A couple of things I’ve noticed at the I Ching Community…
- how much good, natural, intuitive interpretation goes on there, and also
- how if people get stuck, it’s often because they haven’t looked at the whole reading.
There’s a natural tendency to jump straight to the moving lines. We know those are the most direct answer to the question, and that their meaning takes precedence over the hexagram as a whole. For instance, if you receive Hexagram 54 (‘to set out to bring order is disastrous’) but with line 1 changing (‘lame, can still walk; to set out to bring order is good fortune’) then you know that it’s good to hobble on and do your best to sort things out.
However, it really does make your life easier if you start at the very beginning of the reading, and ask why this hexagram? You need to start by recognising how the hexagram is addressing your question and situation, and then the line(s) will make sense.
Another way of saying this – you need to know where you are first. The other day, I was chatting with someone while we waited for a train, and mentioned needing to find the bus station. Ah, he said, that’s not far, it’s just round the corner from the John Lewis store. You go along the street from there and turn left and… and so on. Presently he noticed that I looked quite blank, and I explained that I didn’t know where John Lewis was.
Reading the lines without knowing what the hexagram’s about is quite a lot like this. His directions told me precisely what I needed to know; he was talking very directly about exactly what I’d asked, but this didn’t make me any less lost.
So… start with the hexagram, and locate it in relation to your question. If the primary hexagram is 48, what Well? (Perhaps you were just asking about a close friendship that needs care.) If it’s 10, what tiger are you getting close to? (Someone fierce? Your own untamed emotions?) If it’s 59, what’s Dispersing? (A relationship? A belief?)
This is often quite weirdly obvious, leaping to the eye as soon as you look – and then it suddenly becomes clear how the lines apply and are answering your question. You only need to know where you are.
A final note: this is not a rule: there’s no stone tablet engraved with ‘Thou Shalt Look at the Hexagram First.’ If something in the reading calls out to you, trust your response. If you received, say, 26 line 1 –
‘There is danger.
Fruitful to stop it.’
then it makes sense to stop first, and work out exactly what is being Greatly Tamed afterwards. But if you’re flummoxed, you need to absorb the whole reading, everything the oracle said to you, and not just zoom in on a few words.
Thank you very much Hilary, I think that in the end, that intuition still prevails, that spark that illuminates and clarifies what you were asking.
However, there are times when you don’t have a fucking clue hahahaha, then, your advice is what enlightens us.
So thank you for this.