A thought about Hexagram 58, line 5… not yet completely confirmed by experience, just a thought… Hexagram 58 is Opening, Joy and Communicating: the human figure with the great mouth who seems to dance and sing. This post is about its fifth line – the peak and culmination of the… Read more »Trusting in stripping away
Do you cast a reading for the year? For many years now, I’ve cast mine on my birthday – I’m lucky to have a birthday in early December, so there’s plenty of time for the reading to start to sink in during the depths of winter. Winter is an utterly… Read more »Casting a yearly reading
One of the fascinating things about the structure of the Yijing is the way one hexagram in a pair (an odd-numbered hexagram with the even-numbered one that follows it, that is) can point to the other. It might contain it, or imply it, or give you a different perspective on… Read more »Inner truth and crossing over
Every now and then, I open a book and the words leap out at me as hexagram commentary – and then ramblings like these result… Here’s Thomas Moore, in Care of the Soul, talking about faith. ‘Imagine,’ he says, ‘a trust in yourself, or another person, or in life itself,… Read more »Stirring the lake
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
