When people ask me how they can become more fluent and confident with their readings, I always, predictably, say something about experience. Consulting with Yi is a relationship and a practice – not something you can learn how to do first, and then start doing it. You get to know… Read more »Learning the I Ching from experience
Here are some thoughts on the moving line texts of Hexagram 46, Pushing Upward. I’d like to have a good dive in here – drawing on the meaning of the line position, the relationship to the zhi gua (the hexagram each line changes to) and the line pathway, along with… Read more »Steps through Hexagram 46
As promised… one more step along the path through Hexagram 46. In this post, I’ll have a go at a couple more ‘hexagrams of context’: two more ways of saying ‘this is not that’. In the last post I looked at 46 with 45, Gathering: the contrasting, paired hexagram. Pushing… Read more »Pushing Upward, step 4 (more hexagrams of context)
This is a topic that came up in the I Ching Community with reference to weekly and annual readings – how people can be frightened by them, maybe scared into paralysis by a sinister-looking line – and it got me thinking about the scariness of readings in general. What is… Read more »Scary readings
I call the hexagrams that are naturally related to the cast hexagram, regardless of its changing lines, ‘hexagrams of context’. They make an extended family of contrasts and sources. (Those simple old human ways of understanding something – seeing what it isn’t, and telling its stories – work just as… Read more »Hexagram 46, Pushing Upward (step 3: some hexagrams of context)
The trigrams of Hexagram 46 seem to embody its nature particularly clearly. Earth contains wood – a straightforward picture of a germinating seed. The Image says: ‘Centre of the earth gives birth to wood. Pushing upward. A noble one with patient character, Builds up small things to attain… Read more »Hexagram 46, Pushing Upward (step 2 – trigrams)
Hexagram 46, Pushing Upward, has to do with step-by-step progress onward and upward, and the effort of the climb. It also has to do with offerings: Harmen, in his fascinating article on the hexagram, says, “Sheng was the name of a certain sacrifice, and because of the close resemblance between the… Read more »46: Pushing Upward (step 1)
