‘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
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
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
In this episode, I share a couple of readings from my journal: ‘What about leaving this volunteering role?’ 32.3 to 40 ‘What do I do when I’m there?’ 61.4.6 to 58 And I talk about conversation with Yi, the interplay of text and structure, catching up with the reading years… Read more »From my readings journal
For this 15th episode of the I Ching with Clarity podcast, I asked the oracle to explain the whole idea of a ‘New Year’ to me. ‘What’s a creative way to imagine New Year? What’s its deeper significance?’ Yi responds with Hexagram 57, Subtly Penetrating, changing at lines 2 and… Read more »What are New Years?
In my last post, I talked about how the Daxiang paints pictures of individual hexagrams, as a whole. In this one, I’d like to try a change of perspective, zooming in and zooming out, to see what comes into focus. Commentary on the lines The Image builds on and humanises… Read more »The genius of the Daxiang (part 2)
Here are the next three ‘character’ hexagrams… 32, Lasting Lasting is de‘s steadfastness. It means [encountering] miscellany and not [feeling] disgust. It provides for a single de. As you can see from the [square brackets], I haven’t quite managed to find English equivalents to the Chinese words for this one.… Read more »‘Character’ hexagrams: Lasting, Decrease, Increase
