Unchanging hexagrams and patterns of change

(Note: this is a quick post, throwing an idea out into the ether as soon as it hatches, with just a few feathers sticking to its scrawny neck, and a great big gaping beak squawking ‘Feed me!’ It is distinctly lacking in flight-feathers of its own as yet.)

People instinctively feel that there must be some distinct, special meaning in receiving an unchanging hexagram. And I think there is – though it’s so closely tied up with the meaning of the particular hexagram received that it’s really quite hard to pin down.

Here’s another angle of approach to unchanging hexagrams that might help with that: the Patterns of Change.

The change patterns (which have almost as many names as there are people who’ve been fascinated by them) are hexagrams that depict only which lines in a hexagram are changing, and which are not. You can think of them as a map of where change is active in the reading, or as a description of the agency at work, acting on the primary hexagram through that particular pattern of changing lines to reveal the relating hexagram.

You can represent the pattern of changing lines in two opposite and complementary ways: by drawing each changing line as yang, and each unchanging line as yin, or vice versa – representing the change as an open space, as yin, and the unchanging lines as yang. The yang pattern (changing lines shown as yang) I find shows the ‘gateway in’ to a reading: it often captures the moment of asking the question in some way. And the yin pattern (changing lines shown as yin) shows the ‘gateway out’ from the reading, the way through and beyond it. It can show a way the reading might be put into action – and as such, it can be a source of advice.

Anyway… this leads to odd results when you look for the ‘patterns of change’ in a hexagram where no lines are changing: the yang pattern comes out as Hexagram 2 (no changing lines = no yang lines), and the yin pattern comes out as Hexagram 1 (no changing lines = no yin lines).

So if you receive an unchanging hexagram, you entered into your reading through Hexagram 2, Earth. You arrive at your question like the mare: free-roaming, full of energy and spirit, and paying the closest attention to cues and guidance. You have a ‘direction to go’, a sense of purpose – often a very coherent one with great power and momentum of its own – but you are still in search of a ‘master’, a sense of how it might unfold. There is a confusion of possibilities, and you are waiting for a single beacon to emerge from it all.

(Maybe this is why people sometimes find an unchanging hexagram frustrating: they have a particular desire for guidance, to be told how something is to be done, and they receive no moving lines. No specific advice ‘lights up’ for them; they’re not given signposts. It’s as if they’ve been short-changed, cheated of precisely the kind of answer they were looking for!)

The question that receives an unchanging hexagram in response might be asking, in effect, ‘Why?’ or ‘What is behind this?’ There’s an underlying desire to know and be in touch with the guiding principle at work: to connect with whatever it is that you’re enacting, manifesting or serving.

This questioner has no relating hexagram (yet). They have no place to stand from which to relate to this; they don’t have a way or place for it to ‘fit in’. There’s no answer (yet) to the question, ‘Where is this all taking me?’ or ‘how is this unfolding?’

So they enter the reading with Hexagram 2, and to carry on and move through it, they need to bring this into balance with Hexagram 1. That’s a balance of being in service and willing to lend support (to a person, to an ideal, to an idea…), with their own personal creativity. It could be as simple as uncovering who they want to be or what they want to do in and of themselves, from their own intrinsic creative drive, that is not a function of anything or anyone else.