Hilary Barrett, I Ching

Archive for the 'I Ching' Category

How important are the changing lines?

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

(This post is about the basics. If you know them already, you can skip this and seek out something more sophisticated.) ‘How important are the changing lines?’ Someone emailed me to ask that: his ‘I Ching’ book had taught him to read one hexagram with one changing line for every reading, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) he [...]

‘Not possible’ querents, impossible readings

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

I like reading tarot blogs – there’s a whole supportive culture out there of readers, and the challenges they face are not so different from   those encountered by Yi people. For instance, here’s Brigit writing warmly and with a good dose of common sense about dealing with difficult clients. It’s actually odd how few [...]

Clarity news: site upgrades

Saturday, March 23rd, 2013

I’ve been very quiet lately – busy preparing to upgrade all the software that runs Clarity. Now it’s time to take the plunge and run the upgrades. While the upgrades are running, some things – the forum, shop and anything you log in to – won’t work. They’ll close on Monday morning, and if all [...]

Learning the I Ching from experience

Saturday, February 23rd, 2013

When people ask me how they can become more fluent and confident with their readings, I always, predictably, say something about experience. Consulting with Yi is a relationship and a practice – not something you can learn how to do first, and then start doing it. You get to know hexagrams and lines when you [...]

Steps through Hexagram 46

Monday, February 11th, 2013

Here are some thoughts on the moving line texts of Hexagram 46, Pushing Upward. I’d like to have a good dive in here – drawing on the meaning of the line position, the relationship to the zhi gua (the hexagram each line changes to) and the line pathway, along with experience, to get a feel [...]

Pushing Upward, step 4 (more hexagrams of context)

Monday, January 21st, 2013

As promised… one more step along the path through Hexagram 46. In this post, I’ll have a go at a couple more ‘hexagrams of context’: two more ways of saying ‘this is not that’. In the last post I looked at 46 with 45, Gathering: the contrasting, paired hexagram. Pushing Upward is not Gathering Together [...]

Scary readings

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

This is a topic that came up in the I Ching Community with reference to weekly and annual readings – how people can be frightened by them, maybe scared into paralysis by a sinister-looking line – and it got me thinking about the scariness of readings in general. What is it that’s frightening about readings? [...]