s given to you: an omen or synchronicity, such as a visiting crow, or significant bumper sticker or fragment of conversation, or an eloquent dream. It can show up at any time and for anyone who’s prepared to notice it.

An impetrative oracle is one you ask for, and where your action creates the sign you are seeking. If you crack tortoise shells, shuffle cards, toss coins or count yarrow stalks, you’re both asking for a sign and bringing it into being. Rutt calls it ‘inducing artificial signs that can be read as portents.’ Inducing and interpreting these signs would be the job of a diviner.

So you ask your question, and you take action to reveal your answer – or, you could say, to create your answer, to bring it into being at this time and place. Sometimes, this is exactly the right thing to do. Something moves you to ask, and when you do so it feels as though the universe breathes a sigh of relief: ah, at last she’s listening! A broken connection is mended; spirit has a voice and language to speak in, and meaning and message flow naturally.

But what if it isn’t time for that answer to come into being?

I don’t mean those times when we ask, don’t understand or just don’t like the answer, and keep right on asking. It’s certainly true that this can lead to more and more ‘noise in the signal’, as the questions asked wander ever further away from the real present moment.  But a single, wholly realistic and reasonable question, well-formed, not containing any hidden assumptions to divorce it from reality – a question where you’re visibly ‘doing it right’ in every particular – can still be out of harmony with the time. In a timely question, you’re stepping into the centre (of yourself, of the moment) to ask; in an untimely one, you’re stepping out.

Of course, it will still look as though you have an answer: there are lines, they make a hexagram. Sometimes that’ll be hexagram 4, or 29. Sometimes it’ll be virtually impenetrable, and sometimes (personal experience!) it’ll be brutally rude.

I’ve been thinking about this because, after a series of overwhelmingly timely readings, I’ve reached a stage where most of what I want to know now – like where I’m headed and what it’ll be like when I get there – is not timely. Or possibly just ‘wanting to know’ is untimely. I’d love to know where I am and where I’m going, and whether I’m doing it right; I have a badly inflamed case of ‘shoulditis’, in fact, which I’m treating with repeated applications of sitting meditation and meandering cycle rides in the autumn sun.

I asked Yi about the wisdom of continuing the conversation and about taking a ‘reading holiday’. It described continuing with readings as 61.1.6 changing to 29. Inner Truth Repeating the Chasms (also learning them, or so I’d hope).

‘Guided, good fortune.
There is another, no peace.’

If I think there’s something I need to be doing besides just being guided – like knowing where I’m headed, being sure I’m doing it right, etc, etc… – then ‘no peace’. That’s certainly true.

‘Cockcrow rises to heaven.
Constancy, pitfall.’

To quote my own commentary, which turns out to mean more than I thought it did (it’s disturbing when that happens):

The cockerel’s crowing rises to heaven; the cockerel does not, nor does his crowing cause the sun to rise. You are making noises you cannot match in reality. This has left inner truth behind: instead of trusting, you demand a response, trying to force a connection and define how things shall be. But there are limits to the changes you can create with your words. When you are overreaching yourself, persevering in your agenda will not help, and is likely to damage relationships.

Limits to the ‘changes’ I can create with my words, indeed…

How to navigate round this one and avoid becoming like the cockerel? Ah look… here’s another answer I can’t conjure into being by asking the question. It probably helps to keep the whole process as simple and open as possible: to wait for that inner nudge that there’s something you need to know, and then asking, ‘What do I need to understand about x?’ – or even just ‘What do I need to understand?’

I didn’t ask a complicated question, just ‘advice and comment for the trip…?’ – I simply wanted something to hold in mind and help me not to miss anything while I was there. Yi came back with Hexagram 38, Opposing, changing at lines 1 and 3 to 50, the Vessel. So we have a bunch of wildly irreconcilably different ways of seeing, all contained and cooking together in one Vessel.

And that is exactly – exactly – what happened.

I’ve got to admit that the moving lines, though, are taking their sweet time in making sense to me. Here they are:
‘Regrets vanish.
Lost horse: don’t pursue it, it returns of itself.
See hateful people,
No mistake.’
‘Seeing the cart dragged back,
The oxen stopped,
Your men branded and their noses cut off.
With no beginning, there is an end.’

I haven’t seen any hateful people; I generally don’t. I’m starting to wonder, in fact, whether ‘fierce people’ might be a more useful reading of this – something else you don’t need to react to, like the lost horse. (Anyone have any defining experiences to share?) And despite my apprehension after looking at line 3, all my trains ran perfectly and I reached Folkestone in plenty of time to meet up with Cesca and Brad.

One thing the lines are certainly doing, though, is providing plenty of wry commentary on the way we found our way about.
‘Seeing your road signs indecipherable,
Your ferries going in unexpected directions,
And your return bus disappearing mysteriously.’
- that kind of thing. But Brad has a sense of direction, LiSe translates from the Dutch tomtom, Cesca has remarkable patience and an unerring instinct for picking the right direction to turn in out of the two or three being called out to her at once as she drives, and the horse keeps on finding its way home somehow – through ‘the average of our errors,’ as Brad put it. We weren’t lost, just arriving differently.

Or as Yi put it,
‘With no beginning, there is an end.’
After our time in (and around) Amsterdam, I have a new understanding of that one: there are no patterns predefined, nothing clear-cut (the word for ‘beginning’ is the one with roots in ‘cutting out the cloth’); nothing, in fact, that looks remotely likely to lead anywhere specific. And yet somehow we kept arriving somewhere, and in one piece. (‘Fuzzy logic,’ Brad says.)

My previous take on this was that the Great Possession of Opposing (38.3 changes to 14) lay in having people taking a different view of your possessions, your cart and oxen, with unpleasant results. That might be present – maybe it’s more that it’s hard for diverse people always to keep track of exactly what gifts each one of them has to offer – but what struck me most was the emergent 14. With no beginning, somehow you still end up with a Great Possession more than the sum of its parts.

We saw plenty of lovely, clear illustrations of that. There was the navigation thing, and there was the day we spent in Amsterdam with not much idea where we were going, but generally assuming we’d know it when we found it. And then there were our Yi discussions: Cesca was brave enough to share her annual reading, first with Brad, who looked at transitional hexagrams, then LiSe and I, who looked at the lines in the original hexagram, then with Harmen, who did startlingly succinct and fluent things with trigrams. Inspired by her example, I offered up my annual reading, and that became the subject of Brad and Cesca’s first joint interpretation. (Recommended!)

Possibly my favourite example was a bit more literal. Before Brad and Cesca came round one morning, LiSe (who gets up unspeakably early) thought to cook some squash so we’d have something to eat in the evening. When we got back, we started thinking about what to put with it… there’s some broccoli, Cesca suggests steaming it before adding, LiSe wants to know if we’re happy with our onions fried with soy sauce, I suggest adding some grated cheese, LiSe finds pecorino… and somehow all this Diversity goes together splendidly in one large Vessel, and we ate our reading.

*****

Afterword…

I forwarded this post to Brad, Cesca and LiSe before publishing it. Let me just add their comments to the pot:

Brad says:

“* I don’t see the these particular ways of seeing as irreconcilable – they simply can’t be added together without having the picture evolve and deepen. But it’s true that I can’t reconcile something like bunched fat meats or cleaved ewe shins or twitching captives with my own understanding.

* “hateful people” – I read “(on)  seeing the worst (or wrongness) in others”, but for me it means simply that we need to start by seeing others for who they really are and respond accordingly.”

(See how he says he sees hexagram 38 differently? A few decades of working with Yi have left the man with a pretty nicely developed sense of irony, so I expect he sees what he’s done there… )

Cesca says:

“The only thing I can add is that I tend to think of 38 as “Strange” … and LiSe’s house was itself like a character in a strange dream  :-)   (My dreams almost always include the environment in which they take place as a sort of character, and that house is quite a character!)”

Very, very true. Even the spiders in the Heyboer house make art.

And LiSe says:

“I love it! But you forgot the bus driver who had to ask the passengers for directions. She had never before been there, and when the road seemed blocked by the big whateveritwas (a JCB?) she thought she had lost the right road.”

That was when we were on our way in for the day’s meandering in Amsterdam. Definitely ‘no beginning’ whatsoever.

She also points out that you add the soy sauce after frying the onions, which is good to know.

Well… I sit myself down in front of a task and my brain goes on strike. It’s got quite radical about it: ‘Sit and stare at the screen all you like,’ it says, ‘but if you think anything useful is getting done here, you’ve got another think coming. Or you would have, if I weren’t on strike. See – nothing happening, is there?’

And there isn’t. It’s not as if there were a shortage of things to get done, either – but somewhere between my ears, the hamster has got off the emailreadingemailsitemaintenanceemailemailforumemailblogemailtranscriptsproductsemailwebsitesemailemailemail wheel, curled up and fallen asleep. I’m enjoying doing readings, and meeting deadlines by the skin of my teeth, but all the other things have been falling by the wayside.

Hm. I rather hoped this might be a cue that I should have a holiday, but of course it might just be a cue to give myself a good kick. Well, I’d find out if I asked Yi and it gave me hexagram 7, wouldn’t I?

So I asked Yi: ‘How to respond to this aversion to work?’

And Yi responded with hexagram 7 (heh…) changing at lines 4 and 6 to 64. So there is an army, yes, but it’s not yet across – and specifically, it’s camping on the left, no mistake. That’s a literal translation of what Wilhelm simply has as ‘retreat’, and Brad calls a ‘fallback encampment’. Exactly. So… despite the very amusing experience of getting hexagram 7, this is not time to try to kick myself into action. It’s OK not to fight this. I can relax from the campaign for a bit… and of course this line points, beautifully, towards 40, Release.

Another meaning of this line would be to stay in a defensible, supply-able position, not to overextend the army. (One of those intriguing notes in Lynn’s book connects this with the ideal position according to the Art of War.) Hence not, for instance, to commit myself to things I can’t carry through. This makes me feel better about not squeezing in a Yijing Class this year.

The other line in my reading is a bit more of a challenge:

‘The great leader has a mandate
To found a state and receive the households.
Don’t use small people.’

Gulp?

Clearly the sleeping-hamster-scenario doesn’t mean it’s time to wind the business down and become a librarian or something. It seems to be about expansion, community, and creating something self-sustaining.

The small people are raising an inner ruckus, and the connection between this line and Hexagram 4 – aka Being Clueless – has never been so apparent…

I was very, very lucky that Ravi Walsh agreed to step in at the last minute after one of the Festival of Change speakers had to drop out. He’s a spiritual life coach who works with a method of his own creation – or maybe it would be better to call it a method of his own discovery, as it sounds as though it rather created itself – called Symbolic Tracking. You can read about that here – and you’ll see why he’s a good fit for a Festival celebrating living in the flow of change, and all our ways of connecting with it.

Ravi was delighted when I told him we have 90 minutes for his call, as that means there’s time for him to share the whole process he uses with his clients. Though we’ve only had time to talk once, I get the distinct impression of someone who’s itching to give as much as possible…

…which makes sense considering that Yi describes the gift he offers as Great Possession in Small Taming – 14.4.5 changing to 9.

I actually get the feeling this reading’s talking both about Ravi and what he gives, and also what role there is for me to play to allow him to give it. I’ll be the ‘small farmer’ for this call, the one who takes care of the terrain and makes it ready. I think I can probably also expect to experience some of the ‘not quite there yet’ frustration of Small Taming, running round managing the technical things rather than being able to settle into the call and get the full benefit of it. (I hope I’m wrong – but I’ll have the recording to listen to again and again when I’m not under pressure, and that will be good.)

Also, line 4 leaps out at me -

‘It is not for you to dominate,
No mistake.’

This is the line about beating your war drum, trying to get the world to march to your rhythm. I’ve found the ‘no mistake’ in this line is often responding to a certain fear that if you’re not controlling things, they’re really not being done properly. Well… most of the calls will be in an ‘interview’ format, more or less; Ravi will be shaping his call as he goes along. And yes, I’m so new to the way he works that some part of me does want to take back control. This line is certainly talking to me.

Come to think of it, though, this is also talking about Ravi. His work is absolutely not about what he says anyone should be doing, following, experiencing etc… it’s entirely guided by the rhythm set by the individual’s experience.

Line 5 I do think is Ravi’s:

‘His truth interacts, strikes awe -
Good fortune.’

This is a gift that connects with Hexagram 1, Creative Force. (Interestingly, the same line came up in a reading I did for – and about – James Warlock, that I’ve yet to share on the blog.) It’s hugely full of energy and has the potential to be a little overwhelming (something I can relate to after talking with Ravi). Here’s what I wrote about this line in the book, trying to capture that uncompromising purity of Hexagram 1:

Pure, undiminished truth communicates directly and with great force. It is not compromised by trying to convey a specific message or create a particular outcome, but speaks consistently and powerfully through what it is.

You will make the most profound and lasting difference simply by being who you are, without dilution and without ulterior motives.

The Festival begins tomorrow, Saturday, at 3pm UK time. There is still time to join! (It doesn’t matter if you miss a call or two, as they’re all being recorded.)

This is where EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique – can help. And when I started asking round to see if there was an EFT expert who would be willing to join us and teach us how to use the method to help get readings through into reality, I was naturally pretty chuffed when the person who volunteered had the domain name EFT4change.

I don’t have a share-able reading with Claire, but you can get a good sense of her ‘voice’ from this article, ‘All is Change’, and from her excellent free ‘pocket EFT’ series – all good, immediately-useful stuff.

I asked Yi what gift Claire brings, and received Hexagram 55, Abundance, changing at lines 2, 3 and 4 to 19, Nearing. This one is taking a little more thinking about than previous ‘gift’ readings, but I think I’m starting to get it…

Hexagram 55 describes that moment when you’ve received the sign – the eclipse at noon making the Dipper visible, the oracle that tells you not to hide away in the mourning hut but to make your offerings and march out… – and now you have to decide and act. There’s pressure, there’s perfect darkness, and there’s the imperative to be the king and take on responsibility.

Abundance Nearing… this means partly that it’s a growing presence, I think, and partly that you’re growing in strength and presence yourself, which is certainly an aspect of 55. (It’s ‘the Nearing-experience of Abundance’.) 19 tends to mean becoming the responsible adult, the one with the overview, who is most definitely not a victim. In this case I get the feeling that it points to personal strength ‘nearing’, rising within you as a kind of inner ally and approaching the challenges of 55.

(I think there’s a lot more to be understood about 19 here, though… not least since it’s also the relating hexagram in the reading about Tori Janaya’s gift.)

So Claire comes in at just this moment of ‘easier said than done’ as you understand what you’re called on to do. Then the moving lines…

(I did this for all the people I considered asking as speakers, probably more asking about other people than I’ve ever done before. But in the context it made sense: there wasn’t any other practical way to get the understanding I needed, and I couldn’t imagine initiating a partnership like this without asking Yi’s take on it first. I just leant on readings rather more for this than I usually would. The resultant readings were, without exception, very revealing and helpful. They also relate to one another in some fascinating ways…)

What gift would James bring people?

Hexagram 26, Great Taming, changing at line 3 to 41, Decrease/Offering. (That is, changing to the primary hexagram in the reading about Tori Janaya.)

Greatly accumulating with and through Decrease, purposefully cultivating mastery by making simple offerings… and with that idea, from 26, of accumulating skills and energy with a view to going further, ‘not eating at home’, being of greater service -

‘Great taming,
Constancy bears fruit.
Not eating at home, good fortune.
Fruitful to cross the great river.’

Whatever mastery is to be had on this scale, it always contains the hidden possibility (nuclear hexagram, 54) of being like the Marrying Maiden, who comes home into a new situation far beyond her scope/scale, and must grow into it. This isn’t going to be about ‘becoming intuitive’ as if that were an end in itself.

‘Taming’ stands in for one of those Chinese characters that isn’t remotely adequately translated by any English word I can think of. Great Taming, Nurturing, Accumulating, Restraining… the idea is of containment and control as a kind of caring, one that allows for growth. Given the word’s roots in fields and farming, it makes sense to think of this as Great Self-Cultivation. This post at Living I Ching talks of 26 as restraint, study and practice. After talking with James about magical ritual as a spiritual practice, this strikes chords for me.

Specifically, James brings a fine horse, and the means of training it:

‘A fine horse for pursuit.
Constancy in hardship bears fruit.
Daily training, chariot driving, protecting.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.’

My first sense is that this is something we need: the training, the developed skills, to make full use of our intuition, our energy – whatever name you give to that inner capacity for moving fluently with Change. (It also dovetails intriguingly with the reading about Jen Louden and the ‘great chariot to carry loads’ – the chariot, and how to drive it!)

Left untrained, the horse is very beautiful, strong and swift, and it runs with the herd. Here’s what I have in my book for this line:

“Before you think about what you are pursuing, you need to concentrate on how you pursue it. The energy and spirit you have for this are of great potential value, like a fine horse. And you cannot have a horse without a duty of care – nor yet a fine, well-trained horse unless you accept the daily work (and discomfort, struggle and sacrifice) of training it. Through constancy, the work becomes the gift.

The horse will follow its instincts and run with the herd. For your power to pursue to become a strength rather than a liability, these impulses must be restrained, boundaries safeguarded and energies redirected – so that you control the direction of travel.

Having your chosen direction in mind gives you the motivation to train a fine horse. But what you are really mastering here is freedom of movement, so that it becomes meaningful to choose a direction to go.”

In about the first 45 seconds, I think you’ll understand what grabbed my attention. Tori describes how come we can hear things and not get them: ‘how we can get stuck in the psychological game of acquiring fabulous insights that seem brand new and fresh, but they don’t result in us having really true, lasting transformation in our character.’

Or in other words, a game I’ve certainly played with readings in the past, and I’m reasonably sure I’m not the only one. What makes the difference is the quality of listening… and this is what Tori goes on to talk about. (In this audio it’s about communication with another human being rather than with an oracle, but the principle of listening is the same.)

When I asked what gift Tori would bring as a participant in the Festival, Yi was quite specific: Hexagram 41, Decrease or Offering, changing at line 6 to 19, Nearing. Line 6 reads -

Hence her question:
‘What’s my next creative calling?‘
Yi answers with Hexagram 21, Biting Through, changing at line 1 to 35, Advancing. I think this is actually answering one of her unasked questions just beneath the surface: she has plenty of ideas, but how to discern? And I think that in another layer, it’s also directly answering the question she asked.

So here’s the reading (right or control click and choose ‘save link as’ or the equivalent to download).

[podcast]http://livingchange.s3.amazonaws.com/I-Ching-for-Jennifer.mp3[/podcast]

It launches straight in without the initial ‘hello’s, because we spent the first five minutes or so talking about how dodgy the Skype connection was, and this is not hugely exciting.

And here is a blog post Jen wrote as she was responding to the reading.

It occurred to me that if I gave each speaker a reading, that reading might turn out to be the kind we could share, and then the recording would be a really good introduction to the speaker. Plus it’s an example reading, and that’s never a bad thing. (I may or may not be able to follow up with readings featuring all the speakers – they might not need one now, and if they do it might not prove ‘share-able’. But I’ll post as many as I can.)

So here, with Pam’s permission (thank you, Pam ) is a reading I did for her about her possibility portraits. To explain… she has a two-branched sort of business. She started out painting portraits that help people see and remember their real self and real possibilities; now, she’s branched out into business mentoring for heart-centred people. (What I’ll be asking her about during the Festival draws on both of these – what it is that helps people who see the possibilities move from there to realising them.)

Anyway, the business mentoring has been growing and getting time and attention, and Pam asked for her reading to be about the possibility portraits and what to do with them. So here it is: right-click to download the mp3.

[podcast]http://livingchange.s3.amazonaws.com/I-Ching-for-Pamela.mp3[/podcast]

(Oh, about the beginning part about complementary hexagrams – Pam is somewhat familiar with the Yi; I obviously wouldn’t start off like this with someone who wasn’t. And the previous reading, the hexagram 20 one, is mentioned here.)