Memorising the I Ching

There’s a splendid series of threads at the I Ching Community entitled ‘Memorising the I Ching’. Rosada and everyone who pitches in are travelling through hexagram by hexagram, describing what’s memorable about each line. Here’s a list of the threads so far; they’ve got as far as Hexagram 19.

Why would you want to memorise the I Ching? Rosada suggested it as a way to allow lines to come to mind without casting, “as if I can hear my heart talking to me.” I’d add that it’s also very useful at times to be able to cast at moments when you don’t have access to a book. Besides, it seems like a mark of respect.

And how might you go about it? Memorising 64 gua (configurations of lines), with their names, Judgements and Images, doesn’t seem too hard; I found that had happened without conscious effort after just a few years of divination. But all 64×6=384 lines? That can happen spontaneously, too, but it does seem a little trickier.

I think it helps to understand the line texts in some larger context. For instance, do the lines tell a story, as you climb through the hexagram? The lines of 53 work this way, as the wild geese settle at the border, on the rocks, and so on. Some lines show a different kind of pattern: if you remember that 28.2 is the older husband with a young wife, then it’s not so hard to remember that its mirror image, 28.5, is the upright husband with the older wife.

Then there’s the line in relation to its position in the hexagram, or its trigrams. The third book of Wilhelm/Baynes will generally ‘explain’ line meanings in this way, though the explanations don’t necessarily make anything more memorable. But it can be simpler: looking at

for example, it’s not hard to remember that the one firm line in the ‘inner centre’ is ‘in the centre of the army.’ And it often helps to remember that the first line’s ‘outside’ the action, the sixth line exceeds it in some way (whether by going beyond it as in 18.6, or simply overdoing it, as in 34.6), the threshold from third to fourth can be a place of fear and indecision, and so on.

What I personally find most helpful as a nudge to memory are the relationships between the lines and the hexagrams they point to, their zhi gua. The final line of 57, for instance, warns that in ‘rooting under the bed’ you can ‘lose your property and symbol axe’. Changing this line leads you to the Well (48), which is an endless resource. I find that people who ‘root under the bed’ at 57.6 insist on really ‘going into’ something, for instance wanting to explore to the limits of its potential. But potential, like the Well, is endless; you can try forever to fathom this, send your roots ever deeper, and forget all about your power to act.

Perhaps this is a helpful way to remember lines, or perhaps it’s just helpful for me. Anyway, please share your own perspective. With Hexagram 20 on the way, it seems a good moment to lend this series some more visibility. 🙂