I wrote about a core message of Hexagram 23 when it’s your cast hexagram: how it demands a true tabula rasa, not just a ‘rethink’. What about 23 as relating hexagram – what can that mean?
Of course, there are 64 different ways a reading can change to Hexagram 23, but here are the six ways that involve just one line changing:
‘Giving up your own spirit tortoise,
Gazing at me with jaws hanging down.
Pitfall.’ (27.1)‘Embracing the ignoramus, good fortune.
Receiving a wife, good fortune.
The son governs the home.’ (4.2)‘Stilling your waist,
Dividing your back,
Danger smothers the heart.’ (52.3)‘Advancing like a long-tailed rodent,
Constancy: danger.’ (35.4)‘Seeing my own life.
The noble one is without mistake.’ (20.5)‘Dragons battling in the open country.
Their blood dark and yellow.’ (2.6)
If we can see what these lines have in common, that might (perhaps) offer a guide to the more complex, multi-line readings.
The first thing I notice is that they all seem to involve separation and divergence: explicitly or implicitly, there are two directions present, and the distance between them is important.
Gazing at the hanging jaws means giving up your sacred tortoise. Accepting the child’s new authority means moving away from the certainty of the father’s rule. You keep your waist still, but natural movement continues and pulls you apart. The humans want a grain store, but the rodent’s idea of ‘advance’ takes things in another direction. The noble one’s detached vision pulls up and away from involvement. The dragons of winter and spring fight to pull the year in opposite directions. It all shows the influence of 23 as Splitting Apart.
In a lot of these – all except 20.5, perhaps – there’s rivalry between two authorities, or two agendas, pulling in opposite directions. (And perhaps you could even construe 20.5’s overview as an alternative ‘authority’.) The line is tending to split apart from an original structure, vision or flow – pulling away from the situation’s dominant direction.
That divergence can show up as an inner division that becomes self-sabotage: pushing out that solid sixth line can amount to separating from your own motive force, your natural insight, desire, greater purpose or creative direction.
In relationships between people, the growing distance stretches communication to breaking point. People pull too far apart to connect with one another, or with an idea.
Separating from the yang sixth line can also feel like ‘getting off the train’ – separating yourself and your perspective from the onward march of things. Is that ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or feasible? It depends what you think of the onward march. Wondering whether to accept the upgrade to Windows 10, I asked Yi about declining, and had 2.6 – resisting the change, separating from the trajectory of ongoing upgrades and updates Microsoft has laid out for us.
Every now and then, Stripping Away as relating hexagram has a paradoxically creative effect, opening space for more responsive action. You can recognise this in the moving line texts – 4.2 or 20.5, for instance. And the same’s true of multi-line readings.
Decreasing and Stripping Away, 41.1.2 to 23 –
‘Bringing your own business to an end, going swiftly,
Not a mistake.
Considering decreasing it.’‘Constancy bears fruit,
Setting out to bring order: pitfall.
Not decreasing, increasing it.’
Your own agenda is stripped out, cleared out of the way of increase.
Gradual Development’s Stripping Away, 53.3.5 to 23 –
‘The wild geese gradually progress to the high plateau.
The husband marches out and does not return,
The wife is pregnant, but does not raise the child.
Pitfall.
Fruitful to resist outlaws.’‘The wild geese gradually progress to the ancestral grave-mounds.
The wife is not pregnant for three years.
In the end, nothing can prevent it.
Good fortune.’
– and Already Across, Stripping Away, 63.2.4 to 23 –
‘Your wheels dragged back.
Constancy, good fortune.’‘Constancy, good fortune, regrets vanish.
The Thunderer uses this to attack the Demon Country.
Three years go round, and there are rewards in the great city.’
In both of those readings, what’s stripped away seems to be your own timetable: you might expect to have arrived by now, but no. That can eb experienced as a great loss.
Or 12.4.5 to 23, a reading I had once for what to do with a decaying wisdom tooth. I think those lines –
‘There is a mandate, no mistake.
Work with clarity, fulfilment.’‘Resting when blocked.
Great person, good fortune.
It is lost, it is lost!
Tie it to the bushy mulberry tree.’
– are a way of separating one’s own efforts from the outcome. I used raw garlic to cure the infection (not for the faint-hearted); then I had the thing extracted, and was finally able to concentrate on something else. Stripping Away can even be a relief…
There is so much to be said about all this, I will have to keep it short. It is interesting that the second line in hexagram four and the fifth in twenty are the two lines that normally speaking would be considered more positive as those two lines are central. As for the other lines, and what I have to say is extremely relative because in deeper understandings there is no positive or negative, only truth, they would appear to be more negative. The first line (hexagram twenty seven) on a simpler level just indicates that we engage in disappointment when we have something in our lives that doesn’t jive with what we think is important, and that leads to more disappointment, and ‘stripping away.’ Hexagram fifty two, line three can on a simpler level indicate a situation when we try to ‘force an issue,’ rather than allowing the t’ao to flow, and that leads to disappointment and stripping away as well. In hexagram thirty five line four, we act surreptitiously, and in secret, and that leads to more negative consequences also. Fnally, in line six, where we do not use yin energy in the most positive way, also leads to trouble. This comment is very simplistic and needs a lot more sophistication, but just as a notice…
Interesting point that the two ‘friendlier’ lines are at 2 and 5, the centred ones.
Also, in 12 lines four and five, as far as your tooth is concerned, it is interesting that the text says, “it is lost.” Sometimes the I Ching can be very literal, but it would not be a good idea to always expect it to be literal, sometimes the answer can be very puzzling, especially if we try to interpret it literally. The I Ching teaches us, it is not an ‘automatic response system, and if we do not have the right motives we will be given answers that trick us. That is just the way it is. But here is a very straightforward and literal answer that is lovely.
Yes, that one was good and literal! And it was something I needed to understand, because sometimes decay can be arrested and a tooth can be saved – but the hole in that one was so deep that staving off infection was turning into a full-time job. Better to let it go, give it a rest.
This and all the 23 series are incredibly clarifying (the posts here are always reminding me of the website’s name).
I had 1- 1,2,3,4,5 – 23 and then 23uc for 2 questions on the same subject yesterday.
I love it how stripping something away in my life is now evidently leading to 1, qian. At the moment between lines 5 and 6. Time to act.
Talk about relief for getting off the train!
Thank you, Hilary.
Thanks for sharing this – I’m glad the posts are helpful! ‘When it is the moment for it, ride one of the six dragons to drive through the sky.’ Happy dragon-riding!
i got this hexagram a lot this year. I also get 8, 10 ,38 and 43
my brother came under the knife with back surgery. at the same time i met 2 new people , i think of as 8, that lived west of me, that were into various forms of healing and education. One person happened to also be a spy for another government as well, looking for wanted criminals in this country. she was rich. i liked her but i kept getting 38 when i asked about her. every time we met up there just happened to be some police around, 10. sort of nervy relationship. very ambitious relationships, besides being healers. all about the future , finances and creative ideas and ironically , we’re too broke to invest. Like they say 3 people can arouse jealousy , so that didn’t work out. i learned i have to 43 and not miss opportunities and think of some future that may be as fake as reality and be left in 64
Good to be able to 58 about it all as 13, though… 😉
Thank you ! Yes, 13 that’s great ! from distant lands. We do 58 and are currently trying to 35. ☺️
I just realized i was talking about hexagrams that are 15 apart, not knowing
8 and 23 and 38. coincidence