Every pair of hexagrams, ie every odd-numbered hexagram with the even-numbered one that follows it, carries some un-pin-downable feeling of ‘inspiration and manifestation’ or ‘question and response’ or ‘yang and yin’. Only I just wonder whether there might be a more specific patterns in the 7s and 8s…
Hexagram 7, the Army – and being within it. Hexagram 8, Seeking Union – looking at the terrain from outside to see where you belong. The general and the king.
Hexagram 17, Following – being within the flow. Hexagram 18, Corruption – examining and changing the flow from outside.
Hexagram 27, Nourishment – a containing structure. Hexagram 28, Great Exceeding – ‘the noble one stands alone without fear…’ (Daxiang). Incubating and hatching.
Hexagram 37, People in the Home. Hexagram 38, Opposing. ‘Opposing means outside. People in the Home means inside.’ (Zagua) Two different points of view on the same structure.
Hexagram 47, Confined, the view from inside an enclosed, oppressive space. Hexagram 48, the Well, reaching down into a dark, enclosed space from above to draw out the water.
Hexagram 57, Subtly Penetrating (into). Hexagram 58, Opening. ‘Opening: seeing. Subtly Penetrating: hidden away.’ (Zagua) These two begin to feel like a simple ‘key’ that unlocks the whole sequence.
Are you seeing what I’m seeing – inside and outside? (And if so, is there anything half so clear for other pairs?)
Thank you, Hilary, for this observation.
Glad you enjoyed! Suddenly noticing this kind of thing makes me wonder how much more I’ve been staring at all these years without seeing it.
9 – Working with and adjusting the small little pieces inside yourself.
10 – Taking that adjustment and applying it to the outside world of conduct.
Both seem to be about baby steps? Gearing up in 9, and using the refined self to interact correctly with the outside world 10. ??
🙂
Yes, that describes 9 and 10 very well. The question is whether there’s something similar that also describes 19-20, 29-30, 39-40, 49-50 and 59-60. If there is, I can’t see it yet!
A possible 29-30 connection..
This is hard to describe in words but I will try! I am getting a visual 🙂
With 29 we have a situation where we have water running all around us. It is not ‘soaking in’, instead rushing by. We over and over again go thru the same ‘test’ of danger, and every time we do not ahdere to a specific light of reason to help us, so we go thru it again. We instead trudge through with survival eyes. I see it in a primitive sense where we have not realized the tool to help us quite yet. And so we must have the repetition to realize the importance of the experience.
With 30 we have a situation where we have in fact realized something to help us on the way. A light of clarity, a conscious tool to cling to, to use, and so we no longer are trudging, instead we are depending on something to help. Just like a tool is born to use and technology grows.
So, if I had to sum it up quickly.. I would say both are about help, but in 29, the help is not reached or soaked in. The outside experience (over and over) is the important aspect. In 30 the light reaches and there is a spark within. But the help of 30 can also be a crutch if depended on too much. Against the backdrop of the outside experience, if all we had was 30 experiences, we would miss the importance of learning new things from the fear that went with it.
Oh yes… it’s one thing to have insight into something consciously, to be able to ‘make sense of it’ or put it into words; it’s something else altogether to travel through the chasms and experience the depths. 29’s learning may never be articulated, but it runs deep!
What I was getting at with the post, though, was finding a single theme that links all the pairs in the same position in their respective decades. So 7-8, 17-18, 27-28, 37-38, 47-48, 57-58, can all be described in some way as ‘inside-outside’. (Maybe.) (Of course each pair – any pair – can also be described as aspects of a single process/change.) Is there some similar thing that can describe 9-10 and 29-30 together? Along with 19-20, 39-40, 49-50 and 59-60? That’s what I was looking for and not finding.
Maybe the 7-8s are inside-outside a structure, especially a structure of relationships… and the 9-0s are inside-outside an experience, somehow?
And that is far too vague to be of any use to man or beast…
Oh, I see. I was actually thinking when I was initially describing the 9 -10 and also the 29, 30, that they were opposite of your inside-outside idea. Yes, they are instead outside-inside.
Confusing and interesting!
I do not yet see a pattern with 39-40, 49-50 or 59-60 that correlate. Shucks.