It’s only natural that we should turn to the Yijing with medical questions: we’re vulnerable, uncertain and out of our depth, facing the unknown, so of course we want to consult the oracle. Or if we encounter someone else dealing with a medical crisis who asks for a reading, of… Read more »Medical readings
A Change Circle member recently mentioned getting a whole series of readings with 15 as relating hexagram, so I thought I’d dig in and explore how it works there, as the background to a reading… Integrity, humility… The name of Hexagram 15, qian 謙, means humility – or perhaps integrity,… Read more »Hexagram 15 as relating hexagram
Measuring Hexagram 60 is called Measuring, or Limits – not in the sense of imposing restrictions, but of knowing where the edges are, and discovering or negotiating what’s workable. The original concept is the knots and segments of bamboo, and hence all ways of dividing up something big into smaller… Read more »Hexagram 60 as relating hexagram
Something I just came across… Alan Seale, in Create a World that Works ( a book I haven’t read, and no doubt should) described four levels of engagement with experience – from the most easily accessible to the most creative: Drama – the blow-by-blow, he-said-she-said reliving of events, in a… Read more »Levels of questioning?
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
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’
