Tradition tells us that Hexagram 63, Already Crossing, has its trigrams in the right places: water is above fire, like the pan on the stove; things are cooking; everything is in good working order. And then by contrast, Hexagram 64, Not Yet Crossing, with the same two trigrams in reverse… Read more »Fire on the river: Hexagram 64
There’s a well-established tradition that these trigrams portray fast-moving fire burning through mountain vegetation.Kong Yingda (574-648AD) wrote, ‘When fire is on top of the mountain, it races through the grass and shrubbery, a condition that does not leave it in one place for long. Thus this provides the image for… Read more »Fire on the mountain: Hexagram 56
The trigram picture of Hexagram 50, the Vessel, is a dynamic one: wood in the fire, burning. The wood is becoming fire; the food in the vessel is cooking for the ritual meal. ‘The vessel.From the source, good fortune.Creating success.’ Hexagram 50, the Oracle This is an exceptionally fortunate beginning,… Read more »Fire above wood: Hexagram 50
I’ve written about the trigram li, fire and light, and the role it plays as inner trigram, inside the hexagram. Here’s a look at fire on the outside… In the ‘Trigram Associations’ pdf that’s part of the Yijing Foundations Course, I simply wrote that, The outer li illumines more expansively, with less concentrated focus… Read more »Fire outside: hexagrams 14 and 21
Eight hexagrams of the Yijing are formed from doubled trigrams (chong gua 重卦) – the same trigram above and below. These hexagrams give us the names of the trigrams. They also – as Bradford Hatcher explained – provide some of the best evidence that the original authors of the oldest… Read more »The eight doubled-trigram hexagrams
I mentioned in a recent post how the hexagram picture of Hexagram 38, gui, Opposing, looks like the eyes in its name. The six lines together illustrate two eyes that see differently, or squint – which is one of the meanings of gui. What about the trigram picture, though –… Read more »A trigram picture of Opposing
On not knowing the first thing about the Yi Back in 2015, I titled a post, ‘I don’t know the first thing about the Yi‘. By this I meant not knowing how it came to be – how people first knew that a certain pattern of lines belonged with certain… Read more »Hexagrams as pictures
