Multiple moving lines

The most frequently asked question

This probably the most frequently asked question about I Ching divination. Before long, everyone consulting the I Ching receives an answer with 3 moving lines… or even 5 or 6… and wonders how to make any sense of this overload of (apparently mutually contradictory) information. If you ask what would be the outcome of a course of action, and one moving line in your answer reads ‘good fortune’ while another says ‘misfortune’, what are you to do?

How to bypass the problem altogether

There are methods of consulting the I Ching that can only ever give you a single moving line. By some margin the simplest way to do this is given in the Sorrells’ book, ‘The I Ching Made Easy’.

Take six coins – five identical, one different.
Shake up all the coins together and cast them all at once.
Push the coins into a column arrangement – the one nearest you at the bottom, etc.
This column represents your hexagram: each head is a broken/yin line, each tail is a solid/yang line. The single different coin represents the moving line.

The Sorrells in practice simplify things even further by reading only the first hexagram and the moving line, ignoring the second hexagram.

Personally this is not my favourite approach – anything that limits the I Ching to less than its natural ‘vocabulary’ seems bound to reduce its power to communicate. However, it’s certainly better than allowing multiple lines to put you off altogether – and the many examples given in the book show clearly enough that this method can ‘work’ to give an answer someone can use.

An I Ching reading: How to approach answers with multiple moving lines?

It seemed a good idea to ask the I Ching for advice on this – and not to use the one-line-only method!

Answer: Hexagram 58, Opening, changing to Hexagram 8, Seeking Union.

(Note: this article will be a lot easier to read if you have your own I Ching open alongside you!)

The I Ching has very obligingly given us a reading here with three moving lines, so we can use it to try out different methods, and see which makes most sense.

First, a lightning tour of the answer as I would normally read it:

Opening, Communicating Joy

The oracle’s answers are a joyous opening, and the first thing is also to respond with joy. (And not with ‘argh, how am I meant to make sense of this?’!) Be responsive, use both inner dialogue and conversation with friends (see the Image), and persist – ‘constancy bears fruit’.

Interact with the reading, question it and listen to it. Don’t sit obstinately alone with it (Hexagram 52, the opposite); don’t expect it to be hidden when all is in the open (contrasting hexagram 57). Take joy in the reading and you will forget that multiple moving lines are supposed to be hard work!

An old Clarity member, Chinuajin, used to respond to multiple moving lines by looking especially at the primary hexagram’s nuclear hexagram. In this case, that’s 37, People in the Home, which might lead us to look at the relationships between the lines – how they connect and communicate with one another within the hexagram’s natural structure.

Seeking Union

This is a picture of the individual querent (person asking the question): looking for something they can unite with, something that will give them a clear lead. How to respond to a reading with multiple moving lines? Communicate with it openly, and seek union – look for how you are related to the answer, how you connect with it (and it with you).

Also this suggests responding by returning to the source of the oracle consultation, in other words looking again at yourself and your question. But you don’t want to ‘sit on the fence’ about the reading (‘for the latecomer, pitfall’) – better to own it, connect with it, find your own response. (One way to do this is to look first at the two hexagrams, primary and relating, and then see how the lines fit into the context they give.)

The three moving lines

Line 1: ‘Responsive opening: good fortune.’

There is inner harmony at this first meeting with the oracle: this is an unbiased, spontaneous response. Here is the ideal querent: someone without bias or attachment to any particular answer, independent of mind and naturally at one with the I Ching.

Line 2: ‘True and confident opening, good fortune. Regrets vanish.’

The ideal querent is still at work! S/he has approached the oracle with perfect sincerity, and accepts its answer with complete trust. S/he is centred and at one with the moment, and enjoys open communication with the spirit.

You can see these two lines naturally work together, establishing a foundation for a good reading. Things get trickier, though, as we emerge into line 4:

Line 4: ‘Negotiating opening, not yet at rest.
Containing the affliction brings rejoicing.’

‘Negotiating’ is what merchants do: they calculate, haggle and barter. Anyone who has tried to weigh up the input of several apparently contradictory lines will recognise this description. ‘Not yet at rest’ echoes Hexagram 8 – ‘not at peace, coming from all sides’: the image of the querent’s many concerns which seek a single, clear lead from the reading. With multiple moving lines, such a lead is not immediately forthcoming!

‘Containing’ also means finding protection against something; ‘affliction’ also means pressure and haste. To overcome this unproductive tendency to haggle with the oracle for the ‘reward’ of a positive understanding, you need to set limits to your own anxiety.

Lines 1 and 2 obviously work well together. Be open, spontaneous, sincere and trusting, and the answer is given to you. But line 4 shows a quite different (and, if I’m honest, rather more familiar) scenario. What should we be doing – trusting, or haggling and limiting?

Three sources of information for understanding all the lines together

Line position and sequence

Understanding that the lines come in a specific order is tremendously helpful. The sequence of the lines in a hexagram is from bottom (line 1) to top (line 6), and so the events they describe, or advice they offer, can also be read in that sequence. If you combine this with an understanding of the basic role of each line position, even apparently contradictory advice can make a lot of sense. Naturally, once you have reached line 4, the moment of putting ideas into practice, the advice will have changed from that at line 1, when you were just beginning to form the ideas.

In this reading, line 1 is at the beginning, an initial and personal response. It’s yang in a yang position, by nature strong and secure. Line 2 is very close to this, but also inwardly centred, and entering into communication with the oracle. Line 4 has crossed over into the upper trigram, where decisions have to be made and things have to be put into practice. It’s yang at a yin position, less secure and with more demands on it, and has to decide what to follow. Someone in this position needs to create limits and rules in addition to simple trust.

The steps of change

Formed by changing each moving line in isolation, the steps of change are like miniature relating hexagrams for each line. They show the context for the change in the line, and also the kind of response that draws forth the line’s advice.

So in this case:

Line 1 points to 47, Oppression: someone self-contained to the point of isolation, learning independence.

Line 2 points to 17, Following: someone who is in the moment, naturally following the signs.

Line 4 points to 60, Measuring: finding the right framework to define the conversation with the oracle without stifling it; seeking out a common language. Too much ‘negotiating’ could be driven by this desire for Measure, for something easier to manage and assimilate.

The patterns of change

These are formed by replacing each changing line with a yang, each stable with a yin to find the yang pattern; the yin pattern is the opposite of this.

The yang pattern of change here is Hexagram 54, the Marrying Maiden. That’s the ‘gateway in’ to the reading – in this case, recognisably the experience behind the question. We’re plunged into something we can’t control or direct. Multiple lines will not be shaped to fit our preconceptions or our particular needs, however urgent.

The yin pattern, showing where there are openings for change, is 53, Gradual Development. Understanding of a complex reading develops slowly, like a tree growing on a mountain.

So I’d read these three lines as describing three ‘layers’ of a response. At its foundations, in the first two lines of intuitive feeling and heart-centred responsiveness, a reading with multiple lines moving is like any other: calling for responsive, true and confident opening. At line 4, when connection needs to be translated into interpretation and action, the process is more complex, more drawn-out, as we ‘negotiate’ with the lines. The advice is to contain our haste and anxiety.

I don’t believe the advice is to limit the number of moving lines – that seems more of an ‘afflicted’, hasty response. Still, here are three ways to do so –

Three methods to limit the number of moving lines

Master Yin’s rules

Alfred Huang, in his Complete I Ching, has a set of rules for reducing multiple moving lines to just one:

2 moving lines, one yin, one yang: consult the yin one.
2 moving lines of the same kind: consult the lower one.
3 moving lines: consult the middle one
4 moving lines: consult the upper of the two unmoving lines
5 moving lines: consult the one unmoving line
6 moving lines: just consult the Judgement of the relating hexagram (except in hexagrams 1 and 2, when there is a special text for all six lines moving)

That reduces this reading to just line 2 – arguably the essence of the reading, but it seems a shame to miss the recognition and insight of line 4.

Zhuxi’s rules

These are similar to Huang’s – they give the same result for this reading – but not identical:

1 line changes: read that line
2 lines change: uppermost is most important
3 change: middle most important, with uppermost possibly confirming (but if they are contradictory stick with the middle one)
4 change: go over to the second hexagram and take the lowermost of the two lines that have not changed from the first hexagram
5 change: in the second hexagram take the line that hasn’t come from a change in the first hexagram
6 change: then the first hexagram’s situation is entirely past or on the brink of change, the second hexagram is more important. Take the judgement
If no lines change you can read the ruling line, if there are two ruling lines then take the uppermost.

The Nanjing rules

The earliest recorded I Ching divinations are in the Zuo Commentary, and they never consult more than one line. Sometimes they choose a line text to consult, sometimes a Judgement. In the 1920s, a group of scholars reconstructed a method that would account for the ancient diviners’ choices. Here is its application to this reading:

Add all 6 line numbers (moving yang=9; stable yin=8; stable yang=7; moving yin=6): 9+9+8+9+7+8=50
Subtract the result from 55:
55-50=5
Use this remainder to count up to the relevant line – line 5.
This line being unchanging, when there are exactly 3 changing lines, the hexagram statements from both first and second hexagrams form the oracle, and the line texts aren’t referred to at all.

(I don’t have space here for a complete account of this rather elaborate method. You can find a detailed explanation of all the rules of this method and their rationale, along with translations of all the divinations from which they were deduced, in Richard Rutt’s Zhouyi.)

A whole new perspective

Gary Bastoky wrote to me about a method he learned from a friend – one that’s also used and suggested by Bradford Hatcher:

‘My question is, do you have a recommended method of consulting multiple changing lines? My friend has a very different approach than any I’ve ever read about, and it seems to make sense — more sense than even Huang’s suggestions. He creates a new hexagram for each changing line, and only the lowest line that is changing in that particular sequence is consulted, in EACH new hexagram — basically a progression of time and thus events.’

He gives this example:

45 with changing lines in the first, fifth, and sixth place.

Change Hexagram 45, line 1: get hexagram 17.

Read Hexagram 17, line 5, and change it: get Hexagram 51.

Read Hexagram 51, line 6, and change it: get Hexagram 21.

Gary again:

“What this means is that the first line in #45 is the first in a series of events or processes that may or may not be a catalyst which causes the event or process that occur in line 5 of #17, and so on. In this example, line 5 in #17 is the only ruling line in the group and is therefore the most important or the biggest catalyst that finally results in #21 (Biting Through).’

For our reading on moving lines, the method works like this:

58, change line 1, giving

47, change line 2, giving

45, change line 4, giving

Hexagram 8

The second and fourth lines of Hexagram 58 don’t feature at all.

In this case you begin with harmony and spontaneity (58,1)…

‘Responsive opening: good fortune’

…but find yourself stymied and oppressed amid plenty (47,2).

‘Confined while drinking and feasting,
Scarlet sashes come from all directions.
Fruitful to use thank-offerings and oblations.
Setting out to bring order: pitfall, no mistake.’

Opportunity is on the way, though, and you encourage this by making offerings, showing sincerity and trust, rather than setting out to introduce an order of your own creation.

…Perhaps as a result of accomplishing this, you attain ‘great good fortune’ (45,4)

‘Great good fortune, no mistake.’

…and can achieve the naturally right choice of Hexagram 8.

The idea behind this method is quite different from my usual way of reading. The lines are definitely expected to represent a process, rather than, say, mutual relationships or alternative positions to take within the landscape of the primary hexagram; you won’t get lines from a series of different hexagrams ‘talking to one another’ in the same way. If the subject of your enquiry can be considered as a step-by-step process, you might like to experiment with this. (It’s possible, of course, that both approaches – reading the lines cast, and tracing the process of change – could be informative in different ways.)