I Ching with Clarity

Here's episode 64 of the podcast, with a reading about recovery from depression:

How to be well? By Limping with Clarity...

This looks like a complicated reading, but it really isn't.

If you'd like to share a reading of your own on the podcast, you can do that at onlineclarity.co.uk/share. Private reading chats are included in Change Circle membership at onlineclarity.co.uk/circle.

The Yi has quite a bit to say about food and drink generally, and wine in particular. While food has always seemed to me to be a fairly simple image for how you participate in your world - what you internalise, how you meet your essential needs - wine is more complicated. It's not only sustenance: it also has the power to change your mental and emotional state. Also, alcoholic drink has undergone its own change of state by fermentation, creating the mystery of a liquid that burns.

Wine, jiu 酒, plays an important role in 5.5, 47.2 and 64.6. (I'm calling it 'wine' - it could be beer. Definitely something alcoholic, anyway.) It also gets a mention in 29.4, which changes to 47, and is poured from a good vessel in 61.2.

5.5

'Waiting with food and drink.
Constancy, good fortune.'

需于酒食, xu yu jiu shi, waiting with/at wine (and) food: the very best kind of Waiting. The fifth line of any hexagram tends to be the 'ruler's' place: the line with the greatest sense of autonomy and choice. You can't choose not to have to wait, but you can most certainly choose how you wait.

The core meaning here is simple: waiting with confidence and enjoying yourself in the meantime. If you imagine the farmer waiting for rain, knowing that if it doesn't rain he will have no crops and no food… it might seem natural to go on starvation rations and stare anxiously at the sky hoping for clouds. But Waiting calls (in its Oracle text) for fu, sincere trust, confidently expecting and moving towards what you need.

The authors of the Image enlarged on line 5, clearly seeing it as the ideal way to Wait:

'The clouds are above heaven. Waiting.
A noble one eats, drinks and relaxes with music.'

Eating and drinking isn't only an expression of confidence that there will be good crops to come; it may also be a way to invite the spirits to share your meal, bless you with their presence - and nudge some helpful rain clouds your way.

This line changes to Hexagram 11, Flow: Waiting in and with Flow, in full knowledge that everything works.

And the wine? It shows this is a celebration. Its mental/emotional effects reduce fear and second-guessing, make us more present and trusting, more able to enjoy the moment without worrying about the future.

47.2

Compare that with 47.2…

'Confined while drinking and feasting,
Scarlet knee-coverings come from the regions.
Fruitful to use thank-offerings and oblations.
Setting out to bring order: pitfall, no mistake.'

5.5: 需于酒食, 'Waiting with drink and food'.
47.2: 困于酒食, 'Confined with drink and food'.

Not only does the wording follow the same formula, but both of these are the central line of kan, between two broken lines, showing the active liquid within its container. (Scott Davis pointed all this out in his book.)

The emotional experience, though, is very different. Wine should create trust and encourage social bonding - drinking with a group says, 'I feel safe to let my guard down with you all.' But Hexagram 47 is isolating: trust between people is exactly what it does not have.

Looking at experiences with this line, being 'confined with drink and food' generally means there is food and drink, nourishment and trust or good things in general, just not for you, or not quite what you need. (Which feels extra-frustrating, as surely it ought to be?)

For instance, I've had it about beautifully designed software I couldn't quite get on with - one of those situations where I spend more time trying to adapt the way I work to fit with the software than I do getting any actual work done. And I remember someone complaining the I Ching Community was dying and he'd had this line about it - when the community was actually in rude health, but its culture was shifting and he wasn't quite as in tune with it as before.

There is a great Gathering (47.2 changes to 45) of people, or of energy and focus in a shared project, but you are not quite in phase with it. To change that, you'll need to engage with its 'scarlet knee-coverings' (authorities, requirements, rules, how it works…) gently and politely, without 'setting out to bring order'.

(This is one of those odd omens: 'pitfall, no mistake.' Perhaps your reasons for wanting to fix everything and make it work are all good, but it still won't end well.)

29.4

'A cup of wine, a pair of dishes,
Using earthenware.
Let in with ropes from the window.
In the end, no mistake.'

Another mention of jiu 酒, wine, another changing line in the trigram kan. This one's a yin line, though, perhaps because it's the ropes that are active, rather than the liquor itself. And this line changes to 47, reinforcing the thematic connection - and more importantly, indicating that this is about reaching a prisoner.

In readings, I think this is about getting past barriers, finding an opening to make a simple connection - just enough to provide what's needed. The line's about delivering the wine rather than drinking it.

61.2

'Calling crane in the shadows,
Her young respond in harmony.
I have a good wine vessel,
I will share with you, pouring it all out.'

This line doesn't include the character jiu, but the theme of trust and connection would be hard to miss! The hexagram is named zhong fu, Inner Truth, with the same word for 'truth' as is used in the Oracle of Hexagram 5 (and again, twice, in 64.6). Rapport, mutual responsiveness, trust, truth and confidence - all are represented by both the cranes and the wine-sharing.

That part is immediately relatable: if you have a good wine stored away, then you open it when you have a friend to share it with. The speaker offers a good wine vessel, one that would be used for festivals. Perhaps they are like the young crane, responding to the call of an ancestral spirit, using wine and the subtly altered psychological state it offers to step outside the everyday and into the shadows.

And you can see this in the hexagram structure, too: there is no kan here, but Hexagram 61 is its opposite trigram, li, writ large (with each line doubled individually), creating a big container for Inner Truth. It's the vessel that's active, containing and sharing - motivated by Hexagram 42, Increasing, and its desire always to pour in more.

64.6

'Being true and confident in drinking wine,
Not a mistake.
Soaking your head,
Being true and confident, losing your grip on that.'

I love very much that this ancient, profoundly wise and greatly honoured oracle concludes with advice on how drunk to get.

This is the top line of the trigram li, fire, above kan: a hexagram of 'fire water' (Scott Davis pointed this out, too), with the emphasis on its intoxicating effects. Wine creates fu - sincerity, confidence and trust - and sometimes a little too much of it.

Disinhibition and an increase in confidence can be exactly what's needed when you have a river to cross: you can be less anxious about the future, more capable of anticipating success, more willing to take risks - the imagination crossing the river ahead of the rest of you. But the aim is a subtly altered consciousness: believing in yourself enough to try, but not so much you lose your grip on reality.

I have an example of this one from just a couple of weeks ago. I'm in the final stages of learning to drive - an unfortunate example for the metaphor, I suppose, but there we go… - and the process is having the nice side effect of giving me lots of vividly-illustrated, crystal-clear readings.

I started learning in a state of abject terror, with a lovely instructor who managed to transmute that into a good blend of confidence and caution. Now I'm continuing to learn with my husband, I need to manage that blend for myself.

Remembering I can drive and I'm going to pass a test soon - not a mistake. Losing presence of mind and driving on into the middle of the river a tight space between a van and a bus (just for example, you understand…) - not so good. I can see more clearly now how this line engages with Hexagram 40, Release: it needs the freedom to decide what to do next in each situation. With no place to go, to hold back and wait for the van to finish turning is good fortune…

I Ching Community discussion

A reading for a decision this time: Sha asked,

"If I build another tech company, what will the experience be like?"

Yi answered with Hexagram 27, Nourishing, changing at lines 2 and 3 to 26, Great Tending:

So that gave her an interesting couple of moving lines:

‘Unbalanced nourishment.
Rejecting the standard, looking to the hill-top for nourishment.
Setting out to bring order – pitfall.’

'Rejecting nourishment.
Constancy, pitfall.
For ten years, don't act.
No direction bears fruit.'

It looks as though the experience would be not much fun at all - but why...?

Bill asked about his dating prospects, and received - of all things - the sixth line of Hexagram 24, Returning...

...which is exactly no-one's favourite line. So how do you respond when Yi's answer is all doom and gloom, and really not what you hoped to hear? You explore... so we did.

Bill kindly interviewed me for his blog afterwards: here's his article.

A listener's reading for this month's podcast: Ann asked,

'How do I integrate myself as an artist with everyday life?'

And Yi answered with Hexagram 14, Great Possession, changing at lines 1 and 3 to 64, Not Yet Crossing.

(If you enjoy this, please share it!)

One of the strangest things about conversations with Yi is how immediately relatable most of its imagery is. Life is a journey; we walk our paths (Hexagram 24). We can be stressed and over-burdened to breaking point (Hexagram 28) - it's actually next-to impossible for us to talk or think about stress without using the same metaphor. We can stretch our imaginations a little to remember that, to the Yi's authors, horses are not only beautiful and fast, but the fastest things in the world and a vital military advantage. We may not know that tigers are guardians, or associated with the west, but we know about their teeth. So we can consult with this book written several millennia ago, in an unimaginably different culture, and more often than not, understand what it's saying.

Only… then there are the offerings.

Offerings in the Yijing

Even if you are reading Wilhelm/Baynes, there are plenty of them. 'One may use two small bowls for the sacrifice' in Hexagram 41; 'The neighbour in the east who slaughters an ox does not attain as much real happiness as the neighbour in the west with his small offering,' in 63.5, for instance.

And if you turn to one of the authors who sets out to reconstruct the original, Bronze Age meaning of the text - or someone like Karcher, who made these scholars' work accessible for modern divination - the offerings are everywhere. In Rutt's version, Hexagram 23 is flaying a ewe, Hexagram 31 is chopping up a human sacrifice, Hexagram 52 is 'cleaving' some unspecified victim joint by joint, there is blood gushing all over Hexagram 59, and every instance of 'truth and confidence' has turned into war captives, on their way to the sacrificial altar. The whole book starts to sound like a helpful manual for blood sacrifice.

Rutt intended his book as a scholarly translation, of course, not for use in divination. But Karcher, who certainly did write for modern diviners, translates heng ('success' in Wilhelm/Baynes) as, 'Make an offering and you will succeed.' What offering?

The idea of 'offerings' or 'sacrifice' seem to be what makes the oracle feel most remote from us, ancient and alien. We don't have feudal lords, but we do have networks of communication and helpers - we can understand their function and what fulfils that role for us. Most of us don't own cattle, but we all understand ownership, wealth and its attractions. Most of us don't make offerings… and there is no apparent modern equivalent to take their place.

So people look at 'make an offering and you will succeed' and wonder whether they literally need to start making offerings. Or read Stephen Field's translation of Hexagram 29 -
'There is a capture. Consider offering the heart in sacrifice. A trip will be rewarded.'
- and lament that they have already sacrificed their heart to this, and they've had enough!

Part of our problem here is the colloquial English meaning of 'sacrifice'. Consider…

'She sacrificed her family life for her career.'

or

'She sacrificed her career to support him.'

In either scenario, we understand that she suffered a loss, overall. A sacrifice - even if made for good reason - is something painful that makes you poorer.

This is not what offerings mean in the Yijing.

Offerings in ancient China

Offerings were of central importance to ancient China's rulers. Performing offerings and divinations, sustaining a living relationship with the spirits of his ancestors who would care for the people, might be the king's most important job. The calendar is defined by rituals.

The great feasts where the king would 'host' his ancestors were also festivals: the offering is cooked in the great ding vessel, the spirits are nourished by the fragrant steam, and people gather to enjoy the spirits' leftovers. This is what I imagine with Hexagram 45: the offering as a shared social experience, reinforcing the bonds (to one another, to place, to ancestors) that unite people.

There may not be a perfect modern analogue for this, but we can see a connection with our own gatherings, big or small - from sporting fixtures to Christmas dinner - where we participate in shared traditions and remember the dead.

This points to a vital role of offerings: they create connection and relationship - not least among people. There are even a couple of instances in the Yijing where an 'offering' can be interpreted as being made to another human being - 47.2.5, maybe 14.3. We can certainly use the concept of offerings that way in our own readings. Open-source software is a modern offering; so are those apples left out by the roadside just up the road from me, with a sign asking, 'Please take some.' We're all in this together, say the offerings; let's help one another.

Offerings made to the spirits of nature or ancestors say very much the same thing. If you make a sacrifice to the mountain spirits, you are expressing your confidence that they will respond. I don't think you would imagine that you were making yourself poorer.

My modern prejudices are telling me that if you expect something in return for your offering, this somehow cheapens it. But I think my modern prejudices are missing the point. An offering isn't purely transactional, quid pro quo; it's shared. You are sharing your meal with the winds and mountains - or the winds and mountains are sharing their meal with you. If anything, the offering is a celebration of how you are part of a single ecosystem of mutual support.

Only someone wholly immersed in the circulating flow of energy, giving and receiving, could make this kind of offering. And being part of this cycle of goodwill, that circulates through offerings, rain and harvest, is not optional. If the crops fail, you can't step outside the cycle and order a supermarket delivery instead.

Ancient offerings, modern readings

So… a few 'offerings' in readings will be obvious in the context (cooking a meal, giving a concert…). For the many that aren't obvious, it might help to think of an offering as a way of nourishing, investing in and (re-)creating a relationship.

We can think of it in terms of human relationship to start with. Love is a verb. How much can you give? How fully and wholeheartedly will you participate?

Or to put it another way - what are you prepared to spend? Spending our resources for someone or something - time, energy, attention, not just money - is an offering. You might make offerings for your creative work, or for your children - not as an abstract decision, but in your daily actions.

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run …”

Henry David Thoreau

I also think it's important that an offering is a ritual. As a ritual, it may or may not involve incense and candles, but it certainly involves attention. So when a reading invites me to make an offering, I need to become conscious and deliberate about what I'm giving and how that works: what does it create, what is it part of? (How does it 'create success'?) Whatever I'm doing can become more intentional. There's more than one way of cooking supper.

The Book of Rites says,

“Sacrifice is not a thing coming to a man from without; it issues from within him, and has its birth in his heart. When the heart is deeply moved, expression is given to it by ceremonies; and hence, only men of ability and virtues can give complete expression to the idea of sacrifices.”

Liji, the Book of Rites, Legge translation.

It's also interesting to reflect on how divination and offerings were originally part of the same ceremony. People would often divine to ask what would be a fitting offering. With an expanded idea of an offering as conscious spending, deliberately nourishing relationship… many of our readings now might be doing the same. We're still asking what to do, what to bring, how to participate… what to offer.

I Ching Community discussion