Comments on whole hexagrams, individual lines and so on
Three lines Here’s another phrase that appears three times in the Yijing: 富以其鄰, fu yi qi lin, ‘rich in one’s neighbours’. In 9.5, you are rich in your neighbours – ‘There is truth and confidence as a bond.Rich in your neighbours.’ while in 11.4 and 15.5, you aren’t – ‘Fluttering,… Read more »Rich in your neighbours
Hexagram 8… …is called bi 比, which means… You can see the core idea in the old Chinese character: two human figures walking together, one following the other, their outlines matching. (One dictionary even says these are not human figures, but spoons – spooning!) In the context of the Sequence… Read more »Hexagram 8 as relating hexagram
I mentioned in a recent post how the hexagram picture of Hexagram 38, gui, Opposing, looks like the eyes in its name. The six lines together illustrate two eyes that see differently, or squint – which is one of the meanings of gui. What about the trigram picture, though –… Read more »A trigram picture of Opposing
On not knowing the first thing about the Yi Back in 2015, I titled a post, ‘I don’t know the first thing about the Yi‘. By this I meant not knowing how it came to be – how people first knew that a certain pattern of lines belonged with certain… Read more »Hexagrams as pictures
People quite often ask me about the Yijing’s vocabulary of periods of time. But as I worked my way through them – seven days, three days, ten years… – I found one that I haven’t been asked about: a whole day. Just like seven days, three days and ten years,… Read more »All day
A Change Circle member recently mentioned getting a whole series of readings with 15 as relating hexagram, so I thought I’d dig in and explore how it works there, as the background to a reading… Integrity, humility… The name of Hexagram 15, qian 謙, means humility – or perhaps integrity,… Read more »Hexagram 15 as relating hexagram
Measuring Hexagram 60 is called Measuring, or Limits – not in the sense of imposing restrictions, but of knowing where the edges are, and discovering or negotiating what’s workable. The original concept is the knots and segments of bamboo, and hence all ways of dividing up something big into smaller… Read more »Hexagram 60 as relating hexagram
