People often ask about the significance of the specific periods of time mentioned in the Yijing. Does this literally mean seven days, or ten years? Very occasionally, it can – but normally, these periods have symbolic value.
It’s interesting to see that ‘seven days’ get three mentions in the Yijing: in the Oracle of Hexagram 24, and then in 51.2 and 63.2. It’s always worth taking notice when there are three of something in the Yi. And it’s odd that seven days should feature at all. It seems natural enough to us, since we live in seven day weeks – but a Chinese week is ten days long, and the traditional Chinese calendar is all reckoned in tens and twelves. Yet there’s only one passing mention of the ten-day week in the Yi (in 55.1).
Hexagram 24: return on the seventh day
Here’s the first mention of seven days, introducing the concept:
‘Returning, creating success.
Going out, coming in, without haste.
Partners come, not a mistake.
Turning around and returning on your path.
The seventh day comes, you return.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.’
According to Wilhelm – and also Tuck Chang, who provides good illustrations – we should imagine seven steps of change here, starting with Hexagram 44, the onset of darkness, and progressing through hexagrams 33, 12, 20, 23 and 2 to 24 – the complementary hexagram of 44, where the light returns. Thus seven is a number for return.
Wilhelm writes,
‘All movements are accomplished in six stages, and the seventh brings return. Thus the winter solstice, with which the decline of the year begins, comes in the seventh month after the summer solstice; so too sunrise comes in the seventh double hour after sunset. Therefore seven is the number of the young light, and it arises when six, the number of the great darkness, is increased by one. In this way the state of rest gives way to movement.’
Wonderful stuff – though these are examples for months and hours, not days, so not everything is explained!
There’s also a simpler way to look at this: if you count seven hexagrams on through the Sequence from 24, you arrive at Hexagram 30, Clarity: from winter solstice to full daylight. The theme is the same: from dark to light, in seven steps.
Seven days as symbol
When a reading mentions seven days, I think it will always be useful to remember the cycle of time as Wilhelm describes it – from the darkest time to the lightest, and hence from loss to gain. It’s natural in Hexagram 24 to look for a ‘turning point’ (Wilhelm’s alternative name for the hexagram) – but what about hexagrams 51 and 63?
The name of Hexagram 51, zhen, is made of the character for rain and that for the fifth Earthly Branch, chen 辰, which also means a time, an occasion, and the start of the growing season: the old character shows a plough or hoe, to break the earth. That feeds into the themes of Hexagram 51 – that thunder shows the moment to wake up and pay attention:
‘Rolling thunder. Shock.
Hexagram 51, Image
A noble one in fear and dread sets things in order and is watchful.’
You might also say it’s the moment to start rebuilding:
‘Shock begins. Stilling stops.’
Zagua
As for Hexagram 63… well, the idea that 63/64 are the ‘end’ of the Yijing is the subject of a very big, oracle-scale joke: Already Across? Not Yet! As the Sequence says,
‘Things cannot be finished, and so Not Yet Across follows – and so the completion.’
In other words, this is altogether more of a turning than an ending. It’s a good time for beginning:
‘Already across, creating success.
Hexagram 63, Oracle
Constancy yields a small harvest.
Beginnings, good fortune – endings, chaos.’
(And a bad time to imagine you’ve finished anything.)
51.2 zhi 54
‘Shock comes, danger.
A hundred thousand coins lost
Climb the nine hills,
Don’t give chase.
On the seventh day, gain.’
We can have fun counting hexagrams here, too – but it’s much more important to notice that this is the same theme. This is your lowest moment, when Shock has brought great loss. But you should be reassured that the wheel turns, and in seven steps what’s yours will return.
Counting games
You can count the nine hills from here. What about the seven days?
Counting seven hexagrams forward (like we did from 24 to 30) would take us to 57, where the sixth line is part of the same theme of loss and gain:
‘Subtly penetrating under the bed,
57.6
Losing your property and axe.
Constancy, pitfall.’
No sign of any coins being regained here, though.
What about following Wilhelm’s example and counting line changes? The idea behind 24, we’re told, is cumulative line changes, such that 7 steps take you from darkness to light: from 44.2 to 33, 33.3 to 12, and so on round to 2.1 and the complementary hexagram 24.
If we do the same here and change all six lines…
51.2 to 54
54.3 to 34
34.4 to 11
11.5 to 5
5.6 to 9
9.1 to 57
…we’ll arrive at the complementary hexagram, 57. How interesting that this is the same place we reached simply by counting hexagrams.
So this starts to look as though it might be quite intentional. If only 57.6 were about gaining coins instead of losing yet more property, it would all be very neat and tidy – but in fact the gain line has Wandered off to 56.4.
63.2 zhi 5
‘A wife loses her carriage screen.
63.2
Don’t chase it.
On the seventh day, gain.’
Once again, it takes seven days to go from loss to gain, and this wheel will turn by itself; there is no need to chase after things.
More counting games
We run into problems if we try to count seven hexagrams along from 63, of course. If you go downstream, as a carriage screen might if it fell in the river you were crossing, the seven steps take you back to 57 again. So that’s – again – interesting.
You could also try arranging the hexagrams in a giant circle, and continuing around it: 63, 64, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We’re still Waiting for gain, though crossing the great river will be fruitful. And, of course, Hexagram 5 is also the zhi gua for this line. I enjoy this kind of coincidence between counting and zhi gua.
If you trace some Wilhelm-esque line changes to reach the complementary hexagram, 64, the final step in the series will be 38.1 to 64:
‘Regrets vanish.
38.1
Lost horse: don’t pursue it, it returns of itself.
See hateful people,
No mistake.’
which is the remaining ‘lost and found’ line. That one doesn’t mention ‘seven days’ – but it does incorporate the name of Hexagram 24, so perhaps any more pointers would be redundant.
As so often with the Sequence, there’s no tidy, rigorous, fixed system – but I do get a sense that someone is having fun playing with patterns and hiding connections in plain sight.
Interesting! Thanks Hillary!