The Yijing is an optimistic oracle: omens of good fortune come more often than those of misfortune. But on four* occasions, it goes one step further and promises great good fortune: ‘Enriching the home.Great good fortune.’ Hexagram 37, line 4 ‘Great good fortune, no mistake.’ Hexagram 45, line 4 ‘Welcomed… Read more »Great good fortune
‘Not yet across, creating success.The small fox, almost across,Soaks its tail:No direction bears fruit.’ There are ten places where the Yi says that ‘no direction bears fruit’, or (in the Wilhelm/Baynes version) ‘nothing furthers’: 4.3, 19.3, 25.6, 27.3, 32.1, 34.6, 45.3, 54.0, 54.6, and finally 64.0. It’s easy to see… Read more »No direction bears fruit
This podcast has a reading of my own, about creating a home. Yi answered with Hexagram 53, Gradual Progress, changing at line 5 to Hexagram 52, Stilling: changing to If you’d like to discuss a reading with me for a future episode (it’s free, as a ‘thank you’ for sharing),… Read more »Creating a home
A little background Let me set some context for this one. Back in November 2021, I’d just finished planting garlic round the half-dozen raised beds I’ve created over the years, then mulching the beds with a good layer of compost, ready for sowing the following spring. The next day, we… Read more »Reflections on Lasting
If you try for an ‘eagle’s-eye view’ of the Yijing, you get to admire its architecture: the intricate connections between hexagrams, the Sequence, two-line changes and so on. What if you zoom in, instead, for a mouse’s eye-view? Here’s an example of that. I’ve translated Hexagram 4’s Oracle like this:… Read more »Hexagram 4, ‘polluting the waters’
A reading for an I Ching Community member, Honey, aka MeltingPot247, with four moving lines full of darkness and warnings – What do I need to know about this relationship as it is now? The answer: Hexagram 32, Lasting, changing at lines 1, 3 4 and 6 to 41, Decrease.… Read more »Portrait of a relationship
Here’s an interesting experiment you can play with: a reading without an oracle. That means setting out to receive guidance from the world without using anything intended for divination: no cards, runes, coins, stalks, charts or anything of the kind. Instead, you might listen to the first few words you… Read more »Reading without an oracle
