Sometimes, after you’ve looked at an I Ching reading for a while, the natural next step is to ask another question to help you understand aspects of that first reading. And sometimes the further answers you’re looking for are already present in your original reading, if you just have the time and patience – and a little knowledge – to look.
I’ve a feeling I’ve written about this before, but the subject came to mind again when ‘Bostonian’ asked, over in the Exploring Divination forum, whether the I Ching’s answers could be ‘taken literally’. My answer to that one would be that yes, they can, provided that what you are taking literally is the whole hexagram: its structure, text and associations. All these things create a larger context within which the answer has its full meaning.
For example…
Hexagram 45, line 4, reads only:
‘Great good fortune, no mistake.’
So if someone asks how a project will go and receives this one, they can pretty confidently expect it to be a success. But there is more information to be had – why will there be great good fortune? Under what circumstances? Where does this good fortune come from? It’s important to explore and be aware of these things: how else will you know whether you’re staying on track for that ‘great good fortune’?
Here are some of those texts and contexts:
This line connects Hexagram 45 with Hexagram 8: it’s ‘Gathering Seeking Union’, someone who comes to the gathering motivated by a desire to find and join with kindred spirits, to choose and build their world of relationships on the basis of natural affinity. So ‘great good fortune’ might be associated with that quality of intuitive discrimination.
This is the fourth line, the traditional ‘line of the minister’; it comes out into the world (across the ‘threshold’ between inner and outer trigrams) and asks, ‘What can I do? How can my strengths be used?’ It doesn’t ask, ‘What can I get?’ or ‘How can I best direct this for my own advantage?’ – commentators are all agreed that this minister is in service to the ruler in the fifth place. So this, too, is a way in which great good fortune can come about without mistake.
Its paired line, 46.3, speaks of ‘Pushing upward in the empty city.’ This emphasises and deepens the idea that the good fortune here is not about immediate gratification. The city stands empty; the goal is beyond it. So 45.4’s desire to be of service to something bigger than itself might tend towards a sense of the hollowness of immediate experience, a need for that to be filled up with a purpose beyond itself.
The fan yao –
‘Seeking union outside. Constancy, good fortune.’
– also connects with this theme of reaching out and beyond. The good fortune of gathering seeking union has to do with an expansive movement: growing beyond the notion of ‘my story’ and ‘how I do things’, leaving that dead weight behind and – in the true spirit of hexagram 45 – identifying with something greater.
The line doesn’t only say ‘Great good fortune’, but ‘Great good fortune, no mistake.’ The I Ching is a very small, concise book; it contains no wasted words. Why ‘no mistake’?
It’s interesting that every line of Hexagram 45 says the same. The hexagram deals with life on the grand scale, and with extremes of emotion – and with the accompanying risks and fears that we could get it all wrong. At line four, the fear might be of inadequacy, not being up to the job. ‘No mistake’ comes as reassurance that it’s possible to think and act on the scale of Gathering, to aspire to something ‘outside’ and even beyond the empty city.
So hopefully it becomes clear that there’s more to be learned from this line in addition to just ‘this looks good.’ There is great good fortune with no mistake if you are gathering and committing yourself to something bigger than you are, if you bring a spirit of service and a longer view. If you feel that you’re freely and clearly choosing to ally yourself with the gathering, and if you’re prepared to let go of old ways that are no longer the locus of strength they once were, then you’re in resonance with this promise of good fortune. The line offers a very strong positive omen – but it’s also, in a sense, a conditional one, or at all events a ‘conditioned’ one.
This way of understanding moving lines by setting them in context is part of the I Ching Class that begins next month; there are still 9 places left. The class includes more of a ‘system’ for relating to connections and structures like these, so you know where and how to apply them to your readings. Do have a look at the class outline and see if this is something you’d be interested in.