Following its last lesson on Modesty, the Book sweeps us into its next change, Enthusiasm.

This hexagram is formed by putting Modesty on its head, which gives you the trigram for Thunder over the trigram for Earth -- energetic noise coming out of receptiveness and devotion.

In other words, sometimes you just have to blow your own horn. For the greater good, of course.

The Judgement verse refers to leaders inspiring their armies to march,... more

So, I've just been confusing myself over on this I Ching chess page, which I'll readily admit is way beyond me. I retreat here, to this blog, and find that it's time for the next hexagram, humble Qian.

(But wait, asks the careful reader. Isn't qian the name of the all-yang trigram for "heaven"? Well, yeah, but that's actually a different word from ... more

This is one of the most popular (or most popularly thought of as "good") hexagrams in the I Ching -- "Possession in Great Measure."

It's the flip-side of the previous hexagram, tong ren, which was all about getting along with people. (If you're interested, the proper term for "flip-side" is "zonggua," the gua (change) that could be zong (woven together), and... more

A while ago, there was a thing about the word tong on this blog right here. It's a word that can mean "similar" or "a society" or "a gathering place" (as well as "gang"), and a tong ren -- a tong person -- can be a business associate, or a member of the same society, or it can mean a gathering together of like-minded people. That's what this hexagram is about.

So, let's dissect it systematically.

What's on the top? The outer... more

Last time, we looked at Earth over Heaven -- the dark forces on the outside, and the light forces within, creating a sign meaning "peace." Here, we're looking at the opposite of peace. Not war, but stagnation -- a situation where nothing happens. The great depart and the small approach, and virtue has to remain hidden. As Wilhelm's discussion of the Judgement says:

The dark power is within, the light power is without. Weakness is within, harshness without. Within are the inferior, and without are the superior. The way of inferior people is in ascent; the way... more

Peace. Nice, isn't it? All... peaceful and stuff.

Yeah.

The Judgement verse for this hexagram tells us it's a good one:

Peace. The small departs, The great approaches.

That sounds peaceful.

And this impression is clarified by the Image verse:

Heaven and earth unite: the image of Peace. Thus the ruler Divides and completes the course of heaven and earth; He furthers and regulates the gifts of heaven and earth, And so aids the people.

But wait, dude! the careful... more

O.K., we're at the 10th hexagram in the I Ching, and we're (hopefully) pretty clear on how these things work. They've stopped being all Chinese and started being, well, decipherable. To recap, you've got six lines, with two different ways to look at them: as a set of two trigrams (which are explained in the Judgement and the Image verses) or as individual lines representing relationships between yin and yang (as explained in the, uh, Lines verses).

So, this hexagram, we're told in the Judgement, represents a person successfully treading... more

Last time, we looked at a hexagram that was all yin lines, except one -- the fifth line, the "head" line, was yang. Energy at the head is a good thing, and that was a particularly favorable ("lucky" isn't quite the word) hexagram. This time, we've got a hexagram that's all energy -- all yang lines -- except one, the fourth line. The "heart" line is yin. So... is this a receptive heart in the middle of brash, ascending energy? Or is a sinking heart... more

I've been remiss in going through the I Ching lately, but what the heck, it's Friday. Time to get back in the saddle, right?

We're up to the eighth hexagram, bi, made up of the trigrams for water (kan) over earth (kun).

Maybe a review of what those two trigrams can stand for would help clear out some cobwebs. Earth is the lowest rung on the cosmic ladder, the basement floor -- the source of all growing things, and the ultimate receptive force: dark, mysterious, but nurturing. The trigram kun can also stand for your abdomen (and is used... more

Earth over Water -- the Receptive over the Dangerous, the image of groundwater being the stored up energy of the ground, just as a country's army represents the stored up energy of the people.

Water is at its most powerful when it's descending (think of a waterfall), and the Earth is at its most useful when it receives or stays passive (think of a yawning sinkhole or the solid ground). This is a picture of an obedient soldier -- receiving orders like a rock (as in Sergeant Rock, natch) and possessing an... more