Whilst going through the textual analysis for this Query and preparing the above document, first a squeal from the living room next door then a tentative knock on the study door: the housekeeper needed help because there was a very large spider! I went in and heroically coaxed the hairy little beast onto the sweeper using the broom and pitched her gently outside into the garden.
This presented a good opportunity to use Jou Tsung Wa’s ‘I Ching Way to Divination’ version of the I Ching whose introduction features a few methods I haven’t read elsewhere, namely using the time or the nature of an event as the basis for determining the lower and upper trigrams and any changing lines.
Two New Year’s ago we had an Earthquake at 08.30 AM and I used this method which produced #51 – Quake! After that, I treated the method with a little more respect. I don’t generally go along with New Age magical thinking approaches, but there are so many coincidences with the Yi Jing that I cannot deny them, though that doesn’t mean I can explain them either. In any case, today whilst analysing Hexagram 35 a tarantula appeared yielding the Fire Trigram above (requires use of intuition) and the lower trigram is calculated by the direction, in this case front right or North East which yields Earth – Hexagram 35!
And this method yielded the same Hexagram as the one I was studying when the Event took place. So to my way of thinking this means that one should pay attention to it. To be honest, I was finding the Cast a little vague or weak and some of the text above reflects this. However, now that the Tarantula Event has yielded the same Hexagram and the changing line text clearly states that a period of stagnation might soon be ending, maybe this Presidential Election in the US, unlike most if not all in the past half century or so, will make a difference. For sure the country needs it. My personal opinion is that the US is now a post-republic kleptocracy so no elections are meaningful – at least not in terms of substantive outcome; but would be delighted to be proven wrong.
Finally, cannot help but point out the seeming serendipity of this Cast’s ‘Powerful Prince’ coming to the rescue and the recent formal announcement of RFK throwing his hat into the ring as Candidate for President. If anyone can be regarded as a Prince (of sorts) in the US, it’s not Harry from another Kingdom, but Robert Kennedy Jr. of the Kennedy family, whose father was assassinated whilst running for President and whose uncle was assassinated whilst actually President. They are the closest America has – in the public sphere at least – to royalty.
The ideograph of the first character, shi, consists of two parts. On the left, a small square represents an open mouth. On the right, there is an ideograph of shi, which provides only the sound to the character, with no implication as to the significance. However, the ideograph of shi is a beautiful picture of an act of divination. At the top two little plants represent yarrow stalks.
In the lower portion, there are two people in a hall. The horizontal line above them represents the roof; the horizontal line below represents the floor. The vertical line between them symbolizes a post or a pillar. The two persons are kneeling on the floor face to face. One is the diviner, the other is the inquirer. When this character is combined with the mouth on the left, it means “biting.”
The ideograph of the second character, he, also consists of two parts. On the left there is another mouth. On the right is a container that looks exactly like a type of bronze utensil of the Zhou dynasty having four legs and a cover. The stroke in the middle represents an object within the container. There is a tiny space between the cover and the container that suggests that the cover is being put on; it is an act of closing. This action signifies the movement of bringing two parts together. When this picture unites with that of the mouth, it appears as an action of bringing the upper jaw and the lower jaw together, or closing the mouth to bite.
This cast continues the recent Geopolitical series. The last time we got Hexagram 21 was in response to the very first such geopolitical query in this series, namely: “World Geopolitical Situation – the Russia-China Alliance.” This returned 63 After Completion leading to 8 Union which latter’s text recommends casting again to see if the leader(s) in question have sufficient virtue to succeed in the great endeavour which in this case is bringing some Very Big Things to fruition. The result of that second cast was 21 with no changing lines but of course the same Nuclear as this cast, #39 Impasse. To me that meant that: clearly there are serious obstacles and clearly they have what it takes to handle them so clearly they should do so – they being the China-Russia alliance mentioned in the Query.
In my opinion, part of the reason #21 is viewed as involving decisive cutting or biting or gnawing through and administering punishments is because of the nature of its own Nuclear #39 internals which is described as a turbulent ravine at the base of a steep mountain. Wilhelm’s commentary says that this obstacle is so intractable that the only solution is to return to the starting point and either wait for the situation to change or plot a new course because no matter what the journey cannot continue on that first path right now. So 39’s impasse demands finding new ways forward. In this #21 case, obstacles are to be gnawed through. If you can break through in one bite, fine; but if not you have to persevere, gnawing, until that bone is no more.
This particular cast seems to confirm Putin’s vision and policies since the two changing lines, interestingly the first and last, result in #16 Enthusiasm whose idea is Thunder arising from out of the Earth. The Earth represents many different things combining together such as people, societies or armies. Thunder is associated with drumming, movement, action, change, momentum – even shock or quaking. Indeed, Earth quakes when the drums are sounded and armies march to them! So this enthusiastic, high morale dynamic is the result of Putin’s policies.
Putin is not a Johnny-come-lately. Of all current world leaders of large population states, he has been in the saddle the longest, essentially all of this twenty first century either as President or Prime Minister. His popularity remains high both at home and abroad. And we can see in his face and body of late that he is maturing into early old age and acquiring no little dignity as the result of his patient – his critics in Russia say much too patient – work on the world stage to create situations more favorable for those peoples who do not wish to march to Hollywood programmed neocon drumbeats – or of late, for example, who do not want boys competing in girls sports and then undressing in their locker rooms. For most nations in the world such issues interest only the mentally ill.
Yesterday I read an article about current geopolitical developments the author of which characterized the dynamic as two main opposing camps namely the Unipolar Liberal Globalists (ULG) and the Multipolar Conservative Sovereigntists (MCS). The ULG side wants a single, over-arching world order with everyone marching to the beat of the same drummer – a beat which only they get to lay down and which they get to change at any time without any apparent due process or accountability. The MCS side partly stands to resist such ever-encroaching hegemony but mainly to promote a alternative vision of a world enjoying many different cultures and civilizations which have their own perspectives and ways of doing things and wherein there is more appreciation of their diverse existence and contributions rather than compelling them all into the same tube from which only one paste emerges.
Although I think the article over-simplifies what is going on, still it well describes in broad strokes much of the geopolitical dynamic in play these days. My personal reservation is that along with such tensions between various blocs, at the same time we are seeing all supposed adversaries concurrently working to develop new financial systems including banking and currency methods all seemingly headed in the same direction featuring digital formats which will work seamlessly world-wide even as they also indefatigably track each and every transaction, perhaps also whilst tracking everyone’s individual location 24/7 along with traffic, weather and social media trends and who knows what else. This sort of technological capability has the potential to entirely eradicate Common Law based nation states by eradicating individual privacy and therefore both individual and collective sovereignty. There may be some sort of jurisdictional multipolarity on the political and narrative level, but underneath there will be a single currency system circulating like blood to each and every cell in what will essentially therefore be a single, unified world order – precisely what the multipolarists say they are working to prevent.
The MCS side of course by definition are standing for Sovereignty – which I personally think is the sine qua non of any bona fide polity, being the glue which holds together any collective sense of ‘we a people’ – but this emerging technocracy may entirely do away with all such quaint notions and instead usher in a dystopian totalitarian era administered by opaquely programmed Artificial Intelligence algorithms mechanically tracking every movement and action of every person everywhere all the time, making decisions based on huge data sets that no human mind could possibly process minute by minute, day by day, country by country.
As an individual observer, moreover one without the slightest high-level administrative or governmental experience, I can only watch from afar. But I believe that each individual is an important part of any larger whole, so this individual opinion matters as much as anyone else’s and moreover that each of our opinions matter at least a certain amount. Or put another way: how each of us feels effects how every one of us feels so we each have a part to play.
This query was about a very public figure’s part in the world’s geopolitical drama which assuredly effects us all. Putin is arguably the most influential world leader right now even though President Xi is governing the most dynamic industrial and emerging cultural polity and India is now lifting off too, enjoying significant civilizational growth and rise after a couple of centuries in the doldrums. Putin and his ever-increasing circle of allies, principal among whom is China, are re-uniting central Eurasia, thus in a way continuing on where Genghis Khan left off so many centuries ago. Putin clearly wanted Europe on board creating a Eurasian civilizational zone stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok – for Christian Russia has traditionally been regarded as part of the European civilization of course as anyone who has read any Tolstoy knows very well – but the Western Europeans of today are seemingly in thrall to their masters in the City of London and Canyons of Manhattan and such and so are responding to such invitations with coups, military threats and now actual military confrontation. So be it. There is no need for a global bifurcation but it seem we are getting one. That said, if they are serious about multipolarity, then Western Europe should remain distinct from Russia, Turkey, China, India and so forth. Why not? They just need to stop trying to contain and control all foreign nations and populations and all will be well.
Interestingly, it is not looking like a 50-50 or better split that most Westerners probably imagine but more like a 75-25 split in the (RoW) Rest of the World’s favour with the West having at best only 25%. China and India alone comprise almost three billion people and their societies are in positive economic and cultural growth phases whereas the West is in a decadent, fading phase. Regarding the latter: such phases happen regularly and can indeed be positive for the society in question though they don’t provide any basis for geopolitical expansion; on the contrary they demand a certain period of internal housecleaning. Be that as it may, the RoW – or ‘global South’ – is clearly on the rise whilst the West is clearly on the wane. And given the 75-25 split, the results are relatively easy to predict, though not of course the many twists and turns no doubt about to unfold along the way.
In any case, we are where we are and this cast about Putin suggests there’s a whole lotta gnawin’ to go down before this is all over.
I am in the camp of those who not only hope that the excesses of the current Western regimes can be curtailed, but that also we use this period as an opportunity to reform constitutions which outcomes prove to have fallen far short. Germany needs to be sovereign and chart her own course as one of the pre-eminent cultures and manufacturing bases in the world with as much emphasis on Eurasia at her doorstep as any Western connections, valuable as they are and always will be. France clearly needs to work on yet another Republic, though they should also examine why they keep making new ones and nothing different really results! Italy is a mess; but Italy is always a somewhat marvellous sort of mess, so maybe it’s fine – but still. The UK is a ghastly mess; its politics stink; the civil service is too entrenched as in the US where a ‘Deep State’ does indeed rule the roost though nobody can definitively say exactly who or what it is. (Some even claim it is secretly rooted in the British Deep State.) No matter the whys and wherefores, but the US leadership class seems deliberately hell-bent on destroying the cultural-social underpinnings of its own society and replacing it with negative, progressive ideologically-driven BS. (And that’s putting it politely!) Why? Nobody can say but clearly for no good reasons at all though seemingly nobody can stop them…
So let us hope that Putin’s geopolitical acumen, essentially validated in this Reading, can give Western people a chance to make better countries for themselves to live in and pass onto their children. And if so, they too can join the Multipolar Conservative Sovereigntists and all together we can march to the beat of #16’s celebratory Enthusiastic drums!
Our histories are all garbled deceptive rubbish. (You would use more salty terms, Peter AU1!) Take the Portuguese for example: I used to have a little 24 foot sloop anchored in Gabarus Bay, Cape Breton. It was named such by Portuguese who were there since the 1300’s. Near La Rochelle France there is a strait called Breton.
It is a portolan* port with the Breton Strait so named because by following its latitude you come to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and that connection was made long before 1492. For example native Mi’kmaq historians in Cape Breton tell of a treaty made with an English king in the 1100s. They sent several hundred of their strongest warriors over to fight in one of the great battles, Crecy or Agincourt. To this day many of the men have huge arms and shoulders and are very intimidating to meet in gas stations where for some reasons many congregate! This is because their ancestors made and used very large bows operated by lying on the ground and arcing them with both legs before release – probably for bringing down mastodons, saber-tooth tigers, maybe even tyrannosaurus rex … who knows!. Their arrows were so much more powerful than anything the English or French had that they were armour-piercing. At that time, the French had the technological edge in the form of excellent armor for their mounted knights who were almost indestructible. They could be hacked away at for hours without anyone being able to bring them down.
[* The portolan wikipedia link doesn’t do a good job describing them, but it’s all I could find on short notice.]
I can just see it: some pimply, poncy Duc de Cologne or Marquis de Brie, rises to partake of camembert, garlic and wine of a morning, along with his petit pain and je ne sais quoi, then dons his outfit and, quaffing the familiar reek of all that national culture swirling around in his helmet, he surveys the enemy laid out in battle formation before him. Through the garlicky haze he spots an unfamiliar, well nigh unbelievable, sight: a couple hundred half naked enormous* savages with feathered headresses lying down suddenly. No doubt they were terrified of our superior French armour, he thinks – or perhaps they were intimidated by the odours of cheese and garlic, of our superior French cuisine? Hard to say, but in any case clearly these godless heathen savages have been awed into instant submission. As all should be in the face of their great King and the Mighty French!!!
But just as they are chuckling in arrogant glee as they keep finding ways to smuggle ever more cheese and wine through their bulky metal visors (whilst their wives wait at home with bulky metal padlocks around different, lower-situated mouths!), a command goes up from the opposing side, all the naked savages start moving mysteriously and then suddenly a dark, bristling hail of arrows comes flying in unison through the air issuing forth from this body of bizarrely prone half-naked savages. The arrows come fast and thick and before they even have time to wipe away their grins, many of France’s bravest knights and wealthiest Comtes and Marquises lie dead from thick wooden arrows that easily pierced their otherwise unpiercable armour leaving only a lingering odour of garlic to remember them by. There are scattered records including drawings in the English history books about the Mi’kmaq Chief and his daughters. He was best friends with the English king, apparently, and they got along famously. This is all back in the 1100’s. The tribe’s history goes back long before the ice age, they say. And some of them became Christian. [See below attached history book: Basket Stories by John Bear MacNeil.]
*[ in those days Europeans were nearly all quite small, around 5′ tall if you go by their armour. The Mi’maqs were around six feet and built like NFL linebackers, almost giants. Those Frenchies never knew what hit ’em; and Shakespeare wasn’t tellin’ when he dramatized the battles centuries later…]
So the whole Columbus discovery story is just another set of lies. He had Piri Reis maps most likely and if so knew the coastline pretty well from them. (Those maps show Antarctica accurate to within 100 meters, something only satellite surveillance can match. We have no idea who made those maps or how.) Admiral He’s greatly reduced fleet of ‘only a few hundred’ at that point was in the Caribbean around 1421-2 and then went up to Cape Breton where they built a structure whose remains are still there to this day. The Chinese left artifacts all over the Gulf area in Texas and elsewhere, carved dragons and such like I believe. And of course the Vikings were coming to the Americas long before Columbus as well.
I spent precious time with a Mi’kmaq chief a few years back who told me that according to their tribal histories, Asian people in China are actually their descendants, not the other way around, but this was a very long time ago. She – for they are a matriarchal tribe – was insistent on this point. Now these are Northern peoples who learned to live in a world of ice and snow. The world at the top is a small circle and it’s only a matter of a week or so’s hiking that determines whether when you go South you end up in China, or America, or Norway, or the vast middle in Russia. So I think she was talking of the northern peoples who lived through the ice age in the ice or thereabouts. She says they originally come from around Manitoba long, long ago. Some call them Eskimos. Some call them People of the Deer and there are entire provinces in Russia with millions of these fully autonomous people to this day – far happier than their decimated, impoverished relatives in Colonial Canada.
But there are no doubt many strains of those who have peopled Asia who came from tropical region oceans, not only those from the ice-bound North. Some of them may have come from great lands existing before the scattering of small islands now left today, perhaps the lost civilization that built those huge men staring into space. Such things are simply not known in these latter days. But as the polygamously constructed Warram catamarans ably demonstrate, you can sail the world very nicely in twin-hulled dugouts lashed together intelligently – no need for floating papyrus reed rafts with sails, though they can do the job as well if far more clumsily. People have been navigating by the stars in the Pacific since time out of mind. We have no way of knowing how far back such things go.
And all along there have been battles between builders and plunderers. This is not really a racial thing as too many attest, including here on MoA. Racism is usually riled up to justify violence the purpose of which is to steal other peoples’ stuff. It’s realy a plunder mentality thing, something karlof has studied extensively. Some peoples build and other peoples raid and take or capture and enslave. Or more simply put: some people give and other people take. A friend of mine was chatting with a Chinese martial arts master decades ago asking him about the origins of the many different fighting forms they have like Tai Chi, kung fu etc. The master told him to check with our Tibetan Buddhist master for, he said, it was Tibetan monks who developed the organized fighting forms later taken up by the Chinese. (I’m not sure if this is correct given some of Hua To’s medical qigong animal forms from the time of Christ but…) There were so many bandits and robbers in organized gangs roaming all around everywhere stealing, raping, pillaging etc. that the monks developed ways of defending themselves using their advanced yogic skills to craft fighting methods involving the harnessing of prana-chi which they were already doing for other purposes. The story is more than plausible, but the point is: there was plenty of plundering going on in Asia just as everywhere else in the world. And of course Africa was rife with it, not to mention the world’s greatest supplier of slaves.
Russia-China is proposing a new civilization for builders and peacemakers. All decent people should wish them well. But whatever they build will become a target for plunderers. Such mentalities will never go away even if there is not a single white person living anywhere. For plundering has nothing to do with race. It’s a Cain and Abel thing, yin and yang, moon and sun, night and day. Some things never change.
The ideograph attempts to express the original meaning of Jie, to set bounds. At the top there are two sets of lance-shaped bamboo leaves. Below the leaves is the character ji, providing the sound. Ji means immediately or instantly; it sets a time restriction. The left side of ji depicts a seed of grain with a tiny sprout at the top and two tiny roots at the bottom. On the right is a sickle. These two images suggest a picture of cutting grain and eating it immediately.
Originally the right hand image represented an ancient verifying token made of bamboo. When a piece of bamboo has been split in two, each half becomes a verifying token. If the two pieces match each other, then each person who has one holds a trustworthy credential. Tokens made of bamboo slips were commonly used by ancient governments to verify the identity of an individual.
I include this not to turn the blog into some sort of diary but as an example of using the Yi in everyday decision-making. Truth be told I don’t tend to use it for mundane, particular issues such as this so this cast was done mainly as an opportunity to examine whatever hexagrams thrown up in a different type of context than the broader, generalist geopolitical-philosophical which this blog and the substack have of late been exploring. In so doing various associations with the hexagrams in question are stretched or reexamined. Interestingly, #60 turned up just yesterday regarding Core Principles for Good society these days (as opposed to in ancient China or some such). Also #27 has arisen in three throws in a row first as derived, and now twice as Nuclear.
Which is interesting too, because one might not see how a hexagram one day describing how to create a good society – seeing as we are now participants in a New geopolitical world order being formed – is now arising the very next day about how to deal with a tricky, though not exceptional, personal situation. But the answer yesterday about Core Principles emphasized sincerity, setting limits, establishing good discipline whilst all along cultivating virtue and good health (#27) in family life – hmm, that’s a better summary than I published yesterday … understanding improves after marinating a little while.
But all those principles, excellent as they are for society as a whole, are also helpful on the individual level and indeed that is partly what yesterday’s Reading intimated in that paying attention to the small, to what is essential inside, not flying too high, setting limits etc., that is what works because that is what engenders virtue; and the development of virtue in society is a direct result of the collective development of virtue by each and every individual within it, each of whom is part of and thus helps determine the nature of the whole. As above so below and vice versa.
In the same way that the Yi can serve as a lens into the future by acting as a magnifying glass mirror into the deeper aspects of what is now transpiring in the present, so also we can understand broader society by the nature and actions of the particular individuals within it. The universe is holographic, so we should not be surprised that we can peer into the same hexagram to catch glimpses of the universal even as we are using it to examine any given particular. The Yi, in other words, is just like ordinary life; which is what we would expect in any source of time-tested wisdom.
61 Profound Sincerity > 60 Discipline < 27 Nourishing VirtueQuery in relation to MoA Comment
Gua Hexagram 61 Innermost Sincerity
The name of the gua is made up of two Chinese characters. The ideograph of the first character, zhong, is a picture of an arrow that hits the center and passes through a target. The rectangle represents the target and the vertical stroke, the arrow. Only an arrow passing through the target in the center can strike a balance, without pushing the target to the left or right. The second character, fu, is a picture of a hen hatching her little ones. At the top of the ideograph is a hen’s claw, representing a hen. The lower part is a picture of a little one with arms stretching upward. An image of a hen hatching a chick was created to express sincerity and trustworthiness. In hatching chicks, the hen must be faithful to her obligation.
“Part of the problem is that ‘communism’ was wrapped up in a bankster-led worldwide conspiracy to take over everything. So there was quite a gap between the theory and what actually happened. Another problem is that pretty much by definition communism involves excessive centralization which is the most efficient way of governing but also highly prone to corrupt capture, the prize dangled before their gaze so tantalizing as to engender multi-generational organizations to effect such capture, organizations which over time develop far greater depth and skill than the official organs in place by whatever system, in this case ‘communism’ which is in many ways easier to capture than more messy ‘democratic’ systems. That said, they are all capturable. And once captured, the terrain becomes extremely confusing both to see and to discuss because of course one of the sine qua non techniques of such capture is deception both in word and deed. Gradually everything becomes both opaque and confusing.
When all is said and done, all systems depend upon mutual good will between rulers and ruled, government and people. If too much evil intent enters the mix, it is very hard to spot, contain, reveal or expel. This is why how a society is structured culturally is as important as how it is structured systemically/administratively. This is where old methods like royalty, church, aristocracy came in. Having been largely expunged in most modern polities, they don’t come in much any more. So the challenge Russia and China (and others) are meeting these days is how to fashion societies where good will is a bedrock value permeating all levels of their society without those old institutions which seem no longer suitable for the much larger populations we enjoy today.
In Chinese philosophical terms, everything boils down to Heaven, Earth and Man, an experience-based trinity principle far older than the one proposed in the New Testament but essentially similar. Heaven is the over-arching context, Earth is the terrain complementing it, the relative elements we navigate through under the sky of Heaven, and Man is the navigation process, how good or bad a job we do, what sort of individual and collective world we make in the process of making our way through the journey of life. In a successful, good society, the Heaven aspect includes some sort of basic reverence for the fundamental goodness of life, including all creatures and terrains where life manifests, both visible and invisible. If the society as a whole generally enjoys a shared sense of such reverence, or respect if you prefer, than all the human elements in that society will generally row in the same direction, which will foster goodness and good life journeys for all involved.”
Additional Remarks
The Yi Cast offered up surprisingly apropos hexagrams in response very much along the lines of what I had expressed in the Comment, some of which of course comes from having studied the Yi approach for decades now. That said, although learning to navigate through the fathomlessly intricate hexagrams, trigrams, shamanic and confucian commentary and underlying theory may be a tad difficult – and indeed I regard myself as little more than an advanced beginner at this stage especially given that only of late have I started to study it more seriously – the underlying principles are simple enough that most children can readily understand them, including Heaven Earth and Man. The old Chinese – and most inter-related Asian societies – incorporated such things into their gene structure, basically, so even modern Chinese who may never have studied such things – as I learned years ago on some English-speaking Chinese forums – still understand them well for they are part of how they perceive reality. Just as most Westerners (and indeed most modern people nowadays including in Asia) have incorporated the materialist view so much so that they are entirely unaware not only that they hold it, but also that it is both optional as well as profoundly flawed.
The latter, although it can facilitate truly ghastly outcomes, is not a big deal. Human beings exist not only between Heaven and Earth, but also heaven and hell, and our life journey involves cultivating the good and eschewing the bad (Hexagram 27, Mouth-Nourishment-Cultivation). One way of doing this is holding to the Middle which is both a Confucian and a Buddhist approach. Indeed, the Buddha called his approach ‘The Middle Way’ not Buddhism. The middle avoids extremes. Hexagram 27 ䷚ with solid lines and top and bottom kind of indicates this. Life – the four yin lines – takes place in the middle where we avoid extremes of Heaven and Hell. Indeed, the Nuclear of 27 is #2 with all six lines being Yin. This represents Earth, the Mother, Mother Nature, material and relative reality. It is why the little poem I composed after the Judgment in the document above begins with over-arching Idea and ends with enjoying a good meal at the family kitchen table. Such basic, ordinary pleasures are what high civilizations cherish and promote. A little like Tolkein’s Shire, perhaps, with humble hobbits being those who save the world more than all the Wise and Great were able to do. Civilizations without humility and true inner sincerity founder. Always. Every time. The West is now foundering, as it should. The people will have to find a way back to ordinary common sense and basic decency. Asia-Eurasia is rising, after a difficult couple of centuries. As they rise and their growth slows, they too will have to deal with increasing corruption which always starts to infiltrate and spread, and they too will need to ensure that their people, their society, is rooted in bedrock virtues and values lest they too, like the West, go astray.
Which is a roundabout way of explaining why being mired in the mud of materialist fallacy is not the end of the world. Because if it isn’t materialist mud it’s something else – religious fanaticism, political extremism, banditry, sexual excess, demonic possession, chronic misery and wretchedness, blood sacrifice cults… whatever. Always something extreme pulling us towards excess of pleasure or excess of pain, aka heaven or hell.
In any case, the West was never as perfect as many of its cheerleaders like to portray. But it wasn’t all bad either. You just have to walk into one of the great cathedrals to appreciate this instantly. At the same time, if you sit quietly, you can feel that most of the gods who used to muster there are now absent; there is a dark, slightly haunted feeling along with evident beauty, majesty and depth. They are a little sad, their nearby graveyards a tad too gloomy. The vivid brightness of the Renaissance during which many latter-day churches were built, filled with light, seems more like a memory than a lived reality.
In our experience, the present moment is always vivid and fresh. When everyone is working hard and things are going forward day by day it is not hard to feel energy and momentum and for all to pull in the same direction – even the thieves prosper in such times after all! But once things have stabilized and the momentum period is over, then it’s not so easy. Many individuals in their forties start to experience the chickens of their youth coming home to roost in middle age, and it doesn’t always make for happy family dynamics! Then in maturity and old age we experience the harvest of our earlier years, the degree to which we followed bedrock virtues and values, and the degree to which we strayed.
Civilizations ultimately are not about Empire building, conquest, wars and subjugation. They are about creating good containers for good human life journeys. Such things require an appreciation for the small, the ordinary. Hexagram 61 is about inner truth or sincerity. Hexagram 62, the last process hexagram before the final Completion pair 63 & 64, is about ‘the preponderance of the small’ four yin lines surrounding two yang lines, the graphic opposite of 61 (and why they are paired together). This is where the commentary describes how the flying bird (the body represented by the two central yang lines, the wings being the twin pairs of yin lines above and below) always has to come down to Earth at the end, no matter how high it has flown. Towers built by Sauron always fall in the end.
In the Buddhist and other yogic lineages, masters of meditation go through years of training and extraordinary experiences, plumbing the depths, soaring to heights in endless inner worlds that all of us contain within. Some develop seemingly magical powers, can cure all illness, read others’ minds, learn things in lucid dreams beyond normal ken, influence future rebirths and so forth. But in the end they come back to what the Tibetan Kagyü tradition called thamel gyi shepa, translated as ‘ordinary mind.’ Ordinariness is the highest attainment, experience without extras, add-ons, embellishments, enhancements, ideologies, propaganda, regulations, restrictions, aspirations, second thoughts – even first thoughts. Just direct, ordinary ever-present awareness. High cultures engender this so that we don’t all have to live in caves for decades to achieve this most ordinary of qualities. Cultures which throw up sane and beautiful architecture, delicious and healthy cuisine, artful and practical forms of dress and speech, all grounded in awareness of things as they are, not things as we might imagine, desire or demand them to be, things which ideologues promise (and never deliver) and tyrants or totalitarian regimes mandate. Cultures that do not engender bedrock virtues are not high, no matter how much they believe and proclaim otherwise.
Man lives between Heaven and Earth in what is basically a primordially good setup. All we have to do is work hard at keeping it simple, keeping it real. That’s the upper trigram Water in #60’s Discipline / Limits. Water is the trigram of Work, of flowing around but also gradually wearing down obstacles, creating rivers running through canyons; water finds its own level, its destiny; and water is essential to life, to blood, to movement. Work takes as long as it takes; and for Man, as Adam was informed, work is continuous and ever-present, is a life long 24/7 affair.
In this Cast, the heady speech of lofty goals in the top line turns us to Discipline #60, the one that came before #61. So any time we start to get excited by ideas, we return to bedrock discipline, to the basic work of the Middle Ordinary Way which, interestingly, is based on Lake Below, the youngest daughter, the pleasure and joy principle. Life is not fundamentally drab and drear. It is fundamentally beautiful. But this has to be tempered with Wind and Water, with patient Gentleness and steady, smooth flowing Work.
Another in this political-geopolitical series, and another loaded question which of course is implying that maybe it’s time for American citizens to ditch the old Republic and put together a new one – like is apparently the French can do much more easily, though whether it has proven helpful is probably debatable.
In any case, the pdf for download below contains the answer!
9 Power of the Meek > 48 The Well/Source < 38 Differences
Hexagram #9
Hexagram #9, The Power of Humility: there are two ideographs that demonstrate the meaning of this gua. The first ideograph denotes “little.” It is made up of three strokes, one to the left and one to the right, with the third vertical stroke going all the way from top to bottom between the left and right strokes. This character symbolizes an act of dividing. To the ancient sages, things become little after division.
The second ideograph consists of two parts. The lower one represents a field, and the upper part represents two piles of grass stored one upon the other with a cover on the top. The whole ideograph is a picture of storing up or accumulating. [Huang]
On 4/6 I enquired about RFK as a Presidential Candidate in upcoming US Federal elections. On 4/8 I enquired about President Xi’s geopolitical intentions, essentially asking whether or not he was a good, well-intentioned world leader type or not. On 4/11 I enquired ‘what makes for a meaningful life?’
All three throws responded by offering up Hexagram #9 which Wilhelm translates as ‘The Taming Power of the Small.’ What is meant by ‘taming power’ is that the single yin line is the master of the other five yang lines. Since yang is usually regarded as dominant to yin’s submissive, this is a reversal of sorts, hence the notion of ‘taming.’ The single yin tames the five yangs, which together represent a situation involving great power or great potential. Only Hexagram #1, with all six lines being yang, is more powerful this way.
Now Hexagram #9 is one of six hexagrams with five yang lines and one yin line. Starting with the single yin at the bottom they are:
#44 – Coming to Meet or Intercourse
#13 – Fellowship with Men
#10 – Treading (on the tail of the tiger!)
#9 – Power of the Meek
#14 – Possession in Great Measure
#43 – Breakthrough, Proclamation
Note that 9 & 10 are paired, as are 14 & 14 and 43 & 44. The first three have Heaven Above and something else below depending upon where the single yin line below is, and the last three have Heaven Below and something else depending on where the single yin line above is.
Hexagram #9 has the yin line in the fourth place which is typically described – in political-hierarchical terms – as the line of the Minister (who serves the Ruler in the 5th place as opposed to the Sage – above all such things – in the sixth place). So not only do we have one yin line controlling five yang lines, but also this particular one in #9 is in the subordinate Line 4 position. So this position emphasizes the humility aspect of yin controlling or ruling yang.
There is no such material thing as yin or yang. They are abstract comparative terms, or polarities if you prefer. The warm sun-facing side of a mountain is yang, and the cooler side in shadow is yin. This makes immediate experiential sense but is a constantly changing variable as the sun moves across the sky from dawn until dusk. Hence the Book of Changes (I Ching): everything is always changing and yet there are recognizable patterns or situations, such as the mountain example above.
There are also three main levels of experiential reality assumed in the I Ching world view that are not often mentioned because they are so fundamental. (I also suspect various masters of yore deliberately didn’t want to spell everything out to obviously.) These three are called Heaven, Earth and Man about which more upcoming, hopefully.
In a hexagram, the top two lines are Heaven, the bottom two lines are Earth and the middle two lines are Man. According to some texts cited later on in most editions, the reason for having six-line hexagrams instead of simple three-line trigrams is to give Heaven Earth and Man two lines each. In any case, both individual trigrams and hexagrams have a Heaven Earth and Man structure that is instantly apparent to anyone brought up in this worldview. Let’s look at the three different levels, or aspects, briefly:
Heaven sets the overall mood or context, like the sky in a landscape.
Earth complements that overall mood or context, like the terrain in a landscape.
For example, when you have a bright sunny day with only a few puffy white clouds, the landscape below – trees, fields, cattle, small town on a hillside in the distance, all complement the initial tone set by the sky. But if the sky is dark, brooding, menacing, or even spewing down heavy rain, then the Earth complementing it will also look and feel different from how it did before; it will have darkers shadows, more gloomy areas, the town will look less cheerful and so forth.
Then comes MAN. All three aspects are experiential, but Man is the most dynamic in that it specifically references human agency. You have the sky, you have the terrain (in our example) then you have how it is all put together. For example, the MAN principle involves how the fields are shaped and tended for; how many and well looked after are the cattle; the architectural style and taste of the small town – does it have nice church spires or domes or is it a huddled mass of lowly cattle sheds with a communal field for defecation etc.?
The sky, terrain, man example above is easy to understand, but it’s just an example. You can learn to pick up on these three aspects, or principles, in all experiences, both inner and outer. In terms of our selves, for example, we have mind (heaven), body (earth) and feelings/processes/experiences (Man). Or morally we could say that we have a sense of what is ideal (Heaven), a plethora of situations that happen to us – our family, our town, our society, various events etc. – (Earth) and how we handle them (Man) – do we become a better and wiser person over time or do we become a lowlife, evil-doing demon?
Some people see them in artistic disciplines, such as flower arranging. The first branch or flower placed is Heaven. Then something lower down complements it. Then finally Man is placed bringing the whole thing into some sort of dynamic life.
Note that in the article linked in the caption to the picture above, though Heaven Earth and Man are referenced as being fundamental principles, they are not explained. A similar thing is evidenced in I Ching / YiJing editions.
In the above picture, Heaven is the upper flowers including the long stems. Traditionally they are placed first to set the overall mood or space. The Earth are the green leaves and the lowest brownish flowers. They will be placed second. Finally Man is placed, here the yellow flowers which makes the whole thing come alive. Note how some of Earth is above Man (the higher green leaves). It is possible to make an arrangement with Heaven at the bottom; possibly but not easy. In any case, to the classically educated Asian mind, societies all configure to Heaven Earth and Man principles and one can easily tell which societies accord with them nicely and which do not. Respect for authority is a given, for example, since if Man is fighting with Heaven, there can be no peace, no appreciation for the inherent beauty and majesty of things as they are. If revolutions are necessary, their function should be to restore proper appreciation and awareness of harmonious Heaven, Earth and Man societal configuration.
Well, all this was a sidetrack to explain a little more about the significance of Line 4 in Hexagam #9. Put another way: what difference does it make if the yin line is in #1, #3, #4 or #5? Well, first of all it is up to the interpreter of course! But also one can develop one’s own feelings and responses, one of which might include Heaven Earth and Man considerations.
Doing so in this case, Line #4 is the upper of the two Man lines (lines 3 & 4). Line 4 is part of the upper trigram Wind and Line 3 is part of the lower trigram Heaven. Man traditionally is said to ‘join’ Heaven and Earth and with these two lines it is in contact with both the upper and lower parts of the Hexagram.
Turned into a hexagram, they become #38 with Fire above and Lake below, each of which includes the two Man lines. So one effect of the yin line being in the fourth place is what sort of Nuclear you get. Again going from bottom to top starting with the yin line in the first place:
1st line #44 Nuclear: #1
2nd line #13 Nuclear: #44
3rd line #10 Nuclear #37
4th line # 9 Nuclear #38
5th line #14 Nuclear #43
6th line #43 Nuclear #1
Note also how the Nuclears are paired: 1 &2, 44 & 43, 37 & 38. This shows the internal structure in play and also how the numbering of the Hexagrams from 1 to 64, each in a pair, reflects some of this underlying structure even though it is not immediately apparent as such.
Why are Nuclears important? Again, it is up to the interpreter. Some don’t pay any attention to them at all and get very helpful Readings nonetheless. But for those who do like them, here are some of my impressions based partly on the position and partly on Heaven Earth and Man considerations.
Nuclear, the basic position: If we look at how it is formed, we see that the lower trigram of 38 comes from lines 2,3 & 4 of Hexagram #9, and the upper trigram comes from lines 3,4 and 5 of Hexagram #9. This means that lines 3 & 4 feature in both, whereas lines 2 and 5 only appear in the lower and upper Nuclear trigrams respectively, and of course lines 3 & 4 are the two Man lines, about which more later.
To me what the Nuclear represents is the internal process aspect of whatever the main Hexagram, in this case #9, is presenting. In the case of this particular query, the question is about the Meaning of Life for all of us, so the subject matter is somewhat general and dealing with universal issues and principles, perhaps, rather than any particular or immediate specifics. In this context, what might the lower versus the upper aspects be? Let us say that the former are represented by Nuclear’s lower trigram Lake and the latter are represented by Nuclear’s upper trigram Fire. We can go to the commentary for their hexagram, #38 for guidance or ideas, or we can make them up ourselves based on our sense of what trigrams Lake and Fire represent.
Now: it may be interesting to note that only Hexagram #9 gives us Nuclear #38 so this particular Nuclear tells us much about the particular dynamics involved with this particular Hexagram #9. So, come to think of it, this is at least one good reason for paying attention to the Nuclear. And in this case we can examine #38 in the light of #9 which has this theme of the humble being the Ruler. We are not using this Reading to examine a marriage or a business venture, rather a broad question about ‘the meaning of life’ and in the more specific context of how Hexagram #9 might relate to that query.
So we have Lake Below, Fire Above as part of the dynamic involving how the yin line in the fourth place of #9 rules the other five yang lines. A few things about Lake and Fire:
Lake is the youngest daughter because the yin line is at the top, so imagined as last. The first line yin (Wind) is the eldest daughter, the second line yin (Fire) is the middle daughter, so the top line yin (Lake) is the youngest daughter. So #38 features the middle daughter and the youngest daughter, perhaps being out of natural sequence. But also what happens, if you look further, is that you can see inside #38 lines 3, 4 and 5 being Water, with lines 2,3 &4 being Fire. Water always denotes some sort of work or difficulty in the mix. This is partly because it is heavy whereas Fire is light, and partly because it is dark whereas fire is bright, so Water is the Moon and Fire is the Sun; as such it is associated with darkness, heaviness, coldness, with negative emotions, with thieves (who break in at night) and with work, because here things come about from more difficulty than ease. Nuclear #38’s textual references usually describe something involving Opposites or Opposition even though Lake and Fire are sisters. The idea is that two sisters living under the same roof will often quarrel or differ. But this is because they are similar not because they are totally different. So the opposition in #38 is not that of outright conflict.
Lake is involved with joy, pleasure, communication, speech, beauty. Fire is involved with brightness, clarity, interdependency (in the way that fire depends upon fuel), clarity or insight. So we have beauty and insight. To my mind, one of the greatest challenges we face as human being has to do with how to manage pleasure properly. Indulged in overmuch and it becomes highly destructive and degrading; avoided overmuch and we become dry, cold, unfeeling. And so also with clarity and related wisdom: life is about learning, not just learning via childhood how to become adult, but how to become a good human being, a good husband or wife or parent or colleague or citizen. About learning what ‘good’ means and therefore also what is ‘not good.’ So to me #38 is about the juxtapositioning of good and not good that runs through our entire experience of living especially as regards Joy/passion/beauty and clarity/insight/wisdom. This entire view is what many might call ‘spiritual’ so to me Hexagram #9 as a response to a query about a political leader is providing personal, intimate feedback as to their human qualities within more so than commenting on their role and political system per se.
In each case, it seems to me that the Reading is intimating that both RFK and President Xi are mainly honourable and decent, capable of truly serving others rather than being megolomaniacs. And in terms of the Meaning of Life, those sorts of principles hold true as well, that the best leadership is that which serves, which puts others above themselves. It also implies that life is a spiritual journey of continuous life-long learning which can only come from not assuming one knows it all already, that there is always more to learn and others to learn from – humility.
Another aspect of the Nuclear, as mentioned above, is Heaven Earth and Man. This piece is getting a little long so shall just summarize from the Notes in the document:
Heaven is the Well, which has to do with collective reverence for core values, what is essential – like water is for any living physical community. Earth happens to be #9 again, the principle message of which being the Power of Meekness/Humbleness. And Man has to do with properly managing love and wisdom, two deep, eternal driving forces for all human beings, both individually and societally. I should just note here that the fact that Heaven is 48 The Well and Earth is 9 Power of Humbleness and that these two are the Derived and Primary hexagrams respectively is a coincidence. This does not usually happen. So to my mind it reinforces the ‘resonance quotient’ in the query and response by the Yi. This one is probably worth contemplating many times in years to come.
There’s an old Buddhist expression which sums up Hexagram #9 fairly well. Let us leave it at that:
‘Humbleness is the dwelling place of the Ancestors.’
The ideograph of Feng takes the image of beans flourishing to express abundance. The ideograph consists of two parts. The lower part is a cooking vessel. The upper part shows the stems and leaves of beans. The overall picture is one of flourishing and abundance.
Continuing the geopolitical Yi Readings, and from picking up a lot of chatter about upcoming offensives which may escalate, possibly even to nuclear exchanges, I wondered out loud if maybe such speculations are overblown if for no other reason than clearly there seems to be some sort of agreement between the two main antagonists to keep all the kinetics on the black soil ‘killing fields’ of Ukraine. The Yi seems to indicate that skepticism is warranted.
Of interest is that the Primary hexagram 55 arose a couple of days earlier. And today I consulted on another matter – the meaning of life (!) – and got #9 for the third time in only six queries. I don’t know what those odds are, but borderline astronomical. I am presuming there are important, timely messages in the ether involving #9 (and now also #55 which usually indicates some sort of climax or zenith) so intend to spend a little more time on this latest #9 before publishing the document. As it is, #9 the Power of the Meek, is now involved with the journeys of both RFK Jr and President Xi – and now the Meaning of Life!
My personal feeling is that when particular Hexagrams start coming up again and again despite very heavy odds against, that it’s a sign of something important, though do not pretend to know what.
Asking about Xi yielded the same Hexagram #9 as asking about RFK Jr a few days ago. Different changing line, but still, that’s quite a coincidence. Hopefully it means they will work together at some point.
On 2023 03 30, about a week ago, I queried: “can the neocon era end without war?” and the answer was encouraging but also a little curious in that it posited a great ‘dragon arising from the field,’ a strong leader essentially, who would be able to rescue the situation which now featured evil, or low, people in charge keeping good people out of power. Yi Reading: 2023-3-6 Can the Neocon era end without war? 1- 2,3 > 33 < 1. Interestingly, the very significant Hexagram #1 came up in that one too: 1 Creative Potential > 33 Retreat < 1 Primordial Yang.
Today I asked the Yi if it would even be possible for a strong President to ‘rescue the Republic.’ This because many feel that the Republic has been floundering – at best – since the assassination of John F Kennedy whom – it has finally been published semi-officially – was murdered with the assistance of the US’s own intelligence agencies, a truly shocking thing of course, but it has been so many decades since it happened that all involved are all deceased. Recently a populist was elected and from the day after the election was subject to unending attacks and accusations, nearly all of them false, and never given the chance to govern properly beset as he was with most of the political establishment, including domestic intelligence and Big Tech media, arrayed against him. Even if all the neative stories about him were true in terms of his being unsuited for the Presidency, he nevertheless was duly elected and sworn in and as such deserved much better treatment. In attacking him the way the American Body Politic did, they degraded themselves and their country far more than he could ever have done and the nation is reaping the harvest of such degradations today.
Be that as it may, the question stands: assuming a really, really brave and good President were by some miracle to be elected, would he be able to save the Republic, by which is meant overthrow the corrupt elements which have captured it? The Yi has given a fairly resounding answer in the form of Hexagram #43, Breakthrough or Resolution. ‘One must make the matter known at the Court
Well, we shall see, but with all these Yang lines (with this Cast 15 out of 18) something heavy will be coming down, that much is for sure…
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