Comments on whole hexagrams, individual lines and so on
The ‘powerful woman’ problem In Hexagram 44, we are encountering, meeting or ‘coupling’ with a powerful woman. ‘Coupling, the woman is powerful.Do not take this woman.’ To ‘take’ her means to seize, as one might seize a criminal, but in this usage it’s something like the old-fashioned English, ‘taking a… Read more »Hexagram 44, Coupling
Looking away Hexagram 52 is called gen, 艮, and so too is the trigram that’s doubled to make the hexagram. It translates as ‘looking away’: in the ancient character, you can see a reversed human figure with a great eye. Nowadays, it apparently also translates as ‘tough, hard to chew’ – something… Read more »Hexagram 52, Stilling
Its name (and nature) Hexagram 55 is unusual in that its name contains two meanings – The character feng 豐 means abundant, bountiful, plentiful. The ancient character appears to be an elaborated, decorated version of the character for ‘drum’: see Richard Sears’ site – Feng, name of Hexagram 55 Zhu, drum the donations link… Read more »Hexagram 55, Abundance
‘See the great person’ (or ‘great people’) is one of the Yijing’s recurrent phrases: in Hexagram 1, lines 2 and 5, in the oracle texts of hexagrams 6, 39, 45, 46 and 57, and in 39, line 6. (There’s also just ‘great person’ – without the advice to see them… Read more »Seeing the Great Person (a story)
I’m experimenting with a different kind of post: taking just one line of the Yi, looking at what the translators and interpreters make of it, and seeing what I can learn from the different perspectives. Let’s start with the fifth line of Hexagram 44, Coupling – a strange line, in… Read more »Melon perspectives
It’s a common source of confusion and frustration with I Ching readings: ‘My answer has multiple moving lines, and they contradict one another. How am I supposed to make sense of this?’ Here’s an article to help you with that. Why ‘revisited’? Many years ago now, I wrote a rambling… Read more »Multiple moving lines, revisited
Things that come in threes One of many things about Yi that I first became aware of when Scott Davis pointed it out: there’s a tendency for motifs to occur three times. (He gives the example of whether words are trusted – not in 43.4, not in 47 – not… Read more »Not robbers, but marital allies
