I Ching with Clarity

Following on from a previous post…

Hexagram 20, Seeing

Hexagram 20 has xun, wind and wood, over earth; its Oracle text suggests earth's open, available quality:

'Seeing. Washing hands, and not making the offering.
There is truth and confidence like a presence.’

Earth will not act, but allows: the ritual provides space for truth to arise, like the earth provides space for seeds to germinate. If you're from a Christian culture, these trigrams might remind you of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit (spiritus - breath, wind) came first as a strong wind.

The Image as ever, gives a quietly practical perspective:

‘Wind moves over the earth. Seeing.
The ancient kings studied the regions,
Saw the people,
And established their teachings.’

The ancient kings studied and saw, with earth-like qualities, and established teachings that would carry culture as far as the wind.

The character she 設, 'established', is formed of a mouth speaking and hand acting, and naturally speech belongs with xun, wind. 'Studied' is sheng 省, meaning to inspect, examine or watch over, including in a ritual inspection of mores. The character originally shows an eye with a sprouting plant appearing to grow from it:

The Pleco dictionary suggests an original meaning for sheng of a crop inspection, something very relatable for me at the moment (are those aphids on that pepper plant?). But it seems the character was always drawn with the plant growing from the eye, as if from the earth, and wait, don't we know some trigrams about that?

The teachings grow from Seeing like the plant grows from the earth. Outer xun, with its open yin line at the base, joins with earth, is open to it, and emerges from it. The kings, embodying the two trigrams, both respond to conditions and ultimately create them.

Hexagram 23, Stripping Away

With mountain above earth, we're only a single line away from Hexagram 2. But whereas in its Oracle, 'the noble one has somewhere to go,' in a time of Stripping Away, it's 'fruitless to have somewhere to go.' When things are ending, falling away - or being taken away - there's little point in thinking of where else you’d like to get to. Stand on the plain, look up and see the mountain in your way: you are here.

(When 23.6 changes and the mountain becomes earth, 'the noble one gets a cart' and he's back on the road.)

You can imagine - and I think the Image authors did imagine - the mountain eroding into the earth below. Although we analyse hexagrams into two groups of three lines, they don't all look like that at first glance:

Hexagram 23 looks like a group of five contiguous broken lines, with a single solid line above: the mountain's yin lines look like an extension - or a deepening - of inner earth. And sure enough…

'Mountain rests on the earth. Stripping Away.
The heights are generous, and there are tranquil homes below.'

…there is generosity above, just as 'generous de' is a quality of earth -

'Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous de, carries all the beings.'

It's the same word in the Chinese, 厚 hou, meaning deep and thick as well as generous, and it occurs only in these two hexagrams, the ones with the deepest soil.

The 'tranquil homes' are another echo of Hexagram 2, this time from its Oracle, which ends - after all its travels - with 'tranquil constancy, good fortune.' An 安, tranquil, is one of my favourite Chinese characters:

It shows a woman at home, under her roof - and its shape reminds me irresistibly of 23's component trigrams, with outer mountain in its role as protector, securing the space - not against loss, but through it.

Hexagram 35, Advancing

'Advancing, Prince Kang used a gift of horses to breed a multitude.
In the course of a day, he mated them three times.'

The 'course of a day' is found in Advancing's component trigrams: the sun over the earth. Bradford Hatcher saw this as the earth energised by the sun, and given order:

'More than light is dawning here. This energy coming into the system not only powers the system: it will organize it too, in the same way that good health will clarify the mind.'

So if the sunlight is powering and organising, what's the role of earth? It provides the sun with something to shine on - something that can respond and be brought to life.

That responsiveness is Prince Kang's: he is ready to commit his energy to breeding the horses, multiplying his gifts. And, of course, it's found in the fertility of the mares, who are the multiplier in all this! (This is horses' second appearance in an Oracle text.) It seems to me to be the same earth-readiness, supporting the outer trigram so its potential can be realised, that you find in hexagrams 8 and 16 (and 45).

Then the Image…

'Light comes forth over the earth. Advancing
The noble one's own light shines in her de.'

…makes clear something we might have missed from the Oracle: that this is not just about the happy chance of a blessing falling from above.

The lucky break has to be part of its meaning: Kang's counterpart in Hexagram 36, Prince Ji, was surely just as willing and virtuous as he was, but could do nothing but hide his light. But the hexagram is not just about being lucky. The light comes forth from the earth, with the same verb that was applied to the thunder of Hexagram 16: chu 出, to come out from, emerge from. This is the noble one's own light: it comes from inside, sustained by their own energy.

Hexagram 45, Gathering

'Gathering, creating success.
With the king's presence, there is a temple.
Fruitful to see great people, creating success.
Constancy bears fruit.
Using great sacrificial animals: good fortune.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.'

This might be the fullest expression of earth's willingness to support. Prince Kang lent his energy to horse-breeding; in Hexagram 45, the king, the great people and an offering of the biggest and best animals all support the Gathering. We can picture all the people congregating at the temple with shared purpose.

The trigram picture here is lake above the earth - a reservoir contained by high earth banks. The Image sees the risk this represents:

'Lake higher than the earth. Gathering.
A noble one puts weaponry in good order
And warns against the unexpected.'

From the earliest commentaries, people have recognised that the noble one is warning against the risk of flooding. Gathering all your water in one reservoir has its advantages but also its dangers - all the more so if ordinary people live in pit dwellings.

The role of earth in this picture is clear enough: it contains the water, creates the reservoir, and protects against flooding. It quite literally 'provides the how' - the building material for the banks.

Why does the noble one prepare weapons, though? (This is assuredly what she does: the character for 'warning' or 'guarding against' is the same as in 62.4, and originally showed two hands grasping a weapon.) Wang Bi implied that she was guarding against an emergency when societal consensus might dissolve into an 'every man for himself' mindset.

I tend to think of the depth of water in the lake as a deep emotional investment that can easily run out of control. It doesn't take much for the banks to breach - that's why the police prepare for big football matches. And breaches happen in the individual psyche, too, when we give something all we have. Earth qualities here might mean an openness and readiness to respond to outcomes that aren't what we had in mind.

I Ching Community discussion

Charlie asked 'How to navigate?' and cast Hexagram 27, Nourishment - or Jaws - changing at line 1 to 23, Stripping Away:

What followed was a strongly resonant conversation between his inner imagery and the imagery of the Yi - and also the ancient Chinese motif of being in the jaws of the tiger. The featured image above this post shows a detail from the handle of the Houmuwu vessel, where you can just see the human face between the tigers' open mouths. (The original photo is by Mlogic, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.)

Here's another example, from the 11th century BC:

Earth inside

The easiest way to get to grips with the first two hexagrams, for me, is always to think how much they're not each other. Qian, the creative force of heaven: nothing but solid lines, like the paths of sun, moon and stars across the sky. It moves without ceasing, and we can't change it - not by a millimeter or a millisecond. Kun, earth: nothing but open lines, like the soft earth ready to be shaped by roots, or water, or footprints, or hands, or the plough, to take the shape it's given and provide whatever is needed to bring the creative impulse to full expression.

So when I start looking at how kun works as an inner trigram, I notice first how it isn't inner qian. As an inner trigram, heaven might feel like your irreducible will, life force and creative drive: that part of you which will not be changed, or made to swerve or turn aside. So kun inside could be sustaining and realising power, something that provides the 'how' for the outer trigram; it can also be the power of responsiveness, even malleability.

Let's see…

Hexagram 2, Earth

Earth inside, earth outside: a whole broad expanse of open land waiting for footprints, like the way stretching out ahead of the noble one with 'somewhere to go' of the Oracle text, or the field for the mare:

'The mare is the earth's kindred spirit,
And wanders an earth with no borders.'

(Bradford Hatcher's translation of the Tuanzhuan)

I think the Image authors saw Hexagram 2 as soil:

'Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous de, carries all the beings.'

To quote myself…

I wonder whether the Image authors might not have been looking down instead of out and across, and thinking of the depth of soil beneath their feet:

‘Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous character, carries all the beings.’

地勢坤,君子以厚德載物

‘Soil power’! The word for power, shi 勢, is a lovely choice: its component parts are ‘strength’ and ‘agriculture’ – a component (purely phonetic, apparently!) that shows a person kneeling to plant a seedling. In many old versions of the character, they’re holding the plant up above head height, in a way that – to my very-amateur-gardener’s soul – seems like something between exultation and prayer. (‘Look, it’s growing! Can the pigeons please not eat it?’)

And the noble one, mirroring the power of the land, has ‘generous character’, 厚德 hou de – where hou also means thick, deep, dense, profound and weighty. The six broken lines of the hexagram start to look like really deep, rich soil – not just a dusty layer that could blow away. This deep kindness will carry all beings.

Generous de (character/ virtue/ power) is like good earth: all six broken lines, open and friable, with no rocks to dig through. And this power is ready to carry everything - literally to be loaded up like a wagon. That gives me the sense not only of earth's readiness to lend support, but also of carrying things forward, to their natural destination. Qian might bring the 'what' - or maybe more the 'why' - but kun will provide the 'how'.

Hexagram 8, Seeking Union, Belonging

Earth inside, with water running over it.

'Seeking union, good fortune.
At the origin of oracle consultation,
From the source, ever-flowing constancy.
No mistake.
Realms not at peace are coming.
For the latecomer, pitfall.'

What could be the role of earth here?

It could be the water's source: perhaps water is welling up from the earth, like the 'origin of oracle consultation' in inner openness. (Look at where we've come from in the Sequence, too.) Earth could be your willingness to be guided, and the unfortunate latecomer was just not available enough.

It can also be the banks of the river, its course shaping and shaped by the water's flow. Then earth could be what supports and lends shape to your unceasing emotional-intuitive flow of commitment in the world. ('On second thoughts, stop a minute, I'll just go back up the hill and see if there's an alternative route,' as rivers, on the whole, do not say.)

Then the Image shows earth at work:

'Above earth is the stream. Seeking Union.
The ancient kings founded countless cities for relationships with all the feudal lords.'

Earth provides the 'how': without the cities, there could be no relationships. I've tended to think of this one as a matter of political/military strategy, but it's really much more than that. The 'relationships' here, 親 qin, are close and personal: ancient meanings include close family, intimacy, cherishing, the love of parents, siblings and children.

So… perhaps we could imagine outer kan as the flow of love, and inner kun as everything that supports it: all the practical things you do to uphold a relationship.

Hexagram 12, Blocked

This is really the odd one out. With the other seven 'earth inside' hexagrams, I can start by asking how earth interacts with the outer trigram, how it supports it, responds to it, is shaped by it, provides the 'how' to realise it… but in Hexagram 12, 'Heaven and earth do not interact.' The Image says so, bluntly; so too does the Tuanzhuan:

'Thus heaven and earth do not unite, and all beings fail to achieve union. Upper and lower do not unite, and and in the world, states go down to ruin.'
(Wilhelm/Baynes translation)

I think it was Sarah Denning who connected this one with the quotation from Waiting for Godot:

"Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful!"

Exactly. So what can we do with or learn from the trigrams here?

'Heaven and earth do not interact. Blocked.
A noble one uses her strength sparingly to avoid hardship.
She does not allow herself honours and payment.'

'Uses her strength sparingly' - literally, the noble one uses 'frugal de', jian de 儉德. That's a direct contrast to Hexagram 2, where she uses hou de 厚德: generous de. The two sentences have exactly the same structure:

'Frugal' means thrifty, the opposite of profligate, and also crop failure. In these times, 'the noble one's constancy bears no fruit': nothing is growing; generous de wouldn't work. So in a sense, the noble one makes active use of the trigrams' non-interaction by withholding her own inner strength, keeping her earth-like capacity to herself.

Not allowing honours or payment seems to me to be the action of the outer trigram heaven - not connecting with earth, but continuing unswerving and uncompromised. (I like Bradford Hatcher's explanation of this as 'not taking bait, not giving wrongness something to rally and live for'. We've all had one of those arguments where you are only giving energy to the wrongness, not getting anywhere.)

Looking at the two trigrams together, you can also imagine standing quietly on the earth and not trying to capture the stars. For a clearer sense of this, contrast it with Hexagram 10, Treading: heaven above, but lake below, reflecting the depths of heaven, aspiring towards it.

Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm/ Anticipating

'Thunder bursts forth from the earth!' We should imagine springtime, when everything that has been dormant in the earth surges upwards into life.

The trigrams are already visible - or imagin-able, at least - in the Oracle text:

'Enthusiasm.
Fruitful to set up feudal lords and mobilise the armies.'

Thunder sets things in motion, so that looks like mobilisation; then the earth would correspond to the feudal lords, providing the structure that makes it possible. The earth trigram inside Hexagram 16 feels a lot like the one inside Hexagram 8: lending all possible strength and support.

In the Image, you can feel the wholehearted generosity of its commitment:

'Thunder bursts forth from the earth. Enthusiasm
The ancient kings composed music to honour de,
They celebrated and worshipped the supreme lord,
Joining with their ancestors.'

The ancient kings are honouring virtue, chong de 崇德; chong means to respect and elevate, exalt - the character is made of 'ancestral temple' and 'mountain'. So their music uplifts de like the earth supports the thunder that rises through it; it's the same idea we know from familiar psalms and hymns of voices rising to heaven.

I think they also use earth-qualities to 'join with their ancestors' - or as Wilhelm beautifully puts it, to invite them. The idea here is of matching, being worthy of, being in accord with. That suggests the responsiveness of earth, open to invite a spiritual presence, and following in the ancestors' footsteps like the noble one of Hexagram 2: 'following behind, gains a master'.

It's also important that their music has structure, transforming raw enthusiasm into harmony. In the same way, the interconnected web of feudal lords will turn the people's strength into an army, and the matrix of soil will support the new plants' growth.

(Hexagrams 20, 23, 35 and 45 to come!)

I Ching Community discussion

I've been working on a post on the trigram kun, earth, as inner trigram. That one will come soon - this is just something I wondered about along the way.

I started going through the sequence of hexagrams, looking at the Image texts for the ones with earth inside...

'Above earth is the stream. Seeking Union.
The ancient kings founded countless cities for relationships with all the feudal lords.'

'Thunder bursts forth from the earth. Enthusiasm
The ancient kings composed music to honour virtue,
They celebrated and worshipped the supreme lord,
Joining with their ancestors.'

‘Wind moves over the earth. Seeing.
The ancient kings studied the regions,
Saw the people,
And established their teachings.’

I'd got about this far when I was distracted by the ancient kings: there seemed to be a great many of them about. Was this a pattern, or a coincidence?

Well… there are seven hexagrams that mention the ancient kings in their Image text: 8, 16, 20, 21, 24, 25 and 59. Of these, three have kun as their inner trigram, and then there's also 24 with kun as outer trigram. If the distribution were random, I don't think you'd expect to see it more than a couple of times overall, and once as inner trigram.

So are the ancient kings especially like earth? Mothers to their people?

Perhaps. But this is only half the picture: the trigram zhen, thunder, also appears three times as inner trigram and once as outer trigram in 'their' hexagrams. The ancient kings are also innovators, the inner impulse that set civilisation in motion.

The arrangement of earth and thunder through these seven hexagrams is oddly symmetrical, look:

Here they all are, ignoring the actual distances between them in the sequence. (What is Hexagram 59 doing out there on a limb?)

And here's the character wang, king:

王

It's been written much like this since early times: three horizontal strokes joined by a single vertical one through the centre.

(Not for the first time, I feel as though I'm catching on v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y...)

I Ching Community discussion

How does the Yi help in an impossibly painful situation? It's hard to describe - deep recognition, being recognised, a sense of reconnection. Dominique's reading for this episode:

"What is the lesson that I must learn through the pain of losing my marriage and our future?"

And Yi's answer: Dispersing - Hexagram 59, with no changing lines.

It's a beautiful response - I hope you enjoy listening

Transcript, for Change Circle members

I have just heard that Stephen Karcher, author of Total I Ching and How to Use the I Ching, collaborator on the original Eranos edition, has died. I owe Stephen a great deal, so I'm writing this to express my gratitude.

My very first encounter with the Yi came when I found a copy of Legge in the Oxfam bookshop - but it was when I borrowed the Ritsema/Karcher Eranos edition from the library that I first realised I'd found something I could connect with. Yes, I know now that the Eranos version isn't perfect, but for me it opened the way into the heart of the oracle - a revelation. I monopolised the library's copy for a long time, renewed it, and renewed it some more, and finally bought a copy... and then had the idea of doing readings for other people.

Then I found How to Use the I Ching, a modest little beginner's book that provided exactly what it said on the cover. It has a really excellent introduction - one that doesn't, unlike most, stop at telling you how to cast a hexagram, but walks you in detail through a process of interpretation.

This introduction was where I first learned to understand the second, resulting hexagram of a reading as the 'relating hexagram', the 'sea in which the primary figure swims'. Stephen wasn't the first or only diviner to notice that this second hexagram was not rigidly 'The Outcome', of course, but he might have been the first to write and teach this. This was because he wasn't primarily a translator or academic - though he was both of those - but a diviner. He did readings, for himself and other people, and this experience is the foundation for his books. He had conversations with Change, and was hugely invested in introducing people to the oracle so they could do the same, and ways to transformation would open.

I reached out to Stephen, and was lucky enough to meet him a couple of times. In person he was tremendously energetic, brimming with ideas and creativity - think Laozi meets Tigger. After he'd given a long, lively talk out in Cowley, and answered questions afterwards, I imagined we'd take the bus back to the centre of Oxford - not a chance. We walked (or I walked, and he bounced).

He was also unstintingly generous with his ideas and his support. Of course I found it immensely encouraging that he was already making the Yijing his life's work: it could be done! And he offered me personal encouragement, especially to get started offering readings in conversation instead of just by email.

I was thoroughly apprehensive about this: what if people asked questions I couldn't answer, and I couldn't think of anything to say? As part of persuading me to give it a go, Stephen read for me by phone. It was about a business relationship that wasn't working, and the primary hexagram was 23, Stripping Away. I couldn't see the wood for the bushes I was beating around, looking for subtle things this might be referring to; Stephen told me completely directly that the relationship was at an end. (It really was.) He also responded to my anxieties with the best advice any diviner could receive: 'Trust the Oracle.'

I asked Yi to talk to me about Stephen - something I often do when someone I know dies. It responded with Hexagram 14, Great Possession, with no changing lines.

There's not much to add to that, is there? I think this makes a lot of sense - naturally - as part of the Pair with Hexagram 13, People in Harmony. Stephen was a tremendous synthesiser of Yijing ideas and research, joining many sources into a Great Possession of divinatory tools.

I came to think of him as a kind of Yijing alchemist. Everything he learned went into the crucible - Jung, etymology, myth and legend, insights into the sequence and structure of the Yi… - and every new insight or tool he cooked up, he wanted to see shared and used, explored and developed in live readings, where we could discover how they worked.

I tried to make a list of what's found its way from that alchemist's laboratory into my own readings. Right at the foundation, there's the concept of a relating hexagram. Then there's the habit of paying attention to Xugua and Zagua, and of thinking of hexagrams as one half of a pair. There are trigrams as 'spirit helpers'; there are steps of change and (with LiSe) line pathways. There are patterns of change, or 'change operators' as he called them later on - first the yin pattern, which I think was part of that brilliant introduction to How to Use the I Ching, and then yin and yang together. There are ideal and shadow hexagrams - the 'shadow hexagram', as far as I know, is a Karcher original, something that emerged from Scott Davis' insights into the Sequence.

There's also a whole lot more I never quite wrapped my head around - something that would not have perturbed him in the slightest. What he leaves us is -

'Great Possession.
From the source, creating success.'

Hexagram 14 has the first two of the 'big four' words - yuan heng, 'from the source success', a 'primal offering' - but not the third and fourth - li zhen, 'constancy bears fruit', 'fruitful divination'. We're left, not with a well-polished, monolithic system, with everything said that he would have wanted to say, but with a great profusion of ideas and approaches to try, a gift waiting to be used. The absence of a relating hexagram seems to emphasise that open-ended quality of the hexagram, leaving the 'fruitful divination' part up to us.

I wish I could have quoted Total I Ching in this post, but sadly my copy is tucked away in storage. You can find Karcher on Hexagram 14 at the 'Mothering Change' website, though. An excerpt:

'Circle of Meanings
A great idea, a great leader, a great person, great power to realise; great results, great achievements; an inner concentration of the will around a central idea that brings wealth and abundance.'

I Ching Community discussion