Discussing the fourth ‘readings panel’ at GreatVessel, Rodrigo says that the absence of moving lines indicates that the situation is an objective reality: there are no subjective choices to be made. This is a good way of understanding moving lines – that they are the openings for subjective choice. I would say that the unchanging hexagram is advice that now is not the time to make any such choice – or at least, that this hexagram is a space to wait in before choosing a way of relating. (The second, ‘relating’ hexagram can describe a personal way of engaging, a desire or attitude that exerts a ‘pull’ on the situation. With no changing lines, there is no engagement.)
Stephen Karcher suggests another way of considering the unchanging hexagram, through its ‘change operators’ or patterns of change. These are a pair of hexagrams found by mapping only the pattern of which lines are changing (ignoring whether they were broken or firm). The yang pattern, or inner operator depicts every changing line as a yang, firm line and every unchanging line as yin; the yin pattern, or outer operator, is its opposite, and depicts every changing line as yin (an opening for change), and the rest as yang. So when no lines are changing, you get the somewhat confusing picture of a ‘yang pattern’ that is Hexagram 2 (every line unchanging, every line yin) and a ‘yin pattern’ that is Hexagram 1. Stephen says that these “emphasize that inner receptivity (2) to its message can foster real creative spirit in the outer world (1).”
I think the inner operator, the yang pattern, can show the gateway into the reading: the spark behind the question, the impulse that creates this particular constellation of points of change. In this case, the inner state that begins things is Hexagram 2, the earth’s receptivity. It does sound as if this is where the group started – ready and willing to lend their strength to a cause, but pausing to divine because they were still in search of the best thing to follow. And the way for them to make openings for change, the yin pattern, would be Hexagram 1 – to become dynamically creative themselves.
Hi,
You completely lost me here… “another way of considering the unchanging hexagram, through its ‘change operators’ or patterns of change. These are a pair of hexagrams found by mapping only the pattern of which lines are changing…”
How can you have changing lines in an unchanging hex??
Of course you’re right – you don’t. If you had – say – the first line changing, and the next 5 unchanging, your yang/ inner change operator would be hexagram 24: one yang line, 5 yin. If none of the lines is changing, then logically all the lines in the yang/inner operator are yin. (And all the lines in the yin/outer operator are yang.) It makes sense in a weird sort of way.
How is it that you are so lucky that Russel Cottrel plugged your site with his discussion on Intrepretation of lines. He quoted this from one of the Huang fellows:
According to Alfred Huang, Master Yin handed down these rules for interpretation when there is more than one moving line.
1. If there are two moving lines—one yin and the other yang—consult only the yin moving line.
2. If the two moving lines are both yin or both yang, consult the lower one.
3. If there are three moving lines, consult only the middle one.
4. If there are four moving lines, consult only the upper of the two nonmoving lines.
5. If there are five moving lines, consult only the other, nonmoving line.
6. If six lines are all moving, consult the Decision of the new gua, the approached gua.
7. Since there is a seventh invisible line in the first and second gua, Qian and Kun, for these gua consult the seventh Yao Text, called All Nines or All Sixes. [If six lines are all moving.]
What is your take on using only one particular line out of several to consider the answer?
That if you had needed an answer with one changing line, you’d have got an answer with one changing line! You receive the answer you need, and the varying levels of complexity and interaction within the reading are part of the message. I completely understand the desire to make things simpler, but sommetimes reality just isn’t…