Tips to open up your reading (tips, not rules)

Is using the Yijing difficult? Are the answers that it gives you complex? The answer to both questions is a sound ‘no’. And yet discussion boards are flooded with Yi castings of users who don’t seem to be able to gain useful insights from the Yi’s response. For a long time I wondered why that is. And through that wondering emerged the following tips and suggestions that you might consider if you feel that working with the Yi is a challenge.

Know what you are using

What is the Yi to you? Are you familiar with its history, contents, language, structure and usage in early China, and what does all this mean to you? Knowing what it actually is that you are using can help you to understand how the oracle answers, and why it does it like that.

What is your purpose with it and is the Yi the right tool for it?

What are you trying to achieve? It can’t bake pancakes for you. But maybe it can help you to create a recipe for the best pancakes that suit your taste.

Define your framework: what do you expect from the Zhouyi?

What should it deliver?

Parts of my personal framework are:

1. Chance can be made meaningful – the throwing of coins or any other random token generator will correlate with valuable information, presented by the Yi, that is relevant to me and my situation.
2. The question is not the most important part of the inquiry process.
3. The Yi will always show me the here & now.
4. I can understand the answer from the Yi.
5. It gives me what I need and helps me in my true understanding.

The ideas that I share in this article are also part of my framework.

You interpret the answer according to your own framework

When you do a reading it is very helpful if you decide what the meanings of (some of) the Yi’s components are for the topic under concern, preferably before you do the actual consultation.

For the trigrams this can be relatively easy. For instance, If I ask the Yi if I should quit my job, trigram Mountain seems to say ‘stop’, ‘retreat’. To me Mountain would be a strong indication that I should quit, because to me that is the trigram that describes a situation and a time of ending, of closing. Thunder would mean to start over – not necessarily with a new job, but in my current position, or with my current employer. A new function, a new task, something like that. If I have to decide whether I should undertake a certain journey, Wind will mean ‘yes’ to me because to me Wind is the trigram for traveling. Before I consult the Yi I decide which trigrams are especially relevant or meaningful to me. That helps me to make a good start with my interpretation. If these trigrams don’t show up – no problem, I still know how to handle all other trigrams. But defining trigrams that are strongly connecting to the specified context can be helpful.

The same goes for the text, but in a slightly different way. Since there are 450 different pieces of text in the Zhouyi it is somewhat impossible to prepare contextual meanings for each of these lines of text. But I can predefine themes: if I ask about my work, words and sentences that refer to ‘work’, ‘office’, ‘leadership’, ‘result’ might talk directly about my work. Words like ‘returning’, ‘retreating’ will be a stronger indication to quit than words that indicate a movement forward. Sentences about travelling will be especially relevant when I ask about travels. Otherwise said, I decide for myself that these texts that directly mention the topic under concern do need les interpretation than the other texts – the fact that I receive these lines is so much significant and remarkable that I have no doubt about their meaning.

Find your entry point

Text, hexagram, trigrams – whatever you feel comfortable with or what catches your eye. However, you must know how to deal with that entry point: if you work with the trigrams, you need to have decided what the trigrams mean to you. If you work with the text, you need to know how you will give meaning to it. You can’t work with what you don’t understand.

Explore the images in it

Do not ask yourself wat it means (yet), ask yourself what it says.

Observe: what is happening, and is there a why? Is there a subject, object or verb?

What might help is to read the image as if it is a panel in a comic book, one picture that is part of a whole story. Can you find the story? For instance (total random example, translation from Richard Wilhelm):

H13.4: 乘其墉。弗克攻。吉。
He climbs up on his wall; he cannot attack.
Good fortune.

You can read this as ‘He climbs up on his wall therefore he cannot attack.’ But you can also read it as ‘He climbs up on his wall because he cannot attack.’ The text is ambiguous in this. Let’s start with the first option.

He climbs up on his wall therefore he cannot attack.

What happened? What was the picture before this picture?
There is a conflict, two or more parties disagree, and violence seems to be the last resort. But why would someone climb on a wall, thereby losing the ability to attack? I assume that attacking is a choice here, but this person forfeits that choice by putting himself in a position that makes an attack impossible. Apparently attacking has certain undesired consequences, but simply not attacking was not enough either. He had to explicitly show that he cannot attack from the position that he deliberately chose himself – the wall that he climbed upon.
One party makes it clear that he does not want to fight – he deliberately unarms himself by positioning himself or his army in such a way that it is clear for everyone involved that attacking is impossible. For instance, the infantry is moved up from the ground and lined up on the city wall, posing no threat. It is a peace offering, to reassure every one of his good will to resolve the conflict in a peaceful manner, which is auspicious because no casualties are involved and the focus is on cooperation instead of winning.

Now the 2^nd option:

He climbs up on his wall because he cannot attack.

What happened? What was the picture before this picture?
There is a conflict, two or more parties disagree, and violence is imminent. But something happened which made an attack impossible for one party. Maybe his troops were already diminished, or he did not have other resources. His last resort was to position him out of reach of the enemy, on a high wall, and by doing so he saved his live and that of his team or army. Which is auspicious, of course.

Looking at the text like this, from all possible angles, makes the text come to life: things are happening, there is development or progress, and instead of just one line of text a whole scene is created.

Intermezzo

To prevent I’m being asked in the comments, “so how do you think line 4 of hexagram 13 should be translated?” I’ll give an extremely brief explanation of my take on this line. The most important character in this line is the character cheng 乘.  It indeed does mean ‘climb up, to raise yourself (or something else)’, but its field of meaning is much larger than this. But to me this doesn’t make much sense within the context of the complete line and the other line texts. There is already a rise in the 3^rd line where sheng 升 is used, which in a similar way means ‘to go higher’. And I don’t think that a similar image would be repeated at the 4^th line. I know, this is a wild assumption. But I prefer to see some progress in the line texts. Another quite common meaning of cheng 乘 is ‘to take advantage of, to depend on’. Yong 墉 refers to the city wall, and this line might talk about reliance on the city wall, and with such a wall the enemy cannot attack.

Where do you find all this in your situation or topic?

Ask questions about the image and its parts, and how these parts can be found in your situation. Example: I ask the Yi what I should do, and I get H9.2, which in Stephen Field’s translation reads:

九二：牽復，吉。
Returning on a leash.
There will be good fortune.

First response: wtf. I will NOT let myself be leashed!

But wait. It means good fortune. Why is ‘returning on a leash’ a good image? Who is holding the leash? What exactly is on the other end of it, what is returning? Am I the one holding the leash or is someone or something else holding it? Whatever it is that is returning, it is being guided, which is good. But what is this leash, where do I find this object in my situation? What could guide me? Maybe principles, rules, objectives, standards? These are means to an end. But the leash itself is not important, what is important is how it can be used. There is a difference between the leash and the person holding it…. The one who is being leashed is normally not the one who came up with the idea of a leash…. The person holding it however is. If I am the one being guided, then this means that the guiding principles, regulations etc. are being decided by an external factor. A factor that is returning me. Returning me to what? I can only return to some place or something where I have been before. Where have I been, where did I go, and why would returning there be good? Returning described like this feels like a safe haven…

So, what should I do? I have two options.

If I decide to be the leader, my principles should be connecting principles that guide others or bring the circumstances to a good result, by bringing them back to their starting point: how did you begin, what was your initial purpose, and what distracted you from it. As a leader I have great power, and with great power comes great responsibility.

If I decide that I need guidance, I must follow the principles that others, or circumstances, set for me, principles that will lead me to where I was and need to be. If I understand the positive purpose of the leash, I will not struggle against it. The leash helps me not to go astray.

More specific: I ask the Yi if I should write my own Zhouyi translation, and I get the same line:

九二：牽復，吉。
Returning on a leash.
There will be good fortune.

First response: wtf. I will NOT let myself be leashed!

But wait – when you are on a leash you are being guided by someone or something else on a path that is normally not chosen by you but for you, a path that leads back to where you were before. This feels familiar: with my current research I do not have a particular goal in mind other than exploring the text of the Zhouyi and simply noting down what I find. My research, my sources, constantly lead me back to the Zhouyi and its contents. Writing a book should not be a goal on its own, it should be the result of this process. If I allow myself to return and be led by the contents of the Yi, and have confidence in the path that it creates, the book will write itself. Or not. It is not really important. What is important is the guiding principle that creates the path and that I trust it. Should I write my own Zhouyi translation? No. But there is a great chance that by doing what I love to do I will do it without doing it – wei wuwei 為無為.

Do not be afraid to make up your own mind about what the Yi is telling you

The interpretation in the examples that I gave you are entirely made up. They are a product of my vivid imagination. Imagination is the ability to imagine a text, symbol or experience – you are turning these into images. Which is what the Yi is all about. Images are the voice of the Yi. Do not be afraid to make up your own mind about what the Yi is telling you. You do not need books or other people to tell you what the images mean. When you observe a painting, you do not let someone else decide what this painting does to you, how it makes you feel, what elements in it catch your attention, what you think about the colors etc. Neither should you rely (only) on other sources instead of yourself to discover how the images of the Yi speak to you.

This also goes for the trigrams. Ancient texts like the Shuogua, the Eighth Wing from the Ten Wings commentaries, are a good starting point and show how the ancient Chinese saw the trigrams and their field of meanings, images and associations. It is good to know the animal associations for the trigrams as mentioned in the Shuogua (Heaven is a horse, Earth an ox, Thunder a dragon etc.) but that doesn’t mean that you have to agree with it or that you have to use these associations. Although the associations and images are carried by certain principles and logic (why is trigram Lake ☱ a sheep, or goat? Because the top line looks like the horns of a sheep), they are not laws – they are a reflection of a time in ancient China in which trigrams were used and contemplated, and in the current day and age you can do the same, with different results maybe.

Now, in my videos you will often hear me say “this trigram means blabla” or “this trigram is about woowoo”, but in a way I am lying when I say that: trigrams by themselves have no meaning – you give them meaning through your own sources, thoughts, ideas and experiences. So when I say “this trigram means blabla”, I actually mean “based on sources that I find relevant and meaningful, combined with my own experiences in life and accumulated knowledge and thoughts throughout my more than 40 years of Yi study, and with the present case under consideration, I currently interpret this trigram as blabla.” It is possible that with another case, or in another time, I might interpret the same trigram as woowoo. The meaning of trigrams is not entirely fixed – it changes, and these changes are part of your framework that I mentioned earlier, and you create that framework.

Does that mean that the oracle bends entirely to your will and whimsical ideas? No – because even though you can to a very large extend define your own meanings and associations for the trigrams, there has to be a sound and logical principle behind it that connects it to that specific trigram, some sort of explanation that helps you to motivate your choices, so when you explain your choices others will say, we can relate to that – even though we might not agree with it. You might say that you associate trigram Earth ☷ with a railroad because of how trigram Earth looks: two sets of railroad ties next to each other. I might not have the same association with trigram Earth but that doesn’t matter: you can explain your choice and show that you connect it to something that exists and that it can be seen as a reflection of trigram Earth. And that is all that matters.

You can use other sources as inspiration or guidelines for the interpretation of the trigrams, you can refer to long lists of trigram associations like the Bagua Wanwu Shu Lei 八卦萬物屬類 chapter in Meihua Yishu, Plumblossom Numerology. These lists predefine your trigram associations for you, describe it for you, and that is perfectly fine. But they can never overrule your own ideas, feelings and thoughts that you have about the bagua. Never cast your own ideas aside – they can be part of your framework, and the Yi will use them in his feedback to you.

Use what works for you

Don’t feel forced to use a book, a translation, or a tool that you don’t feel comfortable with. Choose a translation that you find pleasant, that triggers your imagination, or is easy to read, or fits whatever criteria you find important. The Yi is your oracle, not someone else’s. You decide the medium(s) through which it will speak. 

Don’t panic

If you don’t immediately understand the answer from the Yi, go back to the image principle. Without one or more images, interpreting the answer from the Yi might be hard. Images is what the Yi is about. Now, you might argue, but what about these lines that don’t contain images? Like hexagram 32.2: 悔亡。’regret vanishes.” Or H34.2: 貞吉。’the divination is auspicious.’ Ask yourself, how does this connect with the second line of the hexagram? Where does this text fit in the whole hexagram, the trigrams, the rest of the text? And how does ‘regret’ or the idea of auspiciousness fit in your situation? What do the trigrams tell about this – what qualities do they have for you that might explain what makes regret vanish, or what makes the divination auspicious? Trigrams are images so they can help you if you are stuck with the interpretation of the text.

It’s your journey

Ultimately, working with the Yijing is a deeply personal journey. These tips are not rigid rules, but tools to help you open up your readings and form a meaningful connection with the oracle. Trust your intuition, define your own framework, and let the Yi’s guidance weave itself into your unique story. The power of the Yijing lies not only in its ancient wisdom but also in how you bring it to life in your modern context. So take a deep breath, roll the coins, and let the journey begin.