Hexagram 47, Confined Confining is de’s test. It is hard-pressed, and wholly connected. It is used to lessen resentment. Wilhelm/Baynes calls 47 the ‘test of character’, which is memorable – but the meaning isn’t so much what ‘puts you to the test’ as the test that identifies something by differentiating… Read more »‘Character’ hexagrams: Confined, the Well, and Subtly Penetrating
If you’ve opened your Resonance Journal today, you’ll have noticed the ‘Update available’ button is active. Click it! Your journal will update to version 2.5.1, which includes some nifty new features. If you don’t have a copy of the Resonance Journal, you can download a trial from here. It’s available… Read more »New Resonance Journal version
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
In Part II, chapter 7 of the Great Treatise (Dazhuan), nine hexagrams are singled out. The authors of the Yi, it says, knew sorrow and disasters (or, specifically, they worried about disasters), and therefore… and it goes on to list the qualities of these nine hexagrams. You can read the… Read more »The ‘character’ hexagrams
Some 15 years ago, I wrote on this blog about the non-people of Hexagram 12. ‘Blocking it, non-people.Noble one’s constancy bears no fruit.Great goes, small comes.’ Hexagram 12, the Oracle Back then, I emphasised how the idea of ‘non-people’ (fei ren, 匪人) could mean labelling people and sticking them in… Read more »The non-people of Hexagram 8
Ni, 泥 , simply means ‘mud’ – soil, putty, to daub with plaster. It’s the clay that was baked into bricks and tiles. I normally look for how a word is used in the Book of Songs, or the Book of Rites, but ni doesn’t appear anywhere in either of… Read more »Nothing quite like it
You know how the lines of some hexagrams unfold and tell a story? Hexagram 53 traces the journey of the wild geese; 1 follows the dragon’s journey across the skies; 48 describes well-repair. Well… I’m wondering whether something similar might not be happening in Hexagram 51. The name of the… Read more »The story of Shock
