Hilary Barrett, I Ching

Hexagram 10 tells you that you are ‘treading the tail of the tiger.’ The first question to ask yourself about it is always – naturally enough – ‘What tiger? Where?’ There is something here that could devour you; you need to know what it is.
In some readings, the tiger is not hard to identify – [...]

I’ve been reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, and just reached the chapter on the power of expectations to change perception. The introductory example comes from sport: the supporters of two rival teams watch the same key, game-deciding moment, and for one of them the ball (or player, or something – it’s American football, so [...]

There’s a deep humour to the last two hexagrams of the Yijing.
63: Already Across. Already Completed. Every line is in what was traditionally said to be its ‘right place’ – that is, the yang lines are in the odd-numbered positions, 1, 3 and 5, and yin lines sit quietly in the even-numbered places, 2, 4 [...]

A thought about Hexagram 58, line 5… not yet completely confirmed by experience, just a thought…
Hexagram 58 is Opening, Joy and Communicating: the human figure with the great mouth who seems to dance and sing. This post is about its fifth line – the peak and culmination of the hexagram, as a rule, and its [...]

Every now and then, I open a book and the words leap out at me as hexagram commentary – and then ramblings like these result…
Here’s Thomas Moore, in Care of the Soul, talking about faith.
‘Imagine,’ he says, ‘a trust in yourself, or another person, or in life itself, that doesn’t need to be proved or [...]

Hexagram 14, Great Possession, says at line 4,
匪其彭。无咎。 - Not your (or its) peng, no mistake.
Peng means power and dominance – Wu Jing Nuan translates with his usual succinctness, ‘Not his to be strong’  - and the old character shows a drum with three strokes next to it, perhaps representing the sound of the drum in [...]

All meanings of the name of this post are intentional, as I really don’t know the first thing about Chinese etymology. But in my ignorance, I just stumbled over something wonderful in the first line of Hexagram 4, Not Knowing.
Hexagram 4, line 1 speeds the young ignoramus on her way by removing her fetters and [...]