Yi in 19th Century Japan
I’ve been browsing with growing fascination through the Takashima Ekidan. Published in 1893 in Tokyo, this is an English translation by Shigetake Sugiura of an original Yijing translation by Kaemon...
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Not being special
I love Robert Moss’s books; they’re inspiring, wise and lucid. He mirrors my understanding back to me – that we belong here, that life has meaning and the cosmos actively wants to communicate this to...
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One way Yi helps
One of the good things about our little rented home has always been the thick shield of trees that stands between us and the road. Great glossy green laurels, disappearing in late spring under huge...
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Getting started with my annual reading
What’s an annual reading for? Every year on my birthday, I cast a reading for the coming year. Not as a prediction – imagine the gloom and suspense if you spent a year under the shadow of 24.6! – but...
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A ‘cello-related reading
I’ve left a longer gap between posts here than I intended, mostly because March has been very full of ’cello-y things. Still, there’s a reading from one of these that cast a new light on Hexagram 31...
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Yi’s kindness
It’s easy to become preoccupied with how beautiful, subtle and complex the Yijing is – there are endless layers and dimensions to discover – but more than anything, I keep coming back to its kindness....
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Taking a decision with Yi’s help
The background Early this year, I told people that I’d be running a Yijing Foundations Class in May. Not just the course, which is always available in a self-study version, but an online class with...
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Reading structure, and why it matters
As I prepare for the Yijing Foundations Class, I’m realising there are really just two essential elements for dependable readings: being able to connect with imagery, and knowing your way round the...
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Using trigrams in a reading
Here’s an example reading of mine, showing how trigrams can cast more light on changing lines. The background I was contacted a while ago by someone (I’ll call her S) who wanted to invite me to...
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Staying connected
Divination means we’re connected. It demonstrates that there’s no such thing as ‘isolation’: the cosmos has 100% uptime. You can toss three coins six times, any time, to experience its absolute...
View ArticleLiving Change I Ching podcast 3
Here’s the latest Living Change for you to download, with a reading on how to nurture creativity. Please comment! (I’m especially interested in thoughts on practical ways to respond to the reading.)...
View ArticleDirection
or – why is Clarity here? I’ve been running Clarity now for some eight years, so this post’s probably about eight years overdue. What can I say? I’m a bit slow at times. Also, hopefully some things...
View ArticleThe role of music in divination
Back when Eliana and I first started juggling ideas for Opening Space for Change, of course one of the first things I did was to ask Yi for a comment on the idea. Not for the business partnership side...
View ArticleNo fears
I was pretty much bowled over a couple of days ago when a publishing company – a real one that does real, paper books and pays authors – contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in doing an I Ching...
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Yi on life purpose
A couple of days ago, I recommended the Divine Purpose Unveiled course, and all kinds of debate ensued. Some of that was about the very idea of having a ‘divine purpose’ at all, and whether it’s...
View ArticleSteps when stuck
Over at his ‘I Ching Insights‘ blog, Eric Bryant’s doing sterling work writing up the whole process of a reading: formulating the question, and interpreting the answer. And in the process, he’s run...
View ArticleMore steps when stuck
I was writing on Saturday about a reading kindly shared by Eric Bryant of I Ching Insights (‘petrosianii‘ here at Clarity). He asked about the effect of purchasing some nicotine-free cigarettes as an...
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Mare in motion
Yi’s been reminding me of hexagram 2 lately. It’s my ‘hexagram for the year’, unchanging, so I have the opportunity to see it from the inside – after seeing it through my mother’s example a few years...
View ArticleGetting written
There’s something about writing on the Yijing – it’s not like other books, that just sit there mutely and allow themselves to be translated. I think people who’ve worked through the...
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A reading for Pamela
Some background to this… Pamela Moss is one of the speakers for Festival of Change; I asked her to talk about integration, carrying change through in practice, as I happen to know she’s Very Good At...
View ArticleA reading for Jennifer
Another example reading for you, this one for Jennifer Louden, whom I just introduced. I’m reading for as many of the Festival of Change speakers before the event as would like to be read for –...
View ArticleIntroducing Tori Janaya
I only got to know Tori because a friend recommended her as a speaker for the Festival of Change. I started reading her blog, was smitten, and then downloaded her audio about full spectrum listening....
View ArticleIntroducing James Warlock
Every time I mentioned some new aspect of the Festival of Change to a certain friend and mentoring client, she’d tell me I really needed to talk to James about that. Looking at his various websites, I...
View ArticleIntroducing Claire Hayes
In the Festival of Change, Claire Hayes will be helping with the integrating phase of a reading. You know… the moment when you understand what it’s saying to you, and the only minor detail left to deal...
View ArticleIntroducing Ravi Walsh
…at the last possible moment! I was very, very lucky that Ravi Walsh agreed to step in at the last minute after one of the Festival of Change speakers had to drop out. He’s a spiritual life coach who...
View ArticleCamped on the left
…or ‘Where did Hilary go?’ Well… I sit myself down in front of a task and my brain goes on strike. It’s got quite radical about it: ‘Sit and stare at the screen all you like,’ it says, ‘but if you...
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In the pot
Well… Bradford came over to the UK from the States to see Cesca, and while he was here we got together and went over to Holland to see LiSe (and connect up with Harmen, too). And this was brilliant in...
View ArticleThe trouble with impetration
Jack Balkin (The Laws of Change) and Richard Rutt (Zhouyi) both explain the distinction between two kinds of oracle: impetrative and oblative. Since they give subtly different definitions, I’ll content...
View ArticleJust an oracle
Oh dear, oh dear. Another one – someone explaining how the Yijing is not just an oracle, but ‘so much more than that’. I do wish people would not say this without pausing for a moment to contemplate...
View ArticleYi and times of crisis
I see I have made no posts here for over a month. Eep. Why? Erm, let me give you the short version. My Mum-in-law was admitted to hospital as an emergency (this is not the same admission I wrote about...
View ArticleThe basic human need that Yi answers
I’m not quite sure how long ago I cast this reading. A search at archive.org reveals that I’d already uploaded it to IChingResources by April 2001. So some time before then, I had at least noticed that...
View ArticleThe basic human need Yi answers, part 3: the change
This is a follow-up post from these two, about a reading. (And there will be more to come: a single post covering three lines, change patterns and speculations about trigram changes would have been...
View ArticleThe basic human need Yi answers, part 4: changing line 1
As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I asked Yi what the basic human need is that it answers, and it responded with Hexagram 49, Radical Change, moving at lines 1, 2 and 4 to Hexagram 48, the Well....
View ArticleThe basic human need Yi answers, part 5: changing line 2
(This post is part of an absurdly long series: The basic human need that Yi answers The basic human need Yi answers, part 2: the Well The basic human need Yi answers, part 3: the change The basic human...
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Basic human need Yi answers, part 6: line 4
That need Yi answers is for… ‘The Well. Moving the city, not moving the well. Without loss, without gain, They come and go, the well wells. Almost drawn the water, but the rope does not quite reach the...
View ArticleUS election readings from Stephen Karcher
If you click through to http://www.ichinglivingchange.org/, you’ll find a series of four posts on the US election. I wanted just to mention them here, as I think they’re intriguing readings and worth a...
View Article77
Here’s a post I should have made yesterday morning, when I cast my usual playing-in-the-sandbox readings for the Wimbledon finalists. Then I could have made a prediction and invited you to do the same,...
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Dreams: rain dance of the soul?
I asked Yi, ‘Why do we dream?’ I had a few reasons for asking: huge curiosity about the answer, of course, and wondering what Yi might say out of all the possible answers I could think of....
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What to do with dreams?
Something I’d like to do this year: learn more about how to work with dreams and Yi, together, as a single fabric of meaning. (Something that’ll be made much more practical by this journal software.)...
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Shadow hexagrams revisited
Four years ago , I posted about my first encounters with shadow hexagrams. And last week I was reminded of them again when a friend asked me to look at his connected-hexagrams-generating script that...
View ArticleExample reading after a dream
Since I wrote about ‘Four ways Yi works with dreams’, I’ve been on the alert for how this conversation’s working for me. Here’s an example from my journal. I’d been divining – and worrying – about how...
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What is resonance?
I imagine anyone who’s lived with Yi for a while has also got used to the idea that the world around them gives them signs, and often these signs resonate strongly with readings. I had a ‘big’ Hexagram...
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Yi debugs a plugin
I’m not sure what kind of geek it takes to appreciate this reading – probably something quite extreme – but I think it’s brilliant and wanted to share. The background: a helpful programmer had fixed up...
View ArticleListening differently (and not posting much)
Background Well… in the first weeks of September I was bubbling over with ideas for blog posts. I’d write two, and ‘schedule’ one to be published later so as not to overdo it. And then I published that...
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Meeting the Yi lord
Each year on my birthday, I ask Yi for guidance for the coming year. Then over the course of the year I revisit the reading, finding guidance and gleaning understanding as I go. At least, such is the...
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An interview
CJ Liu kindly invited me to be interviewed on her show, and here’s the result. (I just want to reassure you that CJ did get a better reading from me than you see here! We talked about her reading for...
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Dispersing Nourishment
This is an embarrassingly ‘first world problems’ kind of reading, but happily Yi doesn’t judge – and it was tremendously helpful at the time, so I thought it would be a good one to share. The...
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Out of the gate
This is by way of a follow-up to my ‘Dispersing Nourishment‘ reading. I thought I’d share as it’s another reading that shows how Yi helps with the small stuff, and on multiple levels. Besides, I...
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Too many readings?
This was going to be a simple post A worried client emailed me. He’d just been organising his journal, listing all his readings, and found there were a whole lot more on one topic than he’d thought....
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Reflections on Lasting
A little background Let me set some context for this one. Back in November 2021, I’d just finished planting garlic round the half-dozen raised beds I’ve created over the years, then mulching the beds...
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