Very interesting email from Donato:
“Dear Hilary,
I have been consulting I-Ching for many years, during crisis mainly and therefore for really important matters, as well for less decisive problems. In many cases the answers seemed coherent with the question, in some quite ‘to the point’, in many others they baffled me.
I have observed (but I may be wrong in some cases) that it often replies to a question I didn’t ask and ignores the one I’m asking. As if it chooses the issue that is more important. Some time it’s frustrating!
I tried many times to define the question in a precise manner, even using formulas you advise in your course, to force or to pinpoint the oracle to stick to the question, but it never worked, the answer I got had no sense in relationship to my outspoken question but could be meaningful if addressed to another problem I had at the time.
What do you think about it? Is my view plausible? Or the problem could be my lack of understanding?
I thought a lot about that and I was thinking that the explanation could be that consulting I-Ching is a way to be in a dialogue with our inner self or, if you prefer, with our unconscious. That means: if I am confused, the resulting dialogue will be confused too, or maybe if I ask the wrong question, I’ll get a wrong answer.
This, of course is not precisely what the Chinese think and that I read here and there: ‘The I-Ching is always right, it always gives the right answer’.
Suppose the first case is correct, it makes me ask another question: but what then is the use of the I-Ching if I cannot consult it when I am troubled and therefore confused? If I see the whole issue clearly I would not need the I-Ching’s help, would I?
You see the ‘cul de sac’ I am in? I need to consult the oracle because I’m confused but at the same time I cannot trust the answer just for the same reason. So, how can I get out of that hole?
Your obvious answer could be: let another consult the I-Ching for you. But that, it seems to me, prevents me to grow and learn. If I have to depend on someone else judgment or intuition I’ll never develop mine.
So the question would be: the source of the answers you get through the I-Ching is beyond human limitations or within their influence?
Some months ago I decided to consult the I-Ching about that matter.
Are you curious to know what I got?
My question:
‘Is it possible through I-Ching to have access to a superhuman or divine source of knowledge or judgment?’
I-Ching response:
26, Ta Ch’u / The Taming Power of the Great, 6th changing line,
11. T’ai / Peace
The Wilhelm translations says:
‘Nine at the top means:
One attains the way of heaven.
Success.
What do you think?
My best regards,
Donato Dettori
Italy”
Dear Donato,
Thanks very much for your interesting email! While a lot of people ask whether they can always expect Yi to answer the question they chose, I’ve never seen anyone else think it out like you have, or ask Yi about the source of its own answers.
The question of whether or not Yi always answers the question is very much debated. Different people seem to have very different experiences. I find it does answer the question I ask, about 99% of the time. The exceptions would be
- when I was asking a question in order to avoid thinking about something else
- when there was something else I really needed to hear
I’ve only had one unmistakable experience of Yi ignoring the question to talk about something I needed to hear more; people with more active and eventful lives might have this happen more often! But I strongly suspect that in the great majority of cases where someone feels their question hasn’t been answered, they just haven’t been able to understand the answer.
This is most probably not their fault: some translations/commentaries are specialised to respond well to one particular type of question or area of life, and fail to supply anything relevant when the question is beyond the author’s imaginings. What you say about answers being sometimes spot on, sometimes baffling, reminds me of the effects of certain commentaries.
Unclear questions can also lead to a ‘disconnect’ between question and answer, just because the person reading is not entirely sure what question the oracle is answering. A simple example: if you ask, ‘Is it a good idea to do x?’ then you are really inviting an answer to the question ‘What would it be like to do x?’ or perhaps ‘What do you think of this idea of doing x?’ Under most circumstances, this wouldn’t matter in the least; it might even be good to have this greater ‘elasticity’ in the answer. But occasionally, it does cause problems.
It doesn’t sound as though unclear questions would be your problem, though. And as you imply, it isn’t possible to ‘force’ the oracle to answer a question, not with any amount of focus and definition. In those very rare cases where the issue isn’t a lack of understanding, and where the answer is clearly talking about a different issue, I think this is most likely to be because that issue is the most important one to you – and maybe you were asking the other question as a kind of ‘smokescreen’. At least, this has been my experience. The oracle answers your whole present mindset as well as your question, so confusion can arise if those two are remote from one another!
I understand what you mean by that ‘cul de sac’; I think in English we’d call it ‘Catch 22’. ‘If you’re confused enough to need the oracle, you’re too confused to use it.’ But in my experience, this is just not true. There is probably a moment when the answer deepens the confusion, gives my mental kaleidoscope a very thorough shake, but then the patterns start to become visible.
So I would say the way out of the hole is firstly to understand that this is an oracle for confused people, and your ‘cul de sac’ is an illusion. Secondly, to ensure you have a good translation of the oracle and give priority to reading the text rather than commentary. And thirdly, not to hand over your reading to another person to interpret for you, but if possible to get an experienced reader to help you out by offering new perspectives.
(Two ways to do this: there are some very good readers at the I Ching Community, if you’re comfortable with posting there, and there is the correspondence version of my more advanced I Ching course which involves in-depth coaching on each step and element of a reading to give you many ways to connect with it, and indeed to develop your own judgement and intuition.)
Your reading on the source of the oracle’s answers is a stunning one – thank you for sharing it. I hope you’d agree it’s an utterly clear ‘yes’. (Now, the question of whether the divine and superhuman knowledge lives ‘out there’ or ‘in here’ is a whole other metaphysical debate…)
Footnote:
I had a nice reply from Donato, who added that he’d been puzzled by the relevance of Hexagram 26 and ‘taming power’ until he looked it up in a different translation and saw it described as the ‘great educating power’.
Using ‘random’ methods means the WHOLE of the IC is applicable to ANY question – you are using the IC as a filter through which you interact with reality and that includes self-referencing.
The IC is the WHOLE at any moment and as such is background to the particulars we focus upon (extracted to the foreground) – for the neurology of it see such referenced material in:
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/wavedicho.html
The ‘random’ or ‘sychronous’ methods will (a) ensure all hexagrams are meaningful in some way but ordered into a sequence of ‘best fit’ to ‘worst fit’ for the analysis (b) there is, using coins, a 1 in 64 chance of getting the ‘best fit’ consistantly. If you get the 2nd or 5th or 10th you will still find them strongly meaningful and so think you have the ‘best fit’ when you dont. Our consciousness is geared to focus on particulars and in so doing can miss the ‘big picture’ or imagine the particular (e.g. a hexagram) IS the ‘big picture’ – it isnt. The best-fit hexagram can dominate in its representation of a moment, but it comes with a trail of all of the other hexagrams operating in the same moment but to lesser degrees – as secondary harmonics to a fundamental harmonic.
Our consciousness, due to its mediating and so interpreting focus, will ‘connect the dots’ using whatever it can to do so as it tries to derive ‘meaning’ .
The ‘traditional’ methods of yarrow sticks has a bias to ‘yin’ states and reflects as such the more reactive conditions of the past. You can change this around to bring out the more proactive conditions of the current collective, or use 50/50 coins etc etc etc OR use generic questions associated with how you brain deals with novelty etc.
Our consciousness is an agent of mediation and as such is one step removed from the reality we operate in as a species. However, the success of that agent has ment it can create its own little world and in so doing make consciousness appear as if the core focus of reality, and for some the originator of being – there is no necessity for this perspective to understand what is going on with the IC (or any other filtering system, metaphor etc)
Chris.
You write: “but what then is the use of the I-Ching if I cannot consult it when I am troubled and therefore confused? If I see the whole issue clearly I would not need the I-Ching’s help, would I?”
I am only a beginner myself, but the way I look at it, we need to look beyond what we expect the Yijing to answer, especially with the “fix it” style answers as if we were trying to sort out some plumbing. Maybe the Yijing IS answering the question, just not within the parameters we have set around what we expect to hear. I write the readings down in a notebook and sometimes when I look back upon previous answers I find that I was indeed given an answer, I just didn’t realise it at the time.
Have some patience and trust it – whether you believe it is a supra-consciousness or your own unconscious.
Best wishes,
hitchhiker
I was a tad astounded to find out that it is rare to ask the I ching about itself.This is the third time in my life i have attempted to see if me and I could become companions and the first thing i did was ask what it thought of this.When emphasis is based on being in touch with the heart/mind ( I like to picture quan yin in my minds eye), during and prior to the accomplishing process,invariably one gets back a compassionate encouraging message even if it is slightly harsh sometimes. thanx ralph
I have been consulting the I Ching for about 30 years, and to be perfectly honest, I wish I had never met the damn thing! The number of times it has not just been wrong but malevolent, evil, foolish, manipulative, I cannot count. It has admitted clearly that it often lies to me, preventing me from doing things that would have benefitted me.
One recent example concerns real estate. Five years ago I used to ask it every single day: “Shouldnt I buy a condo? Shouldnt I buy an inexpensive little condo, pay less per month than I pay in rent and own my own place?”
Every day the I Ching said No No No. Now that condo is worth ten times what I would have paid for it and the I ching admits that, but keeps saying it is unimportant, a matter merely “ornamental,” while I am suffering financially.
My question: has anyone else found the I Ching to be really quite shitty? And I repeat, I have been at it for 30 years, enthralled by the way it does get lots of little things exactly right – but very disappointed by its inability to really be of practical help.
Well, in a word – no.
And in a few more words – absolutely not, at all. There has been the occasional flash of brilliant 20:20 hindsight on my part, but I’ve never been misled by the oracle. And I use it regularly for very, very practical help – it’s my indispensable, impartial business advisor in book form.
You’ve been lucky. As a matter of fact just these past few minutes I have been asking it if it has benefitted me the past five years (over which time I have gotten what can only be called awful advice from it on business and other matters) and it has said pretty clearly that it has not benefitted me. The answer I keep getting is Hex 37 line 3, which I take to mean it has been tough with me. And H26 lines 4 and 5, both of which I believe indicate it is “holding me back,” “dragging me down.”
It also is not shy about admitting it lied to me. I always get the feeling it is promising that in the future all its bad advice will suddenly appear in its true light and I will see how great it was – but that never happens. It has been saying H12 line 6 or H12 lines 5 and 6 for five years, but the Standstill never ever ends.
Have you ever heard of a person whose I Ching spirit or (or whoever or whatever is answering these questions) is evil? Or, just plain dumb? I’ve considered that, too.
What bothers me most, though, is that when I ask it “WHY” all this untoward advice, it can never bring itself to say, even as a lie, “I have been helping you.” I beg it to say it has been helping me, but it will not. It only insists, over and over H26 – I’ve been holding you back, dragging you down.
I have looked around the net, but so far the only negatives I have found against the Ching are from religious people, who lump it in with the other “demons” and familiar spirits (i.e. – the dead). I myself started consulting the Ching as a form of experiment, do wonder if I am doing something against God, because the Bible is replete with warnings against consulting spirits – but I guess I have convinced myself its more like “casting lots” which seems to be OK with the Bible.
Do you feel the Ching is powered by spirits, One Great Spirit, or just synchronicity? Or what?
Anyway, I am glad to read you have been getting satisfactory results. I have been thinking of giving it up altogether, but it’s tough because after all these years it’s like an addiction.
Mabious,
maybe I Ching is just a mirror?
Do you love yourself?
Are you truthful with yourself?
And what’s more important: what have you done yourself to get out of your standstill? Did you expect that a book will do the work for you?
I’m a beginner myself too, but I think I can give you a hint: don’t try to use I Ching to know external things – that will come later – start asking about yourself, and use it as a chance to know you better. Perhaps it’s the only real important thing we need to know.
Good luck
Donato, I think you put that rather well 🙂
Mabius, I’m glad you mentioned those readings, as it sounds as though you have been handicapped by misinterpretations. Hexagram 26 doesn’t mean ‘holding back’ or ‘dragging down’. It means building mastery – or, as something that could be done to you, it would mean being restrained and given the opportunity to build up your resources, to grow to greater strength. Lines four and five show the key metaphor of the hexagram very well: the farmer restraining and channelling the animals’ strength.
Hexagram 37, line 3 begs the question: who is in charge in your home? Who is responsible?
And 12, line 6, does not have to mean that the standstill will (magically) be overturned. It may mean that you have to act to overturn it.
What powers the I Ching is the subject of a whole other post/book/lifetime quest… I call it God, because I don’t know another word for it.
Finally, a suggestion that may surprise you. First thing Monday morning, take your I Ching book(s) along to a charity shop, and come home to an oracle-free house. I’d say ‘put it on the shelf for a few years’, except that I know what you mean by ‘addiction’. Think of this as a trial separation; the oracle won’t disappear. It’ll be available if and when you ever want to try the experiment again.
Or if you want to test this advice with one more reading – how about
“What effect will it have on my life for me to keep on consulting with you and following your advice as I have been doing?”
Email this one over to me if you like, and I’ll give you some quick pointers.
Donato, thanks for your good wishes, and I think I see what you are saying – about my attitude toward myself. And I do realize that once I ask another being (the Ching) its advice, because I have decided it knows a lot more than I do about the unseen aspects of the future, in a way I have given up my right to complain about the answers I get, when they don’t make sense to me.
But what I am talking about is 30 years of being astonished at how the Ching seems to direct me, guide me, manipulate me, right into the wrong action – the action that closes off whatever “good thing” I was hoping it would help me attain.
Hilary, this gets back to what you say about Hex 26. We are not interpreting it differently. But the problem is – who wants to be treated like a farm animal? I think Lao Tsu said to the Tao we are all sacrificial animals, and whenever I get this hexagram, in answer to the question: “Why didn’t you let me buy that condo/that stock/that whatever that subsequently zoomed out of sight in price?” I do have the feeling it is quite proudly telling me it has treated me like an animal – manipulating me to go another way from the way I wanted to go. So then I ask, Did you do this for my ultimate well-being? Because in the long run, in some way known to you but not to me, I will benefit because I took your advice. And it never comes out and says Yes, that’s it! Rather, it says, No, I did not try to benefit you. (hex 37 line 3) or – the worst – when I blame it for misdirecting me away from abundance, it very often answers: Hex 7 line 6. Which I take to mean (though I hope I am wrong) that it is saying I do not deserve a fiefdom, do not deserve the prosperity I trusted it to help me gain… This is what bothers me. I feel it has been presumptuous in deciding things without giving me true choices – just (as I say) manipulating, re-directing my energies through dishonest means.
For example, in the case of a condo (unimportant, but a memorable hurt) when I asked if I shld go buy one, it was six years ago, and instead of telling me I would make a lot of money, have a great place to live at lower cost than I was paying in rent – all true – it led me to believe the thing would go down in price. Since then, it has gone up about 800 percent! Now, if it had said, well you’ll make a lot of dough but spiritually, or healthwise, or for some reason we cant say but you’ll see you’ll see – that would be one thing – a Choice – a true advisor – but when it gets the specific answer opposite to right, and then the subsequent excuse, when I blame it, is Hex 26, I do want to say I didnt ask for a farmer, I needed an advisor!
Anyway, I am very grateful for your suggestions, and I did what you said/
I asked the Ching today: “What will be the effect on my life if I keep consulting with you and taking yr advice?”
The answer it gave was Hex 64 lines one and six.
Then, (to cover all the angles) I asked What will happen if I __stop__ consulting with you and it said:
Hex 50 lines 2, 4 and 6. I know I have always hated line 4, but I dont exactly know what it means here. In the past it has presaged such events as my dropping a platter of food, locking my keys in the trunk of the car, and others too embarrassing to mention on the worldwide. So — did it tell me to lay off or keep consulting? I cant tell.
Mabious,
Come on, how can you really think to ask I Ching questions like that one:
“Why didn’t you let me buy that condo/that stock/that whatever that subsequently zoomed out of sight in price?â€
Don’t you see the absurdity of your behaviour? If you don’t trust I Ching there is no point in keeping consulting it. What are you aiming at? You want I Ching to confirm your mistrust of it!
I’m not saying that we mustn’t have doubts, it’s sane to doubt, and I often had more or less the same doubts you express, but the only way to get out of the fog curtain is to act, to have the courage of one’s own opinions or will. Only real life will tell whether we were right or wrong, (and often things are a bit in between). It seems to me that one of your main problems is that you are afraid to take responsibility of your decisions, you are afraid of doing mistakes and so you want I Ching to take the decision for you. Why didn’t you buy that condo or stocks? You want the rose but not the thorns, you want to make money gambling with stock market but you don want to the risks it implies. In this way you’ll never make money, simply because you are preventing yourself from acting. YOU are cheating yourself not I Ching.
Don’t you see the big contradiction in your behaviour: you say you don’t want to be treated like a farm animal, but as a matter of fact you are following I Ching advice (or what you think is its advice) like a docile and -forgive me -dumb cow. If you want to be a man, act like a man: accept the risks the situation requires.
By the way, I think that to consult I Ching to make money is a path that leads nowhere. (Yes, I’ve tried it myself! “Who is without sin throw the first stone†-hoping my English is all right here) But Hilary might say a better word about that matter – we could start a new thread: “rich with I Ching, should we look for what we don’t have or for the riches we already possess?â€
But there is another issue in your post which brings us back to my initial question. Let’s assume you really received wrong answers (I’m not qualified to say whether or not your interpretations were faulty). I have the feeling that strong emotional states or tendencies could influence our readings both at the moment of casting and when we have to understand the answer, and that of course will lead to wrong answers – which is the subject of this thread. And I would like to hear Hilary’s opinion about that.
It seems there is a kind of taboo about that subject among I Ching enthusiasts, we like to cling to the idea that “it†is always right, and we may be blind to all the impediments we create ourselves. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to examine all the things that allow us to “align with the universe†and so enables us to divine satisfactorily, and the ones that prevents us to do so? How many of you there feel that that is “the issue�
Just a quick note
Hexagram 7, line 6 also raises the question of who is in charge of creating your life.
How did the I Ching ‘not let you’ buy the condo or the stock? Did the book leap off its high shelf and knock you out as you reached for the phone? Bounce round the floor snapping at your ankles?
Some people have great success consulting the oracle in financial matters, not least stock trading. But they have to realise there is no guarantee that it will always have the same idea they do about their best interests or highest good. An oracle is not quite a tame answer-dispenser.
Hexagram 26 is usually about becoming one’s own ‘farmer’, one’s own master.
If you read moving lines 1 and 6 of hexagram 64 in any translation, I think you will get the message of that reading loud and clear. 64.6, the final line of the oracle, is actually about the dangers of divination (amongst other things), as something you can get ‘drunk’ on to the point of being oblivious to real-world necessities.
For your second reading – since the first reading had told you all you need to know, I have a feeling the second one may have addressed the situation from Yi’s point of view rather than yours. Yi does sometimes refer to itself as the Vessel. This is just a hunch of mine, but in this light I think all three moving lines become self-explanatory.