I Ching with Clarity

Here's a gentle exploration of Hexagram 22, Beauty, in which we work our way round to understanding! Kim asked 'What's happening?' - looking for a picture of the greater pattern of her life. I think Yi handed her the paintbrush...

Dealing with Corruption

Hexagram 18 is gu 蠱, 'corruption': the dictionary tells us its name means snake venom, poisonous insects, bad air and dark magic. A more specific early meaning is revealed in its moving lines: 'the ancestral father's corruption,' 'the ancestral mother's corruption'. These are echoes of ancient oracle bone divinations: 'is this disaster maybe caused by the corruption of this ancestral father?' In other words, is this the ancestor we have neglected and angered, who is cursing us now? Or perhaps this one? It's imperative to identify the angry ghost causing the trouble, to restore a good relationship with them as a benevolent ancestor.

The hexagram doesn't name ancestors, of course, but it carries that same investigative drive: some hidden agency is causing the trouble, poisoning our present experience, and this is the moment to dig in and find it. And startlingly often, when this is the primary hexagram, those moving lines are quite literal, and the reading is about finding and breaking deep-seated inherited family patterns.

The Oracle explains how:

'Corruption. Creating success from the source.
Fruitful to cross the great river.
Before the seed day, three days. After the seed day, three days.'

First with inspired action, fully energised engagement, 'creating success from the source': a moment in time, an opening, when your efforts will work. Then, cross the river! Wade in, go against the prevailing current, forge through to the opposite bank. And - naturally - expect this to take time, both before and after the moment of change. Changing a habit, recovering from an illness, breaking a pattern, restoring the relationship with an ancestor - none of this is like flipping a switch.

And as relating hexagram?

The relating hexagram is generally more subjective: 'what this is about for you' is my favourite shorthand. This can sometimes mean that it's less objectively real. For instance with Hexagram 36, Brightness Hiding, as relating hexagram, I think less about the danger of being injured by a tyrannical regime, and more about the desire to hide. But with 18 relating, the workings of 'corruption' are decidedly real - maybe because the deeply personal is the objective issue here?

Just looking at my own journal with 18 relating (using the 'Cast history' feature of the Resonance Journal), there are plenty of relationship patterns that need dragging into the light of awareness, a good few habits that need changing (as when 18 was the relating hexagram for a question about losing weight!), several questions about home treatment for a pinched nerve in my shoulder (yes, I know, see a doctor, but they weren't available), and even one or two computer problems. All quite real negative patterns - a flow of causes and unpleasant effects, unexamined and recurring: corruption awaiting diagnosis and treatment; rivers to cross.

In each case, the primary hexagram was how I was taking on the task of dealing with the underlying corruption. Naturally, some primary hexagrams are better at this than others…

One line at a time

It's always interesting to look at each individual line that changes to a given hexagram, to see what response it elicits, or what aspect of the primary hexagram it draws out. Here are the six single lines that change to Hexagram 18:

26, Great Tending, line 1

(Yes, I know this is called 'Great Taming' in my book! I'm finding the 'domesticating, nurturing, nourishing' meaning to be more important than the 'restrain, control, check' meaning, hence the change - which you'll find in the updated translation in Resonance Journal.)

‘There is danger.
Fruitful to stop.’

That's very clear, of course - except, what danger? Hexagram 18 offers a substantial clue: an ongoing process that tends to undermine or sabotage whatever you set out to build. Hexagram 26 is a time to nurture and build up character, resources and resourcefulness; what needs stopping might tend to drain all of these - for example, an addiction, a corrosive relationship, a financial drain.

18 is the inverse and complement of 17, Following: all things are naturally unfolding for the best without my input, synchronicities happen, and I follow along without question. On 18's side of the coin, all things are naturally unfolding without my input, and it's fruitful to stop. Questioning, diagnosing, breaking the pattern… all that will only be possible if I start by counteracting the inertia that keeps me rolling along.

It makes a lot of sense that Great Tending and Corruption intersect at their first line. Hexagram 26 follows on from 25, Without Entanglement: those are not my monkeys, but these are my own beautiful cattle, tusked boars and fine horses, to protect, nurture and train. And you could say the first step into dealing with corruption is owning the problem - as in, not 'this is all mum's fault' but 'this is for me to change'. Time to stop rolling along the bank and (the two hexagrams agree) cross the river.

52, Stilling, line 2

'Stilling your calves,
Not rescuing your following.
Your heart not glad.'

How can Stilling deal with Corruption? It will try to stop the process, of course - to still the springy drive of the calf muscles, check the body's forward momentum, and often rescue other people, too. (Interestingly, the word 'following' here is the name of Hexagram 17.)

The aim of the line seems very similar to 26.1, but it doesn't work so well! There can be a 'stop the world, I want to get off' feel about this one - but it's like standing still on the travelator. This line may sometimes find a point of calm and stillness in the midst of it all, but 'No, I don't want this to be happening' isn't enough really to tackle Corruption.

4, Not Knowing, line 3

'Don't take this woman.
She sees a man of bronze,
And there is no self.
No direction bears fruit.'

Another hexagram that doesn't do too well with Corruption. There's the basic problem that the young ignoramus doesn't understand: she has clouded vision and can't see to the real cause of corruption. Instead of the real, flesh-and-blood man, she sees a bronze version. Often this means idolising and fantasy, imagining someone has (or is) all the answers, though I think it can also refer to any way of casting someone into a mould of your own invention. In her eager haste for solid answers, Young Fool lacks the patience and openness needed to explore and discover the source of the trouble. So she ends up wandering in her own imaginings, where no direction is much use.

50, the Vessel, line 4

'The vessel's legs break off,
The prince's stew is upset,
Dignity soiled.
Pitfall.'

I have to admit, this is one of my least favourite lines. The shiny relationship is put to the test, or the excited worker tries out their skills, or the beautiful idea is put into practice - and the legs fall off, probably in some especially hideous and humiliating way. Emerging from the inner to the outer trigram, from theory to practical use, the Vessel's hidden corruption becomes painfully apparent. I imagine this as a flaw in the vessel's casting: the bronze didn't flow through the mould into one of the legs, so it was stuck on later and the join was hidden so it looked fine until we tried to use it.

Why can't the Vessel deal with Corruption, though? Perhaps because its way of engaging is to contain, to incorporate, blend and cook. 18 needs to stand apart from what's going on and examine it. One of the meanings of gu 蠱 is 'a winged insect that hatches in grain after prolonged storage'. These are not meant to be part of the recipe.

57, Subtly Penetrating, line 5

'Constancy, good fortune, regrets vanish.
Nothing that does not bear fruit.
With no beginning, there is completion.
Before threshing, three days.
After threshing, three days.
Good fortune.'

Hexagrams 57 and 18 are the perfect match: this line even echoes the Oracle of 18, with its three days before and after. Hexagram 18 takes three days before and after jia day, which is the first of the ten day week. The Shuowen says of jia:

'In the East, where all things begin, the breath of yang brings forth the young shoots and sets the buds growing.'

57.5 revolves around geng day, the seventh of ten. The Shuowen again:

'Geng occupies the West position. The character represents how, in autumn, the ten thousand things bear their fruit and ripen it, through continuation and change.'

What began in 18 can bear fruit in 57.

To engage with corruption, you have to be willing to penetrate to its roots, to reach deep understanding. This is the trigram xun, wind and wood, doubled: gentleness, listening and responsive growth, feeling its way into the heart of things. Contrast the way Hexagram 52, the doubled mountain, relates to 18: robustly solid, holding firm and resistant to change.

So this line tells a story of dealing successfully with corruption: going from confusion to clarity, successfully uncovering the old patterns and seeding new ones. Regrets vanish; maybe even the old pathologies could be said to have borne fruit.

46, Pushing Upward, line 6

'In the dark, pushing upward.
Fruitful with unceasing constancy.'

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it's good - actively useful - to keep going, without pause for breath. On the other hand, 'in the dark' is not to be underestimated. It has a similar range of meanings in the Chinese as in English: night, shadowy, the nether realms, and also dim-witted, narrow-minded and dull.

You can see echoes of 18's themes there: dark magic and angry ghosts. But it also raises the question: this one can't see where it's going, may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, so does it understand the dangers of Corruption at all?

Perhaps it doesn't need to, like its fan yao 18.6, and can march steadily on past it, holding to its own inner sense of direction? Pushing Upward only knows one way to deal with Corruption: by keeping on keeping on, one step at a time, even - or especially - when things are dark.

(Much more on that line in this article about the moving lines of Hexagram 46.)

Two at a time

As you know, I enjoy looking at how combinations of moving lines 'talk' with their resulting relating hexagram, so I've been exploring the two-line changes that deal with Corruption, too. Each hexagram has its own characteristic way of tackling Hexagram 18 - some conspicuously more successful than others.

Break the pattern

When the first line is involved in the change, there always seems to be a theme of interrupting the pattern. 22.1.2 to 18, for instance:

'Making your feet beautiful.
Putting away the carriage and going on foot.'
'Making your hair beautiful.'

If you think of Hexagram 18 as what follows from Following - the flow of things allowed to roll along unexamined - then getting out of the carriage and choosing each step is a very natural way to engage with it. Another effect of going on foot is, of course, that the journey takes time, like growing hair takes time.

How could you begin to engage with Corruption through a process of making things more beautiful, representing and communicating them more vividly? In both these moving lines, it slows things down: accepts no shortcuts, jumps to no conclusions, allows a full 'three days before, three days after', and thus allows the open-ended relativism of 22 to come into play:

‘Below the mountain is fire. Beauty.
A noble one brings light to the many affairs of state, but does not venture to pass judgement.’

Or take 41.1.3 to 18. How will Decreasing deal with Corruption?

'Bringing your own business to an end, going swiftly,
Not a mistake.
Considering decreasing it.'
'Three people walking,
Hence decreased by one person.
One person walking,
Hence gains a friend.'

By giving things up, of course. In the first place, by giving up your own to-do list, which feels very much like getting out of 22's carriage. You'll no longer be caught up in your own process, or sense of obligation ('this is how I always do it'), so there's scope for a little river-crossing.

Then at line 3 the one who walks away from the crowd breaks in a similar way with the shared, social pattern - and there is the promise of support, and something new. (9.1.5 makes for a very interesting comparison, from a simpler time in the Sequence when you scarcely know 'your own business' yet - how the pattern is broken, how help comes.)

I think these lines tell a story of opening up the possibility of something new by giving up whatever might have dictated your next step.

One more example with line 1: 14.1.4 to 18:

'No interaction with what is harmful,
In no way at fault,
So that hardship is not a mistake.'
'It is not for you to dominate,
No mistake.'

Great Possession seems to be comprehensively successful in dealing with Corruption, thanks to its dominant sense of the natural order - of what is right. Harmful patterns are broken at line 1, and then you need only allow harmony to return. Yes, there is hardship, but you don't need to run the show.

I think these two lines pretty much enact the Image of Great Possession:

'Fire dwells above heaven. Great possession.
The noble one ends hatred and spreads the good,
She yields to heaven and rests in her mandate.'

Have no interaction with what is harmful: end hatred. No domination: only yield to heaven and rest in your mandate.

Here's one to compare with 22.1.2: 56.2.4 to 18:

'Traveller comes to a resting place,
Cherishes his own,
Gains a young helper.
Constancy.'
'Traveller in a place to stay,
Gains property and an axe.
My heart is not glad.'

How would a traveller deal with Corruption? Not altogether successfully, by the looks of things - but the basic idea is a familiar one: that you need to slow down and interrupt the flow. These are the only lines where the Traveller manages to interrupt his journey without also destroying his resting place. Maybe he's experimenting, in search of some new way of being at home.

Step 1: stop, break the pattern. Now, will you be able to find another way? Not necessarily. Just stopping is not enough - remember 52.2,

'Stilling your calves,
Not rescuing your following.
Your heart not glad.'

Escape the box

The Traveller may go to new places, but we know he's not generally very good at changing his habitual patterns of thought or behaviour, as 18 demands.

Hexagram 32, Lasting, also doesn't do well with 18:

'In the field, no game.'
'Shaking up lasting, pitfall.'

A field has been defined for hunting. What to do if there's no game there? Then 32 falls into novelty for its own sake - wanting to start over, without pausing to ask what's happening, or why. The commentary on 32.6 in my book points to a need for some more thorough 18-y thinking, though of course I didn't have this in mind when I wrote it:

"You’re restless; the routine is chafing; you want to be somewhere else and begin a completely new life. But what comes next for you must necessarily evolve from those patterns you’re already living: you can only start from here. If you constantly ‘start over’, always envisioning a new life, never working on the life you have, you will never achieve anything real."

44.4.5 to 18 has a very similar starting point:

'In this basket, no fish.
Rising up, pitfall.'
'Using willow to wrap gourds.
Containing a thing of beauty,
It comes falling from its source in heaven.'

A basket with no fish is very much like a field with no game. You thought you would catch what you wanted here - but no. However, if you are open to receive it, some quite extraordinary new way might come to you. (A surprising number of these two-line changes include this kind of promise of coming help, or mandate, or reward.)

Dealing with corruption requires crossing the river to completely new places and new thinking. You need to redefine the container - remember the mess at 50.4. There's nothing to be gained from the definitions you had before, from where you'd positioned your field boundaries or fish trap.

…nor yet where you'd built your city walls (11.1.6 to 18):

'Pulling up thatch grass, roots entangled,
With more of its kind.
Setting out to bring order, good fortune.'
'The bulwarks fall back into the moat.
Don't use the army.
From your own city, declaring the mandate.
Constancy means shame.'

11 line 1 starts the work of digging in, uprooting and revealing the hidden connections; line 6 levels the old walls (/forms/patterns) so there's nothing left to defend. Overall it feels almost impatient: enough of this; declare the mandate; constancy means shame. Flow deals with Corruption like the river dealt with the Augean stables.

Careful of armies

'Don't use the army,' says 11.6. When dealing with Corruption as relating hexagram, you do need to take care with armies. You need their dedication, the willingness to do the work, but that 'It's my job to sort this out!' mindset could be counterproductive. What if your ideas are part of the problem? 7.3.6 to 18:

'Perhaps the army carts corpses.
Pitfall.'
'The great leader has a mandate
To found a state and receive the households.
Don't use small people.'

An army dealing with corruption could be in danger of perpetuating it, carting corpses. And here is the great promise of heaven's support, as in 44.5 or 11.6, but with a warning: don't use small people! Marching towards the new mandate as if it were a regular campaign objective isn't going to work: you need a whole vision of something new.

Remember 4.3, which has fixed ideas but no new insight - or there's 64.3.4:

'Not yet across. Setting out to bring order: pitfall.
Fruitful to cross the great river.'
'Constancy, good fortune, regrets vanish.
The Thunderer uses this to attack the Demon Country.
Three years go round, and there are rewards in the great city.'

Before setting out to bring order, cross the river! Then the hesitancy of Hexagram 64 (what if I over-commit and get stuck mid-stream?) turns out to be a valid approach to Corruption. First find your new perspective, and then - just as in 57.5 - even if the beginning was terrible, constancy means good fortune and regrets vanish. The beginning may be utterly unpromising, but with time and hard work (plenty of both) there will be success.

…

Enough for one blog post, I think! In case you'd like to keep exploring, here's the full list of two-line changes leading to 18:
22.1.2, 41.1.3, 14.1.4, 9.1.5, 11.1.6, 23.2.3, 56.2.4, 53.2.5, 15.2.6, 64.3.4, 59.3.5, 7.3.6, 44.4.5, 32.4.6. 48.5.6

I Ching Community discussion

This month's podcast features one of those readings where Yi really takes your breath away:

'How beneficial would it be for me to join the next course on family constellations?'

Yi's response: Hexagram 18, Corruption, changing at lines 2, 3, 4 and 6 to 16, Enthusiasm.

Lux (as Lagartija) had originally posted this reading to the I Ching Community, so you can read the background there.

If you'd like to share a reading of your own on the podcast - it's free - you're very welcome to book yourself a slot!

https://livingchange.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/episode49.mp3

This is another post about the differences between hexagrams: this time, Hexagrams 23, Stripping Away, and 41, Decreasing. Both are about loss, about ending up with less, and - given human nature - we tend not to be pleased to receive either one. But how are they different?

Names and shapes

Looking up the hexagram names in the dictionary, there seems to be a great deal of overlap in meaning.

Bo, 'stripping away', literally means peeling off the skin: the ancient character contains a 'knife' element, to cut with. (I've seen the hexagram representing surgery to remove something.) The dictionary meanings include flaying, peeling, falling off and dropping away, and also injuring and excoriating in the more abstract sense of brutal criticism.

Sun at its simplest just means 'decrease', but by extension this comes to mean harm, destruction, weakening, and also biting, mocking criticism. The ancient character shows a round vessel and a hand, which in the context of the hexagram always makes me think of emptying out and making space.

But in the dictionary, these two aren't all that different: two kinds of destruction, two kinds of criticism. One distinction that could be helpful, I think, is that bo strips away the surface, while sun reduces the substance. This all becomes much clearer when you look at the hexagrams themselves -

If you remember that the energy and story always travels from the bottom line to the top, then you can see at once how Hexagram 23 is a snapshot of a 'peeling' process, with the topmost solid line the last one to go. (Or we might imitate Adam Schwartz, take inspiration from line 5, and see the hexagram picture as the skeleton of a filleted fish, ready for its final 'stripping away' in the stock pot.)

For Hexagram 41, Wilhelm's explanation of the tradition is invaluable. We should think of this hexagram as a development of Hexagram 11, he explains, in which lines 3 and 6 have changed places:

'What is below is decreased to the benefit of what is above. This is out-and-out decrease. If the foundations of a building are decreased in strength and the upper walls are strengthened, the whole structure loses its stability. Likewise, a decrease in the prosperity of the people in favor of the government is out-and-out decrease. And the entire theme of the hexagram is directed to showing how this shift of wealth can take place without causing the sources of wealth in the nation and its lower classes to fail.'

I don't in the least agree that 'trickle upward' is the hexagram's entire theme, but it does help to see that third line reaching upward, like the mists from the lake drifting up the mountainside.

Oracles

Big differences here -

'Stripping away.
Fruitless to have a direction to go.'

'Decreasing: there is truth and confidence.
From the source, good fortune.
Not a mistake, there can be constancy.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.
How to use this?
Two simple baskets may be used for the offering.'

One is blunt and direct, one is gently reassuring. And they have exactly opposite things to say about 'having a direction to go.'

Hexagram 23, for me, carries the message that this is being taken from you. To have a direction to go is to have a direction of travel, to follow your intentions or just your curiosity and see where it leads you. Stripping Away is no time to set out to attain or explore anything. 'I wonder if I tried it this way instead…?' - nope. Still not happening.

When I'm introducing Hexagram 23 to someone, I often talk about falling leaves, and how you don't run round searching for ways to reattach them to the trees. I just learned that those beautiful red-orange-yellow autumn pigments were always present in the leaf; it's only that the active chlorophyll that masked them is lost as the leaf dies. An outer surface with no more inner life will always fall away.

It's harder to find an analogy in nature for Hexagram 41, because this is about making an offering: a human, purposeful act. (Maybe the maintenance of acid-base homeostasis in the blood by decreasing calcium stores in the bones?) Made with truth and confidence, this brings good fortune and is - despite how it feels - no mistake at all. Something is offered up from below for the sake of what is above. It's fruitful - vital, I think - to have a direction for this, to know why you are doing it.

The Tuanzhuan, commentary on the oracle, captures the difference.

For Hexagram 41, in the Wilhelm/Baynes translation:

"What is below is decreased, what is above is increased; the direction of the way [dao] is upward. … 'Two small bowls' is in accord with the time. There is a time for decreasing the firm and a time for increasing the yielding. In decreasing and increasing, in being full and being empty, one must go with the time. "

And for Hexagram 23, from Bradford Hatcher:

"Decomposing means stripping away. The flexible alters the firm. Not worthwhile to have somewhere to go, the common people prevail. Accept and stop here. Look at the image. The noble young one respects waning and waxing as surplus and want and as heaven's behavior."

The two commentaries share the message of timeliness, but Hexagram 41 implies there is a time to decrease the firm, to make your offering, while Hexagram 23 simply witnesses and respects the timing of heaven. The message of the trigrams is, 'Accept and stop here.'

Images

So Decreasing offers something up for the sake of something higher, but it seems Stripping Away just happens to you, with no 'for the sake of' about it. However… the Image, telling stories with the trigram pictures, finds something different. Both are about human responses to loss:

'Below the mountain is the lake. Decreasing.
A noble one curbs anger and restrains desires.'

For Decrease, it helps to put a mountain-sized lid on your resentments and desires.

'Mountain rests on the earth. Stripping Away.
The heights are generous, and there are tranquil homes below.'

Or as Wilhelm translates,

'Thus those above can ensure their position
Only by giving generously to those below.'

Either way, you can see there's an emergent sense of purpose in the Image of 23: a deliberate 'trickle down' effect, for Wilhelm. But the text here is somewhat depersonalised: it refers literally to 'above' and 'below', unlike every other Image text, which name individuals: noble ones, princes or ancient kings. This is a power relationship, of course, but to me it also looks like a process of erosion, from the mountain into the valley - a lot like leaf fall, returning organic matter to the ground, creating healthy soil for the spring growth to come.

There's purpose here, but something beyond human purposes. The wheel of the year is turning; the old falls away for the sake of new growth to come, and this has not much to do with your chosen 'direction to go'. But the Image invites you to see the purpose at work, and maybe join with it. What might this loss nourish and sustain in future? If you could experience your loss as something more like erosion into the fields, or more like donation than taxation, how would that be different?

A couple of line texts

(Just a couple, not all six. Two simple baskets!)

Lines 3

'Stripping away. No mistake.'

'Three people walking,
Hence decreased by one person.
One person walking,
Hence gains a friend.'

Isn't it interesting that neither of these third lines is ill-omened? After all, the third line of a hexagram is often a perilous place. It's on the cusp of stepping across the threshold from the inner to outer trigram, from the inner world of theory to the outer world of practice. And so it can have a sense of striving, pushing at the barrier - eager for commitment and ready to put its ideas to the test. Sometimes it hesitates or struggles; sometimes it can lack grounding and be overconfident. On a human scale, it seems to me like a teenager.

So why, in a time of Stripping Away, is that not a mistake? I wonder if it might be the idealism of line 3: melding with and embodying the pure spirit of the hexagram, ready to let it all fall away. (In this it's quite similar to the third line of Hexagram 59, Dispersing: 'Dispersing your self without regrets.') Hence it will be still - this moving line changes the inner trigram to mountain and the hexagram as a whole to 52, Stilling - and not try to make things happen. No mistake: no loss of connection to the quality of the time.

Hexagram 41, line three, leads to separating from the crowd. Remember the traditional analysis of the hexagram, how 11's line 3 has moved up to the 6th place, decreasing the lower trigram for the sake of the upper. So this line, where the mists rise from the surface of the inner lake, embodies the hexagram's knowledge about having/being less and looking upward. Drawn onward by its relationship with line 6 (I think of something like this), and perhaps by that teenaged idealism and inner independence, it will walk away from security in numbers.

Lines 4

'Stripping the bed by way of the flesh.
Pitfall.'

'Decreasing your affliction,
Sending the message swiftly brings rejoicing.
Not a mistake.'

Fourth lines, newly emerged into the outer world, tend to ask, 'What can I do here?' which is exactly the wrong question to be asking in a time of Stripping Away. 'Oh, is this a time for cutting away the surface? Here, how can I contribute to that?' Prompted by the eager, 'seize the day' attitude of Hexagram 35, this line takes up the knife, to disastrous effect.

But when Decreasing asks, 'What can I do here?' there is a ready answer: act to decrease suffering. 23.4 inflicts wounds, but 41.4 heals. It's actually not necessarily 'your' affliction, but a general possessive: your/their/its - perhaps whatever pain belongs to the situation, which might have something to do with its 'step of change' hexagram, 38, Opposing, and alienation.

'What can I do?' As always in Hexagram 41, give something up, let something go - in this instance, anxiety, and perhaps also the sense that this is a Great Divide / Existential Crisis. The action called for here is generally much smaller and simpler than agonising over it. The message to be sent, or action to be taken, varies: it seems to be whatever small thing will create a shift. ('Small works, good fortune,' says the Oracle of 38).

In readings…?

I've been browsing through years of 23 and 41 in my own journal, always asking myself what the 'direction to go' might be in each reading.

With Hexagram 41, I always had less of something: time, or sugar, or freedom, or control, or a parcel that got lost in the post. And I always needed to find the reason why. Often I was making the sacrifice consciously, and just needed to remember what it was for. (Stop eating sugar for the sake of your teeth!) Sometimes the loss wasn't one I would have chosen, but there was still a reason for it. If I could find my direction to go, then the whole experience of loss would be transformed. Also, typically, it's not half as bad as I'd imagined. Those "two simple baskets" often have a subtext for me of "and you can stop overdramatizing now".

With hexagram 23, my own purposes have nothing to do with anything and are best forgotten. Typically, the matter is out of my hands, and I need to "accept and stop here," as the commentary says. But sometimes, especially when lines higher in the hexagram are changing, there's also a sense that I need a complete change. Peeling and stripping away will create a tabula rasa, a true, fresh start for something new to grow. 'Heaven's behaviour', not my ideas.

So I think that both hexagrams can contain promise. The core distinction is that Hexagram 41 means giving things up for the sake of your higher intention, while 23 means losing things such that your own intentions cannot be realised, and the promise of new growth comes only through that blank slate.

Imaginary readings

A couple of imaginary readings, for comparison.

'Where's this relationship going?' If it's stripping away, I should think that's the end. If it's decreasing, then I wonder whether there might be sacrifices to make for the sake of the relationship - or whether the relationship itself might occupy less time and energy for the sake of some other, higher purpose.

'How to make progress with a project?' Hexagram 41 would tell me to simplify it: downsize, invest less, focus on quality not quantity. Hexagram 23, I think, would ask me to consider seriously what had reached its natural end, what I was keeping up out of some kind of 'sunk costs' fallacy, and what could be cleared out of the way to allow something completely new to grow.

I Ching Community discussion

As you might have guessed from the title of this episode, it's about a reading with Hexagram 22, Beauty, changing at line 1 to 52, Stilling:

It was all about becoming imperfectly visible - which the reading's owner has just begun to do on her Youtube channel...

https://livingchange.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/episode48.mp3

There's more than one story of the Yi's origins…

Mythical origins

The story begins in the 29th century BCE with Fuxi, China's first emperor, who may have had the body of a serpent. It was through his insight that the trigrams were discovered, and people could begin to understand their world:

"In high antiquity, when Fuxi ruled the world, he looked up and observed the figures in heaven, looked down and saw the model forms under heaven. He noted the appearances of birds and beasts and how they were adapted to their habitats. He examined things in his own person near at hand, and things in general at a distance. Hence he devised the eight trigrams with power to communicate with spirits and classify the natures of the myriad beings."

This story comes from the Dazhuan, the Great Treatise (in Richard Rutt's translation), which is part of the Yijing itself. In another version, the trigrams were inspired by the markings on the back of a dragon-horse that emerged from the Yellow River - but I find the Great Treatise's version the most resonant and eloquent. We can all still look at our own bodies and the natural world and see trigrams.

At least a millennium later - maybe two - the future King Wen of the Zhou (1152–1050BCE) was imprisoned by the Shang tyrant Zhouxin. During his imprisonment, he combined the trigrams into hexagrams, and gave the hexagrams their names. After his death, his son the Duke of Zhou added texts to the moving lines.

And Confucius (551-479BCE), a faithful student of the wisdom of early kings, wrote the Ten Wings - all the commentaries that have become part of the Yijing we know, such as the Image text describing the noble one's response to a hexagram's trigrams.

So the story unfolds naturally, from simple trigrams through hexagrams to changing lines and finally the addition of the Wings.

(A much fuller version of this story - the most vivid and colourful one I've read yet - can be found in the introduction to Benebell Wen's I Ching.)

Historical origins

The history of the Yijing's origins, as it's been pieced together from archaeological records and textual analysis, is - unsurprisingly - altogether more mysterious and less clear than its myth.

The earliest records of divination in China, dating from the Shang dynasty (c.1600-1046BCE), are of pyromancy: divination with fire. Tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae were carefully prepared, drilled and cracked by the application of heat. The cracks could be interpreted by the king - mostly, it seems, to give direct 'yes' or 'no' answers on questions of policy (would there be good weather for a hunting expedition? was now the right time to open this field for ploughing?), though sometimes with a little more detail. The questions and sometimes also the oracle's responses were inscribed on the bone and kept as records. It's not clear whether the bone oracle was a direct ancestor of the Yi - perhaps it's more of an older cousin.

But there are also records of a counting oracle in the Shang: people recorded series of six numbers that had 'spoken', like a cracked bone could 'speak'. If you've ever cast a reading with yarrow stalks or coins, you've joined this tradition: generated a series of six numbers, paid attention to their pattern and listened to what it has to tell you. The numbers used have changed, but the basic principle of differentiating odd numbers (which we call 'yang' lines now) from even ('yin') is ancient. Were the Shang already sorting and counting yarrow stalks? We have no way of knowing.

The oracle we recognise as the Yi was brought together in the early years of the Zhou Dynasty, around 800 BCE. Hexagrams, those series of six numbers, now had names and associated text that anyone could learn. The text was drawn from many sources: sayings, song, legend, myth, maybe divination records for the hexagram or line. (WikiWing has its roots in a long tradition!)

The Zuozhuan has several early records of divination with Yi, which hint at how it was spread across the kingdom by travelling diviners and became more widely known, working its way into people's language and understanding. Over the centuries, as people added their reflections, experience and commentaries to the core text, it became recognised as a book of wisdom. And in 136BCE, the Yi along with its Wings was one of the five core texts, the Wujing, identified as underpinning all Chinese thought.

(The more recent reprints of my book - 2018 and 2021 - have a fuller historical introduction. It doesn't include all I wanted to, as it had to be cut by about 30% for publication, but Change Circle members can download the original, uncut version from the Change Circle Library.)

A 'fact check'

So, what of the mythical version?

Were the trigrams in use for millennia before they were combined into hexagrams? I don't know of any evidence for that - though it does look as though hexagrams have long been understood as interacting trigrams. (The Fuxi bagua or Early Heaven Arrangement of the trigrams, though, is not ancient - it's considerably younger than the Later Heaven arrangement, as Harmen Mesker explains.)

Are hexagram names and texts a generation older than changing lines? Maybe. Fragments of the Guicang, traditionally said to be the hexagram oracle of the Shang dynasty, have been discovered - and they contain hexagram texts but nothing resembling a line text. Intriguingly, the hexagram names of the Guicang are very often the same as those in the Yi, even though the text that follows is completely different. The same hexagram is named 'Marrying Maiden', for instance, but what follows is the story of Heng E stealing the elixir of immortality and fleeing to the moon.

Did King Wen name the hexagrams and write the oracles? Did the Duke of Zhou write the line texts? How would anyone know? (It's worth noting, though, that the Great Treatise itself doesn't attribute the text to them, simply to 'sages', and you'd think that if their authorship had been commonly accepted at the time, they would have been given credit.)

And did Confucius write the Wings? No - but plenty of his wisdom found its way into them.

Beyond the 'fact check'

…there's an oracle whose origins no-one can pretend to understand.

Who first realised that strings of three or six numbers had meaning? Or discovered if you put a question to the spirits and generated a 'random' series of numbers, your question would be answered?

How did they know that - for instance -

meant 'marrying maiden' specifically, or that

meant 'abundance'?

Who had the insight that these numbers/lines might be changing?

How did they not only name single hexagrams, but create a complete matrix where any hexagram can change into any other - and the nature of that change is captured in the moving lines?

(And not just when the hexagrams differ by one line, but multiple lines? Imagine trying to create something that complex…)

And while we're asking, how come casting coins at random delivers a meaningful answer?

(I'm fairly sure the archaeological technique to answer these has not been invented yet.)

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