“Truth does not come into the world without robes; it enters through words and pictures. Truth cannot be received by the world in any other way.”
This is from the Gospel of Philip (one of the Gnostic Gospels). It seems to say a lot about divination. I think truth cannot be received by the whole human being in any other way. The authors of commentaries draw abstract, unambiguous advice from the ‘words and pictures’ (and picture-words) of the Yijing, advice our intellect can understand and use. (Jack Balkin in his Laws of Change is especially good at this, consistently producing clear, intelligent, no-excuses-for-missing-the-point advice.) We grasp the imagery – and it grasps us – on a whole other level.
A simple example. Someone has to communicate with his/her boss, and receives Hexagram 10 for advice. (I’ve actually seen Hexagram 10 given in this situation more than once.)
“Treading the tiger’s tail.
It doesn’t bite anyone.
Good fortune.”
We can ‘translate’ this into advice about bearing in mind you’re dealing with someone with the power to harm as well as help you, and being cautious, ‘watching your step’, using all your skills to keep things calm, being extremely polite, and so on. We can write paragraphs about it (or borrow some of those that have been written before). It’s even possible that in the middle of that fraught conversation with the boss, the querent will still be able to remember some of this.
Or we can tell him/her that this conversation is like treading the tiger’s tail.
Having imagery and stories to think in can change our way of being on a deep level – change that percolates up through how we think, what we do, how we relate. Somewhere in all this, we may – or may not – get that mental grasp of the advice.
By the way, I think the need for ‘robes for truth’ is one reason why Hexagram 22 follows from Hexagram 21. First you ‘bite through’ to the truth. Then, for that truth to be received – for people to be able to see it, relate and join with it – it needs robes that express its essence.