Yi has been giving me hexagram 2 as relating hexagram for three weeks in succession now – ever since I asked what Mum’s ‘power’ was, and received 2 with no changing lines. (Prior to that, I’d asked why she kept showing up in my dreams with work for me to do, and received 44 moving to 18. Most of the reading I could relate to, but the idea of Mum as ‘powerful woman’ was alien to me at first – hence the question.)
After another few days of house-clearing work, I’m beginning to get more of an idea of how Hexagram 2 power might appear in ordinary life. It manifests, for one thing, as box after box after box filled with neatly-filed pages of notes in Mum’s small, tidy handwriting. She was a teacher, so there were umpteen boxes full of carefully-planned teaching notes. She was a Reader (a kind of lay minister) in the local church, and so there were boxes upon boxes of sermon notes, service notes, duty rotas (you’d be amazed how much work goes into running all the paraphernalia of formal church services), home communion notes, Bible study group notes, confirmation group teaching notes… And then there were theology notes for her studies to become a reader. And more for her MA. And I haven’t even started on the boxes (and boxes, and boxes) of notes for her M Phil (which she completed after her 70th birthday). She edited the parish magazine, and so there was a computer-full of materials for that. (It didn’t just get edited when she did the job: it got laid out neatly, illustrated and proof-read to within an inch of its life.) Going back further, there were the recipe notes for birthday cakes and party games, and the hand-written exercise books for my brother’s reading and writing practice – filled with little stories and illustrations, everything her ingenuity could devise to keep him engaged and concentrating. (Keeping a 6 year old with Down’s Syndrome interested in a writing exercise is tricky.) And, and, and…
(Please understand that I have not run out of examples – or boxes – I just anticipate your patience might be wearing a little thin.)
How is Hexagram 2 a kind of power? She is willing to be guided, and more even than that she is ready and willing to be used – whether by a teaching syllabus, the demands of a church, or the needs of her children. (Even when Mum was doing something ‘for herself’, it would always involve putting herself in a situation to learn and receive guidance.) She gives all she can to whatever she undertakes – and she works with the strength of a horse.