![]() The latter is easier to elucidate, so I’ll begin with it. The interpretation of a trigram is determined by two factors: its intrinsic meaning and its position in the ambient hexagram. (Just to clarify, I didn’t sort yarrow stalks or throw coins to get the example hexagrams, nor did I ask any question, so this “result” is purely expository.) Trigram levelĪ hexagram is made up of two trigrams, and hexagram names are often referenced jointly with their constituent trigrams’ names-or more exactly with the trigrams’ names in their archetypal category-such as “fire-water wei chi” ( 火水未濟 ☲☵䷿) and “mountain-lake sun” ( 山澤損 ☶☱䷨), meaning that the archetypal image of wei chi is fire-over-water and that of sun is mountain-over-lake. According to Wilhelm/Baynes, wei chi advises the questioner to take extra deliberation and caution for the time being, and sun advises him to draw on inner strength to compensate for what he lacks on the outside in the future. Neither the present nor the future situation of the questioner’s concern is perfectly auspicious, though both are still largely positive. That’s why ancient Confucian scholars insisted that the book be read together with their commentaries, which they named the Ten Wings ( 十翼)-without which readers of the I Ching could not “fly” high.Ī visualization of the Ten Wings for I Ching (adapted from new.qq.com)Ībstruse as they are, the central messages in the two judgments are clear enough. ![]() This is not a translation issue, as the original Chinese texts are equally (if not more) abstruse. How is this to be carried out? One may use two small bowls for the sacrifice.Īs we can see, the judgments are quite abstruse and filled with metaphors. Sun: Decrease combined with sincerity brings about supreme good fortune without blame. But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing, gets his tail in the water, there is nothing that would further. Reading through the respective chapters in the I Ching (i.e., Chapter 64 and Chapter 41), we find the following judgments: 2 Screenshots from the contents of the I Ching (source: Amazon) 1 The status quo of the questioner’s concern is in “before completion” and its future development is in “decrease.” For example, the two hexagrams in the previous post are respectively called wei chi ‘before completion’ ( 未濟 ䷿) and sun ‘decrease’ ( 損 ䷨). This is also the easiest level for beginners, because one simply needs to look up a hexagram in the book and read it. Interpretation of I Ching divination results traditionally starts from the hexagram level. Impatient readers can jump to the summary. Two posts are dedicated to this topic because result interpretation is the most complex part of I Ching divination. In this and the next post I’ll write about how those components are interpreted. In the previous post I introduced the structural components of I Ching divination, including lines (or monograms), trigrams, and hexagrams.
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