Thunderbolt and earthquake The name of Hexagram 51, zhen 震, means Shock, Quake, and encompasses both thunder and earthquake. (Nowadays there is a specific word for earthquake made of the components ‘earth’ and ‘zhen’.) The old character has two components: rain, and chen, the name of the fifth Earthly Branch in… Read more »Hexagram 51, Shock
What’s an annual reading for? Every year on my birthday, I cast a reading for the coming year. Not as a prediction – imagine the gloom and suspense if you spent a year under the shadow of 24.6! – but for guidance. Perhaps it’s a little like the people who… Read more »Getting started with my annual reading
I’ve been browsing with growing fascination through the Takashima Ekidan. Published in 1893 in Tokyo, this is an English translation by Shigetake Sugiura of an original Yijing translation by Kaemon Takashima, a successful serial entrepreneur and respected diviner. (‘Eki’ is the Japanese name for the Yi, and I believe ‘dan’… Read more »Yi in 19th Century Japan
I imagine anyone who’s lived with Yi for a while has also got used to the idea that the world around them gives them signs, and often these signs resonate strongly with readings. I had a ‘big’ Hexagram 10 reading a few years ago, and saw tigers everywhere. (Pictures of… Read more »What is resonance?
I asked Yi, ‘Why do we dream?’ I had a few reasons for asking: huge curiosity about the answer, of course, and wondering what Yi might say out of all the possible answers I could think of. (‘Processing’ stuff from the day? Receiving messages? Random noise? Ongoing inner work?) Also… Read more »Dreams: rain dance of the soul?
I’m not quite sure how long ago I cast this reading. A search at archive.org reveals that I’d already uploaded it to IChingResources by April 2001. So some time before then, I had at least noticed that there were, as I put it, ‘books to be written about this answer’.… Read more »The basic human need that Yi answers
The more closely I look at the Image – the Daxiang wing, I mean – the more I think whoever wrote it was a sage. One tiny example… you know how most of the hexagrams’ Images tell you what the ‘noble one’ would do? And then there are three that… Read more »The Image of Stripping Away
