Ah – experience. People phone me up to say they’d like an interpretation from someone who has more of the stuff. We gather it in journals (and Change Circle’s WikiWing); it crystallises into a clear inner sense of what lines and hexagrams mean; it’s worth more than any 20 commentaries… Read more »Dangers of experience
There’s something about writing on the Yijing – it’s not like other books, that just sit there mutely and allow themselves to be translated. I think people who’ve worked through the hexagram-by-hexagram threads over the years have had similar experiences, as the line of the day just happens to show… Read more »Getting written
Hexagram 14, Great Possession, says at line 4, 匪其彭。无咎。 – Not your (or its) peng, no mistake. Peng means power and dominance – Wu Jing Nuan translates with his usual succinctness, ‘Not his to be strong’ – and the old character shows a drum with three strokes next to it, perhaps… Read more »Pounding the drum
All meanings of the name of this post are intentional, as I really don’t know the first thing about Chinese etymology. But in my ignorance, I just stumbled over something wonderful in the first line of Hexagram 4, Not Knowing. Hexagram 4, line 1 speeds the young ignoramus on her… Read more »Not Knowing etymology
One of the meanings of Hexagram 4, Not Knowing, is being ‘covered over’, like a young animal whose mother hides it in the undergrowth. This means you can’t see as far as you’d like to, something which people tend to find frustrating – and yet the image of the young… Read more »Not Knowing and Protection
A while ago, I received an email politely suggesting I stop referring to the Yi simply as ‘Yi’ without an article. The writer maintained that since the oracle is ‘not a person’, it would be better not to give it a ‘pet name’; this was not good English usage when… Read more »Yi, or the Yi
For some reason, working through the lines of hexagram 32 recently took much longer than any other hexagram had done… 😉 I did find, looking through threads about it at the forum, that other people find it hard, too. Especially, it’s puzzling how a hexagram that describes something essentially positive… Read more »Lasting
