Yijing, the Basics (Summary Articles, I Ching)

Stephen Karcher

The Basics
These are single topic focused articles explaining the basics of the way we work with the Yijing.
We hope to cover a wide variety of topics to aid users. If you want to suggest a topic or comment
on an article, click here and select the ‘feedback’ topic.

The Philosophy of Change

The spiritual and social importance of using Change (yi) and its symbols (xiang) might be
summarized in a set of premises taken from the Dazhuan or Great Treatise:

▪ All things are produced by the Dao through the fixed poles or ‘gates’ of Heaven and
Earth, the Two Primal Powers.
▪ All manifest being is an interchange or alternation between these powers, yin and yang,
Qian and Kun.
▪ This alternation creates all dualities, the basic units of our being and thought: dark and
light, male and female, receptive and creative, up and down, heavy and light, old and
new.
▪ This constant flux is articulated by the symbols or xiang of Change which link Heaven,
Earth and the human psyche.
▪ These symbols can be traced in all things, for they are prior to our experience. They
motivate Change as the shi, the moment and the strategy, and the ji, the subtle beginnings
or seeds.
▪ The Ancient Sages ‘xiang-ed’ or created these symbols (xiang) to producethe gua, the
diagrams of Change that participate in the process they represent.
▪ They also created a language that makes this process available to us, a language we see in
the ‘attached words’ of the Change. These words give voice to the ghosts and spirits
(guishen) that create the world we live in through the process of divination.
▪ The Great Enterprise or Great Task (Da Yeh) confronting us is to raise this Sage Mind
into awareness. By using the xiang or symbols of Change, we come to know Dao and the
Sage-Mind and can thus make right decisions in our lives, both personally and
collectively. Thus, by becoming a living example of the process, we set Change out for
all the people to use.

Making Questions and Templates

Your entry into the World of Change begins with presenting your problem as a question. Making
a question is a two-step procedure. You should take time with this. The clearer the question and
the deeper your perception of the issues at stake, the more precise and profound Change’s answer
can be.

Establishing the Field

The first step is to consider the problem. Search out the feelings, images and experiences
involved. Articulate what you feel and think about things, what you know and what you do not
know. Look for relevant memories and experiences, hopes and fears, dreams and desires. Simply
try to see what is there, no matter how contradictory. This will establish a field of associations
that can focus the symbols and relate them to your personal concerns.

Formulating the Question

The second step is to formulate the actual question as clearly as possible. Base it on what you
want to do. Find the border, the place where your desire melts into uncertainty and search out the
level of specificity you really need. It does not really matter what you are asking about as long as
it is personally important and your motives in asking are sincere. There is, however, an effective
form for the question.

Yes and no questions are not usually effective. An effective formulation of a specific question
might be: ‘What about doing X?’ or ‘What should my attitude towards X be?’ If you are
confused about the whole situation, you can ask the most basic question to Change: ‘What time
is it for me? Please give me an image of my overall situation.’ You can also ask for a strategy or
guide: ‘What is the most effective stance to take towards Y?’ ‘How can I best achieve X?’ or
‘How can I best help A?’ If you are truly on the horns of a dilemma, you can ask for an image of
each alternative, formulating two questions: ‘What about doing X?’ ‘What about doing Y?’

In asking these sorts of questions, or asking about another person, you should be sure your
motives are clear, straight and compassionate. Tradition says that the book will respond clearly
to a real need but will not allow itself to be used for greedy or manipulative ends.

Position of the Inquirer

Another thing to consider in posing a question is the position of the Inquirer. How is the person
asking the question related to the matter at hand? In what way are they involved in the situation
and what power do they have over the situation? Define who the Inquirer is asking on behalf of:
him or herself, as head of a family, as a therapeute or healer, as a manager or spokesperson for a
group. The answers Change offers will be directly related to this position.

Active Dialogue
The question you ask can also be the starting point in a continuing dialogue with Change, what
the depth psychologist C. G. Jung called active imagination. It can lead to further questions as
you explore the matter you are considering in depth. Give the oracle’s first response careful
consideration. If further questions arise, do not hesitate to ask them. Change invites this sort of
dialogue. Here is an example:

You ask a Basic Question about a problem or your overall situation. After consideration, you
find you need help to focus and make better sense of the response. You can then ask for a Guide.
As you contemplate this and its relation to the basic answer, you find you need a way to connect
to the actual situation, what you can do now. You can then ask a From Now question. I have
found this dialogue form very effective in taking Change and the basic re-formulation of thought
it suggests into action.

Relationship Readings and Group Readings

If two or more people are involved in the reading, you can set up a template that reflects the
situation. Relationships are a good example. Ask each person to draw the tokens to establish
their individual positions in the relationship, then ask them to alternate in drawing the tokens or
forming the lines to produce a third figure, representing the voice of relationship itself speaking
to both of them. This creates a very fertile field for insight and understanding.

This can be extended to a group, either by asking the group to designate a spokesperson or by
defining who is involved in the decision-making process and asking them to alternate in drawing
the tokens. Here, pay attention to the particular place of the Transforming Lines and the people
who produced them and the positions in the Extended Matrix.

Dream Readings
Another interesting approach is using Change to help you investigate your dreams, particularly
important dreams that feel as if they have a message for you. First write your dream down,
setting out all its parts and changes in sequence, looking at them for personal associations and
getting an overall feel for the atmosphere. Then ask three questions.

1. What is the message or meaning of this dream for me?

2. What is my position in it (as dream-ego)?
3. What long term or core issues does it address?

I have found that looking at the interrelations of these answers can bring real insight into how the
dream process is working and what it is speaking to in your life.

Working with Dreams and Relationships

with the Yijing
Over the years, I developed a fairly standard attitude towards doing a reading. The first thing I do
these days is to ask my personal ancestors and helping spirits to be present and give me the
power to help the person I am working with. Then I explore the inquirer’s areas of concern,
helping them to develop an effective question and establish a field of feeling associations around
it. I take care to establish the precise position of the inquirer, too, whom or what she or he is
asking on behalf of, what the motives are and what my role is in this process. The clearer the
question and the deeper our perception of the issues at stake, the more precise and profound
Change’s answer can be.

Dialogues with Change

As time went on, I noticed more and more that these inquiries would tend to develop into a sort
of Active Dialogue with Change, inviting a series of questions and responses. So I began to
explore other ways of setting this dialogue up rather than the standard question and answer. My
first one was quite simple, developed out of my personal work. I would ask a Basic Question
about a problem or situation. After consideration, I would ask for a Guide to help me navigate
and understand it. Then I would ask for what I call a From Now figure, how to take the reading
into action from the present moment. I found this triangulation extremely helpful. It reflected my
growing conviction that meaning in a reading does not emerge from the internal analysis of a
single figure but out of the interrelations between a set or matrix of figures.

It was here I took a clue from the truly brilliant explosion of Layouts that has accompanied the
revolution in the practice of Tarot over the last 30 years or so, particularly the work of my good
friend and colleague Rachel Pollack. I began to explore ways of using Change in this more
expansive and connected way. One of the Layouts I came up with is about Dreams and how to
interact with them.

Dream Readings
Dreams express our relationship to whatever the Inner World is. They can be confusing,
problematic, profound and trivial at the same time. Whatever they are, they are important and
humans have been searching for a way to understand their deeply symbolic language for
centuries, using a variety of approaches. What seems important to me, however, is to open an
area where we can interact with the dream without reducing it to analytical allegory or being
swamped by its simple presence, lost in clouds of confusion, or inflated by its powerful contents.
Here is a sort of procedure and Layout that can be very helpful.

The first step is to write the dream out, getting a sense of its narrative units, characters, feeling
tones and landscapes. Look at who you are in the dream. Look at the way it is re-arranging your
memories, feelings and associations to create the various elements it portrays. Look at the breaks
between sections, when the dream goes blank. Don’t judge too hastily, particularly with
unpleasant or highly attractive figures. Just look and feel and note things down.

Then pose these three questions to the Yi. Record all the answers before you start contemplating
any one of them:
1) What is the message or meaning of this dream has for me?
2) What is my position in it (as dream-ego)?
3) What long term or core issues does it address?

In my experience you will feel the connections immediately as you begin to circle through the
various positions. It is, of course, extremely helpful if you can recognize the hexagrams
immediately. Don’t get fixated into any one of them too soon, though. Keep circulating. Let
them build their own net of meanings. Work with your personal experience of the hexagrams
involved. Keep a close eye on the hexagrams’ relation to the dream images. Pay attention to the
positions of the transforming lines, for this is one of the ways you can locate yourself in the
process and identify the Voices that want to speak to you.

I have found that looking at the interrelations of these answers can bring a kind of spontaneous
insight into how the dream process is working and what it is speaking to in your life. The
conclusion of the reading will probably arrive as a kind of ‘aha!’ in relation to the overall field.
The dream then begins to recede, satisfied, perhaps, that you have acknowledged it.
Relationship Readings
Our significant feeling relationships are like a net that fate throws over us to keep engaged with
the ongoing process of our own souls and the soul of the world. They can be a true tangle, a
source of real and unnecessary suffering, a kind of ecstasy or, in Jung’s words, an alchemical
vessel. In my experience, when a relationship is troubled, the first step is to disentangle the
people involved and give them a clear place from which to speak, a place that both reflects who
they are, their needs and desires, and can recognize the other as really other. This begins the
dialogue.

The next step is to give the relationship itself a voice independent of, but connected to, the
people involved. Here is a sort of Layout or procedure you can set up to help bring these voices
into play. First get a general feeling sense of things. Look at the crisis and how it might have
evolved. Try to feel into the hidden side of the people involved without judgment. Try to sense
or feel where the relationship itself is, what its concerns might be. Note your own reactions to
things and the conclusions you begin to draw, without presuming they are correct. This is part of
establishing the overall field of the divination.

When you have a sense that the people involved are ready and understand that the basic thrust of
the question is to find a solution to the problem that works for the good of all involved, ask each
person to draw the tokens to establish their individual positions in the relationship. Note the
answers. Then ask them to alternate in drawing the tokens or forming the lines to produce a third
figure, representing the voice of relationship itself. Work through the individual readings until
each person feels comfortable with them as an expression of their position, identity and needs
and the two begin speaking to each other through the symbols.

Then take on and introduce the voice of the relationship (from the third reading), speaking
through it to each person involved. This can create a very fertile field for insight and
understanding. It depends on your own inner preparation, your willingness to step into that spirit,
to use but not be bound up in your own emotional material. This is an act of true divination,
giving voice to what is hidden and does not have a language of its own. Have courage and
compassion, be guided by the symbols and expect surprises, for this can truly be a healing act.

The 16 Token Method of Casting

Many of us prefer to keep with tradition when using the Yijing. This leads to a problem of
choosing which method to use.

The original method was to apply a hot poker to a bone or to a Fresh Water Turtle plastron
(often translated as Tortoise). This caused cracks which could be interpreted. The results were
written on the bone or plastron which had been used to divine. Click here for an example. This
method had obvious limitations which may have included convenience and difficulties in
obtaining shells and bones.

At some point an easier method was developed this was called bu shi, divination using Milfoil or
Yarrow stalks. The earliest references to this were about 670 BCE. We are not absolutely sure
how they originally used the Yarrow stalks to divine. The method was reconstructed by Chu Hsi
in the 12th Century CE. It was about this time that the use of coins to divine with the Yi was also
developed. Coins give different statistical odds to the use of Yarrow stalks, though this does not
seem to hamper the Yi in divination.

Recently a new method was invented that combines the best features of the two. It is as simple
and direct as the coins, and preserves the specific mathematical ratios between the different kinds
of lines of the yarrow stalks. It also has an elegance which throwing coins seems to lack. It is
called the 16 Token Method.

To use this method, you need a small bowl and a total of 16 tokens (marbles are effective) of
four different colors: one of the first color, three of the second color, five of the third color and
seven of the fourth color. In this method, each color represents a different kind of line.

To use the 16 token oracle, put all sixteen tokens into a small bowl. The one token of the first
color represents a yin line transforming into a yang line. The three marbles of the second color
represent yang lines transforming into yin lines. The five marbles of the third color represent
stable yang lines. The seven marbles of the fourth color represent stable yin lines. These ratios
represent the innate tendency of yin to stay at rest and yang to move and change.

Now shake and mix the tokens. Without looking, pick one from the bowl. Note down the kind of
line the color represents. This is the first line of your hexagram. Return the token to the bowl and
pick again. Note the kind of line it represents. This is the second line of your hexagram. Repeat
the procedure, each time returning the token to the bowl, until you have six lines, counting from
the bottom up. This is your Primary Hexagram. If there are transforming lines, change them and
create the Relating hexagram. Then use the Key to the Hexagrams to determine their names and
numbers.

You are now ready to read the answer to your question.

Tools for Change (Brief Guide)

The Tools for Change are a set of interpretive strategies, some are traditional and some are new,
all are based on extensive research and recent archeology.

They shift the focus of analysis from internal yin-yang line relations to relations between
hexagrams. You can imagine these Tools as positions or perspectives. Any hexagram can occupy
any one of these positions in a reading, all depending on the Primary Figure or Cast hexagram.

Line Positions within the Six-line Diagrams or Hexagrams

Each of the hexagrams or six-line diagrams can be thought of as an archetypal moment (shi).
Each has a Name and displays a set of divinatory phrases, with ‘six empty places’ numbered
from the bottom up. Energy flows through these places, leaving a trace or track represented by
the lines. Each position has a particular voice:

▪ Line 6: Culmination (and Crossover or Exchange)

 ▪ Line 5: Outer Center
▪ Line 4: Arrival/After the Crossing (of the Threshold of Manifestation)
▪ Line 3: Approaching the Threshold (of Manifestation)
▪ Line 2: Inner Center
▪ Line 1: Beginnings (of Inspiration or Realization)

The Primary Figure

The hexagram (gua) generated directly from the divinatory process is the Primary Figure or
Symbol (xiang), from which all other figures in a Reading are generated. In this position, a
hexagram embodies the archetypal situation or moment (shi) that is the basic energy form or
flow behind the question you inquired about. It is at once a description and a basic strategy.

The Relating Figure

When the Transforming Lines in the Primary Figure change form, they produce a second figure,
called the jigua or Relating Figure.

The Relating Figure shows how the inquirer is related to the matter presented by the Primary
Figure. It is anything that relates us to the basic situation, the sea or ground feeling in which the
whole reading swims. It can represent future potential, overriding concerns, a warning, a goal, a
desired outcome or a past situation that brought you to the present situation. Finding the function
of the Relating Figure in a specific situation is one of the diviner’s first concerns. It involves an
intuitive exploration of the feelings around the matter at hand.

The Core Theme or Nuclear Figure

The Core Theme or Nuclear Figure represents the motivating energy situated at the heart of the
Primary Figure, connecting the hidden cause of the situation with its goal. It tells you where
hidden action is taking place.

The Nuclear Figure is a hexagram hidden within the Primary Figure, constructed by seeing the
four inner lines of a hexagram (lines 2, 3, 4 and 5) as two overlapping trigrams and then
unpacking them. The lower trigram of the Nuclear Figure is made from lines 2, 3 and 4 of the
Primary Figure; the outer trigram of is made from lines 3, 4 and 5 of the Primary Figure.

The Families or Cycles of Nuclear Figures

The Core Themes or Nuclear Figures of the 64 hexagrams group into 16 families of four
hexagrams that share a common core and theme. There are only 16 possible first generation
Nuclear Figures. If these in turn are reduced to their Nuclear Figures, we find four second-
generation figures: the first two and the last two figures of the book, 1 Force and 2 Field and 63
Already Crossing and 64 Not Yet Crossing. These four are unique. The first two are their own
Nuclear Figures; the last two are each other’s Nuclear Figures.

These provide overall orientation. They can be used to trace any situation back to one of four
basic landmarks or Gates and a connection with the four Hidden Winds which drive the Change.

▪ 1 Force: You are connected to a creative force

▪ 2 Field: Be open and provide what is needed.
 ▪ 63 Already Crossing: Co-operate with the ongoing process of change.
▪ 64 Not Yet Crossing: Gather energy for a decisive new move.

The Change Operators

The Change Operators are a powerful modern technique for determining and differentiating the
specific transformative action of the Two Powers in a given situation. They give us a sense of
effective inner and outer strategies and a much clearer understanding of the dynamic of Change.
The Change Operators work from the positions of the Transforming Lines in the Primary Figure,
no matter whether they are yin or yang.

The Inner Yang or Inspiration Operator describes the inner transformative aspects of a
situation. It offers an effective stance or strategy towards the Inner World and the sources of
inspiration it offers.

The Outer Yin or Realization Operator describes the places where change occurs and its
possibilities of realization. It offers an effective stance or strategy towards the Outer World.

Ideal Form and Shadow Site

The Ideal Form and the Shadow Site is a pair of figures that let you grasp both the ideal
potential of the situation and the attitude or place that is counter-indicated, the specific thing that
is not in harmony with the time. This focuses you on the sort of motivations and activities that
the Primary Figure seeks to inspire and those it asks you to let go of. These are incorporated into
the Header of each figure.

The Time Cycle

The Time Cycle links four hexagrams through the images of the Four Seasons to place your
situation in the oldest description of divinatory time. Use the Time Cycle to relate your situation
to one of these seasons and look backwards and forwards to see where it came from and how it
can be developed.

A Time Cycle is made up of four hexagrams that share the same four inner lines, lines that
represent a Core Theme of Change. The different top and bottom lines attached to this Nuclear or
Core represent the Four Seasons and their themes.

▪ Spring (yang below, yin above): rousing new growth.

▪ Summer (yang below, yang above): ripening the fruits.
▪ Fall (yin below, yang above): harvesting the crop and gathering the insights.
▪ Winter (yin below, yin above): finding the seed of the new by grinding away the old.

Matrix for a Reading

All of the tools explored here are incorporated into the Reading Matrix of the program. Together
they construct an interpretive web around a basic reading that can extend and clarify the oracle’s
response, showing the subtle relations in an answer. They are perspectives that will become more
and more familiar as you become acquainted with the figures of Change.

Working with Pairs

The Pair in the Matrix of Change
The Pair holds the two Primal Powers (yin and yang, Dragon and Dark Animal Goddess) in a
single effective image, an interchange between Inspiration and Realization. This provides a
unifying model for your situation as a whole.

The Pairs, the sets of two interconnected hexagrams (gua), are the basic units of Change. There
is a lot of evidence, both textual and historical, that Change was originally conceived as a
Sequence or Matrix of these interconnected Pairs. To my mind, thinking in Pairs is perhaps the
most important thing we can do to enter the world of Change.

Myths of the Pair

Let’s start with Pairs as a way of perceiving Change, ‘holding the opposites in one thought.’ This
reflects an old meditative practice – ‘one yin, one yang, that is the Way’ - that allows the shen
ming or ‘enlightening spirit’ to enter and inform our heart-mind. You see, Pairs reflect the basis
of all eastern thought: Nothing stands alone; each thing can only truly exist when held in tension
with what we perceive as its opposite, like dark and light, female and male, death and life, cold
and hot, being and acting. Pairs are like the underworld Ghost River that unites the Sun Tree and
the Moon Tree, putting the two halves of our lives together in their mysterious ways.

A basic way of imagining these Pairs is as a set of ‘spindles’ on which an unbroken thread is
wound back and forth like a Möbius strip, or a Great Egg that turns itself inside out without
breaking its shell. The thread is the thread of life itself as it passes back and forth between the
two fundamental Powers, seen in Change as the Dragon and the Dark Animal Goddess, at every
level of our lives. This mythic way of perceiving is capable, in Jung’s words, of working a
profound transformation of our thought.

Pairs as Tools
A Pair is also a subtle interpretive tool. The two figures involved in a Pair interact as inspiration
and realization, agonist and antagonist, light and shadow, woven together by the interconnection
of their transforming lines. The complex internal Matrix this interconnection creates reflects the
healing power of the mythological imagination, its capacity to produce dynamic and
psychologically effective models of complex realities. The internal Matrix of the Pair gives
Change a voice, establishing a place in the imagination where omens can be displayed in all their
complexity.

Types of Pairs
The 64 gua or six-line diagrams constitute 32 pairs. Of these, 28 pairs or 56 diagrams are related
to each other by a process called inversion or rotation: one figure becomes the other when it is
inverted or ‘rotated’ on its central axis. These I call Rotational Pairs. They reflect a process
called hua: gradual, ‘normal’ change. It is the norm in the overall Sequence or Matrix, the
regular exchange between the two halves of a theme or story, effected diagonally across the
internal Matrix of lines between the two hexagrams.

Another, smaller group of Pairs do not change when rotated or inverted. To effectuate the change
here, each individual line must be transformed or converted (bian) into its opposite. These
Symmetrical or Conversional Pairs (1:2, 27:28, 29:30, and 61:62) are the Engines of Change,
Primary Sites of Radical Transformation where the stream of time is disconnected, turned, and
re-connected in a different way. They reverse entropy, re-charging a situation by connecting it to
primal sources of energy.

The Engines of Change are distributed at key points in the overall Sequence or Matrix, at
beginning, middle and end. In fact, this entire Matrix develops as space/time swings open and
shut between these figures, which are described as ‘doors’ that open and close. There is another
sort of internal exchange characteristic of a Symmetrical Pair. Here each line connects
horizontally rather than diagonally with its counterpart, effecting a direct conversion, a radical
change of one thing to its opposite. These Symmetrical Pairs and their radical way of converting
things is what anthropologists call a conversation or exchange between totemic or canonical
categories that express the basic ways our mind organizes the flux of experience that surrounds
us.

A further subset of four Pairs (11:12, 17:18, 53:54, and 63:64) change through both rotation and
conversion. I characterize these as Sites of intense ritual activity that mediates between the
visible and invisible worlds, connecting the primary powers to personal life.

Localized Zones of Radical Transformation

The final link in the in the dynamic of the Pairs weaves the transformative potential of the
Primary Sites of Transformation into 12 Irregular Rotational Pairs. A normal Rotational Pair
generates a regular set of other paired Figures across its Internal Matrix. However, there is a
notable exception to this rule: sometimes two interconnected lines of a Rotational Pair change to
produce the same hexagram; and when they do, the hexagram they produce is alwaysone of the 8
Symmetrical Figures (1:2, 27:28, 29:30, and 61:62).

This significant local irregularity in the normal process of change (hua) shows a place where
radical transformation (bian) is possible because the material in question is ‘pulled back’ through
two Primary Sites of Radical Transformation. I call these powerful anomalies localized Zones of
Radical Transformation as opposed to the Primary Sites of Radical Transformation. They
occur at the limits (lines 1:6), the centers (lines 2:5) or the thresholds (lines 3:4) of 12 Pairs.
When a reading includes any of these, it points at a specific place in our lives where we can
effect a real transformation by sacrificing our old ways and participating in the Way of Change.

Reading the Pair

Here is an example of how using the Pair can amplify and deepen a reading. We asked a question
to Change about how we can best read the answers it gives us.

Question: What would you (Change) like to say to us about reading your answers to our
questions?
The Answer was Hexagram 3 Sprouting as Primary Figure, with a Transforming Line in the first
position, producing the Relating Figure 8 Grouping. The Answer is notated like this:
Answer: 3.1 > 8 Grouping.
Here is the basic information on the Pair 3:4 from the Pair Page, with interpretation and
commentary following:
 3:4 The World Tree: Sprouting and Nurturing the New
3 Inspiration: Sprouting: it appears but does not leave its dwelling.
4 Field of Realization: Enveloping: its disorder is a conspicuous
sign.

This Pair describes the birth and the secret growth of the new, hidden by the ‘covered sky.’ At its
center is the World Tree, the first manifestation of the coupling of Heaven and Earth. It combines
the difficulties inherent in birth and the need to conceal and nurture the new guiding figure that
emerges. It evokes the archaic potency of Wang Hai, First Herdsman and War God, and the birth
of King Wu, the hero who will renew the time and acts as the Approach to Royal Centers of
power in the first stage of life, when the child seeks to create a world in which to find a self.
Core themes: 23:24 > 2, stripping away the old allows the return of the spirit, opening you to the
primal power of realization.

This tells us that we are in an Inspiring phase (the function of Hexagram 3 in the Pair) when we
enter a reading, seeking inspiring inner images, and that we are also in early childhood here,
seeking a way to find an identity within the great world of Change. We must establish the deep
foundations of Change within, enveloping and nurturing the ‘birth of the new’ (its partner
Hexagram 4 as Realization) for there is great hidden potency here, a possibility to ‘renew the
time’ and connect with deep animal powers, the beginning of a new world. If we strip away our
old ideas (Core Theme: Hexagram 23) and conceptions this spirit can return (Core Theme:
Hexagram 24), opening us to the deep feminine powers of the Dark Animal Goddess (Primal
Core Theme: Hexagram 2) and her great stream of divinatory symbols. The disorder in our
normal way of thinking this produces will be a conspicuous sign that the process is beginning.

If we want to look deeper, we can go into the connection of this Pair with other sites and themes
in the overall Matrix or Sequence. Here is the entry from the Pair page. ‘Exchanging influence’
and ‘Inner drive’ refer to the Pairs generated by the interconnected limit lines of the two figures
(1:6, 6:1). Center refers to the Pairs generated by lines 2:5 and 5:2. Threshold refers to the Pairs
generated by 3:4 and 4:3.

This Pair centers on the individual struggle for emergence and the incubation of a new world. It
exchanges influence with 7:8 (Launching the Armies and New Group that results). Its inner drive
is 41:42 (The Offering and the Blessing that results). Center and threshold lines connect the
process to 17:18 (Following the Spirit and Renovating the Ancestral Images); 23:24 (Stripping
the Corpse and the Return of the spirit); 59:60 (Dissolution of the old self and Articulation of a
new time); and 63:64 (the Burning Water and the final Crossings of the stream of life and death).

This tells us that the Pair of Figures 3:4, the dynamic model for our reading process, is
exchanging information directly with a bigger change in culture described in the Pair 7:8 and its
connection with a decisive moment in the history of the Change of the Mandate of Heaven. It is
powered by the central paradigm of sacrifice and the blessing that results (41:42), showing that a
sacrifice of our old ways of thought now can trigger a flow of blessing from the Ancestral
Powers and a real rise in our spiritual status and power. This theme circles again and again in the
different Decades or Stages of Life. It is a drive to follow the new spirit and renovate the parental
and ancestral images of our culture at 17:18; a vital need to strip away our old ideas in order to
let this spirit return at 23:24; and the final dissolution of a powerful and oppressive old identity
that allows the articulation of a new ritual year, a return of the sacred cosmos at 59:60. And we
may note that these are ‘final’ or ‘burning’ issues (63:64), real questions of life and death and
what we can pass on to a new generation.

After this general look at the Pair we are involved with in a Reading, we can follow the thread
farther by moving into the other functions the Pair generates: the Karmic Nodes that point at
specific ages and events in a person’s life that may be relevant to the situation at hand and the
Transforming Lines and Crossline Omens that show particular points where change is at work
and the hidden pathways through which the possibilities of transformation can be realized. All
these interconnections form a kind of ‘magical mathematics’ through which a given Pair is
connected with others in the overall Matrix, echoing backwards and forwards in the stream of
time.

Crossline Omens and Karmic nodes are explored in other articles.

The Decades and the Ritual World of Change

The Decades, repeating units of ten sequential hexagrams represent an archaic shaping principle
used to sculpt the deepest layers of the Classic of Change. Each Decade represents a birth, death
and re-birth ordeal that is simultaneously a personal narrative, a reorganization of the central
nervous system, an evolution of culture and an experience of the continuous act of creation.

Themes of the Decades

A Decade portrays a ‘chapter’ in the ritual course of the Symbolic Life. Each Decade has a basic
developmental task or theme associated with it.

First Half of Life: The Hero’s Journey

First Decade (1-10, childhood) is an intensely self-contained time when the child seeks to
imagine a world in which to discover an identity.
Second Decade (11-20, the Teens) is a series of struggles with the relation between group and
individual identity, sexuality and an emerging personal destiny or mission.
Third Decade (21-30, the 20’s) contains the first great Male and Female Initiations where our
adult Name and identity are first roused and fixed. It begins the search for an image of the deeper
Self.

Second Half of Life: Facing the Gods

Fourth Decade (31-40, the 30’s) consists of the heroic struggles to found a dwelling, family and
career. It is a grueling stage with little transcendental help or relief, a sort of dark night of the
soul that pulls up past experiences and links them with future transitions,
Fifth Decade (41-50, the 40’s) represents the emergence from the wilderness into higher levels
of culture and empowerment in society, conferring new ritual status and power on the now fully
individualized being.
The Sixth Decade (51-60, the 50’s) confronts the proper exercise of power and our
responsibilities to the human community, releasing and fulfilling our potential for present good
and re-orienting us towards the great passage across the river of life and death.
The Crossings (61-64) are a coda and a linking of cycles. They represent a birth into the life of
the spirit, the passage across the River of Life and Death and a link to the new generations to
come.

Structure of a Decade
There are five Pairs of hexagrams within each Decade. Each different Pair occupies one of five
numerical Positions that have thematic meanings of their own.

The Axis and Gate: 1:2 Position changes the energy level of the psyche and provides key
images of a new configuration of the world of the Four Directions. It is like a set of doors
swinging open and closed through which we emerge from liminality and are oriented to a new
stage of life.

The Approach 3:4 Position is a place where identity is re-organized and personal energies
mobilized, a continual process that alternates between rousing and limiting, containment and
breakthrough, protection and challenge.

The Royal Center 5:6 Position represents the experience of the numinous attraction and power
of the King and High Culture. It is the Decade’s centralizing power, a place where we seek
audience, are recognized and charged with a Mission.

The Mission 7:8 Position represents a mandate from the Center that can lead to a change of
state. It is a struggle, an ordeal that must be faced or a challenge that must be confronted.

The Transition or Liminal Zone 9:10 Position is a passage between stages that opens the world
of the ghosts and spirits. It dissolves an old identity after it has served its purpose and releases
the unformed yet numinous potential of the new.

Each Decade portrays a chapter in the course of the Symbolic Life as a sequence of experiences:
Emergence through the Gates, an Approach to, an Experience of and Mission from the numinous
Royal Center of Power and High Culture and the dissolution of old identity and Liminal Passage
to a new Stage of Life. The Decades as a whole set the stage on which the ritual education that
develops individual identity and relates it to the Ancestral foundation of life takes place. They
structure the process of accumulating De or actualizing power, the ‘power and virtue’ that
stabilizes the heart-mind and lets an individual become who they are truly mean to be, the
spiralling steps of the process that Jung called individuation.

The Hidden Dynamic of the Decades

However, if we look at the Decades as a Xiang or Symbol they reveal another more mysterious
dynamic, a continual making, dissolution and re-making characteristic of a Strange Attractor.

Understanding the dynamics of a Decade as a Symbol or Xiang depends on seeing the Pair
Positions not just as forms or themes but as ‘markers or agents that do work’. They continually
project and re-gather themselves in time and space as dynamic dance between Inspiration, the
power of the Sun and the Dragon whose Inspiring vertical Force loops through boundaries,
projects pathways and activates ancestral energies and Realization, the cycling Moon and the
Dark Animal Goddess or Horse Mother who roams the wide horizontal Field of Earth, carrying
the ‘symbols of the spirit’ to her children to bring them ‘safety and security’. Each step in the
dance is punctuated by a return of and to the dark rushing Ghost River that dissolves old form
and gathers the beings back into the fertile womb of chaos that runs beneath all.

This process is reflected in the old Daoist metaphysical image:

The Way gives birth to the One;

The One gives birth to the Two;
The Two gives birth to the Three;
The Three gives birth to the Ten Thousand Things.

The Way gives birth to the One

Axis and Gate: 1:2 Position

This changes the energy level of the psyche and provides key images of a new configuration of the
world of the Four Directions. It is like a set of doors swinging open and closed through which we
emerge from liminality and are oriented to a new stage of life.

Mythically, this is the Great Mountain at the archaic edge of things. It emerges directly from the
Way as the One Alone that contains both Primal Powers. It stands at the borders of existence,
both inside and outside the world in potential like a set of great monumental doors that open
hidden energy pathways that energize the life to come.
In the linear narrative we experience this position as a sudden opening to a new level of
experience where we emerge from liminality and are oriented to a new stage of life by the
images of new possibilities and challenges.

The One gives birth to the Two

The Mountain of the One becomes the Two by mirroring and projecting itself as a River at the
opposite extreme of the Decade. Thus the 1:2 Position enters time as the Beginning by producing
a dark double of itself, a Liminal Transition Zone, and projecting it as the End of each cycle.

Transition or Liminal Zone 9:10 Position

This is a passage between stages that opens the world of the ghosts and spirits. It dissolves an old
identity after it has served its purpose and releases the unformed yet numinous potential of the
new.

This 9:10 Position represents an inversion of the energy of the 1:2 Position, a dark mirror that
reverses the polarity of the Gates and draws things down into the chaos that lies beneath and
around the entire process. This is the dark, rushing Ghost River where everything dissolves into
its constituent parts and returns to the chaos from which it emerged. In the linear narrative we
experience this as a night-sea journey where Hidden Spirit Operators ‘do work’ that dissolves an
old identity and releases the spark, the unformed yet numinous potential of the new.
The Two gives birth to the Three
Just as the distant Rivers and Mountains were doubled into the Earth Altar in the Royal Palace,
so the two Positions that form the limits of a Decade unite to project the 5:6 Position as Royal
Center.

Royal Center 5:6 Position

This represents the experience of the numinous attraction and power of the King and High Culture.
It is the Decade’s centralizing power, a place where we seek audience, are recognized and charged
with a Mission.

The 5:6 Position is the high centralizing place in each Decade where numinous things are
revealed. It draws, collects, centralizes and intensifies the power of the limits and sets it moving
into the world. In the linear narrative we experience this as a place where we seek audience, are
recognized and charged with a numinous mission or mandate (ming) to fulfil.

The Three gives birth to the Ten Thousand Things

The Royal Center then splits its Inspiring and Realizing components to establish flanking
positions or wings that surround the central position like the mirrored slopes of a mountain.
These are the places where the iterating work, the work of the Three is done, a continual re-
doubling that produces change.

Approach 3:4 Position

This is a place where identity is re-organized and personal energies mobilized, a continual process
that alternates between rousing and limiting, containment and breakthrough, protection and
challenge.

The image of the 3:4 Position is a container and a sharp instrument that penetrates or punctures
it. It is a continual alternation between rousing and limiting, containment and breakthrough,
protection and challenge. In the linear narrative we experience this flank as the journey up the
Mountain towards the summit. Here the Hidden Spirit Operators ‘do work’ that will enable us to
be charged with a higher level of energy.

Mission 7:8 Position

This represents a mandate from the Center that can lead to a change of state. It is a struggle, an
ordeal that must be faced or a challenge that must be confronted.

The 7:8 Position evokes danger, death, harvest, marriages. It suggests armies, generals in the
field, invasion of barbarian territory, fighting at the borders, facing and dealing with angry old
ghosts and the corruption of the past. In the linear narrative we experience this flank as the
journey down the Mountain carrying the mandate towards enactment. Here the Hidden Spirit
Operators ‘do work’ to release stored energy into action that can effect change in the world.

Though the linear story line runs through each Decade, its hidden inner process is continually
doubling back on itself to point at a mysterious center ‘whose circumference is nowhere and
whose center is everywhere’. A Decade is, to quote W.B. Yeats again, like ‘a Great Egg that
turns itself inside out without breaking its shell.’
Decades and Karmic Nodes
Each Pair or set of two interconnected hexagrams in Change generates a set of other paired
figures across its Internal Matrix. These sets of Generated Pairs do many things. They describe
the overall interchange between the themes of the two hexagrams involved; they connect the Pair
in question to other sites in the overall Matrix or Sequence; and they generate the Crossline
Omens. Further, through the model of the Decades they can also point at specific events in a
person’s life that may be relevant to the situation at hand.

The Decades and the Symbolic Life

The Decades are an ancient age-grade system that shows the progressive formation of an
individual’s character (de) throughout life in terms of ideal units of Ten. It is a major shaping
principle used in sculpting the local logics of Change, giving shape and meaning to individual
experience by describing its major events, initiations and passages from one state of being to
another. There are specific tasks associated with each of the Decades.

First Half of Life

First Decade (Figures 1-10, childhood): The child seeks to create a world in which to
find a self.

Second Decade (Figures 11-20, the Teens): Struggles with identity and Society.

Third Decade (Figures 21-30, the 20’s): Initiation and search for a Self.

Second Half of Life

Fourth Decade (Figures 31-40, the 30’s): Heroic struggles to found a dwelling,
family and career.

Fifth Decade (Figures 41-50, the 40’s): Emergence into higher levels of culture and
empowerment in society.

Sixth Decade (Figures 51-60, the 50’s): Dealing with power and responsibilities to
the human community.

The Crossings (Figures 61-64): Preparation and birth into the life of the spirit,
passage across the River of Life and Death.

Within each Decade, there are five positions that describe developmental dynamics:
1:2 Position: Axis and Gate to the world of the Four Directions where we emerge from the fertile
chaos into the world of the new stage of life.
3:4 Position: Approach to the Royal Center, an offering, a sacrifice and a gift that allows an
audience, an approach to the experience of royal power and mystery.
5:6 Position: Royal Center and apex, the experience of the numinous power and attraction of the
King and High Culture, the hierarchical and centralizing power of the Decade.
7:8 Position: the Mission or mandate that can lead to a change of state, an ordeal that must be
faced or a challenge you must confront.
9:10 Position: Transition or Liminal Zone, a passage between stages that opens the world of the
ghosts and spirits, a place where identity dissolves and is re-formed.

When the numbers of the Generated Pairs are arranged sequentially, associated with the specific
age of the inquirer and dropped into this system they become what I call the Karmic Nodes.

Karmic Nodes as Tools

The Karmic Nodes can point at knots in the flux of individual experience that contain either
traumas (yin fixations or ‘ghosts’) that are influencing the situation at hand and can be dissolved
or hidden powers (shen or bright spirits) that have been hidden or repressed and can be
reclaimed. The Nodes are a mysterious but, in my experience, very powerful tool for going into
the depths of an individual situation. They are not relevant to all readings and should be used
with real care when you are working with another person.

Reading the Nodes

Here is an example of how the Nodes can amplify and deepen a reading in an individual sense.
We asked a question to Change about how we can best read the answers it gives us.

Question: What would you (Change) like to say to us about reading your answers to our
questions?
The Answer was Hexagram 3 Sprouting as Primary Figure, with a Transforming Line in the first
position, producing the Relating Figure 8 Grouping. The Answer is notated like this:
Answer: 3, 9/1 > 8 Grouping.

I used the Karmic Nodes to explore the deep connections of this Pair (3:4) to myself as the
individual posing the question.

Through the model of the Decades these connections can be seen as a series of Karmic Nodes
that relate the central theme to an individual life. Look at the ages the figures below suggest for
relevant personal experiences and connections to past and future. They point at themes from your
life that may be woven into the situation.

7:8 17:18 23:24 41:42 59:60 63:64

When I mused on the events in my own life associated with these times and ages, I saw a series
of cultural or educational thresholds and betrayals – the failure or corruption of cultural
institutions, the images of the Ancestors, to do what they are supposed to do and the personal
suffering and search for alternative ways of thinking and living this set off. These were my
personal associations to the subject of ‘reading the answers’ from Change.

At 7:8, in the building boom of the 1950’s in the US, the beginning of the ‘Sputnik’ era and the
great fear it engendered, I was enrolled in a new primary school that began a truly disastrous
engagement with what I can only call dis-education and deep confusion. At 17:18 I passed into
an equally disastrous institution of ‘higher’ learning.

At 23:24 I learned what I was being trained for - the war in Vietnam –and left my country as a
criminal and an exile. It was then, too, that I first found the Classic of Change and my true
education, or re-education, began. It was an education that went on to include training and
working as a professional dancer, a PhD in Comparative Literature and Archetypal Psychology
and an introduction to eastern languages and ancient texts.

At 41:42 I became Director of Research at the Eranos Foundation and applied the scholarly tools
I had acquired to a serious study of the texts and history of the Yijing. After the breakup of the
Foundation, I became what we might call a wandering scholar and teacher, taking the Yijing to
many different places and countries. 59:60, the years now coming up, will hopefully see the
publication of my life’s work, the program you are now encountering.

If there is a lesson for me in these experiences it is the deep necessity to find a way to transform
the corruption of learning in which we are trapped. There is also a warning against despair and
an injunction to have faith in the ‘on-going process of the real’ that will always, somehow, come
through when we have the courage to accept our exile as a real message from the spirit and have
the courage to step outside the norms, to encounter these shadows and ‘nurture the new’.

Sources for the Decades

The Decades model the ideal shape of the Symbolic Life. Each tells of a birth, death and re-birth
process that enables us to Accumulate De, the actualizing power that lets an individual connect
his or her own identity to the Ancestral foundation of life. Each recreates the shape and dynamic
of the sacred or ritual cosmos at a different Stage of Life. The movement through a Decade or
sequence of ten hexagrams can be simultaneously imagined as a personal experience; as a
progressive reorganization of the intelligence and the nervous system; as a step in the evolution
of culture; and as an experience of the creatio continua, the continuous creation of life and spirit.

The following sections give you the mythic background to the Decades and material from the
Matrix of Change to begin to study and understand them.

I Landscapes of the Decades

Setting the Stage

The culture that gave rise to the ritual education portrayed in the Decades developed on China’s
great northeastern plain between the sea and the craggy mountain wall bounding the central
plateau, spreading into the beautiful river valleys of the Wei and the Fen and over the passes into
the Yangzi Valley. This is a land of extreme contrasts, a world of wide plains bounded and
divided by mountains, cut by great rivers, with arching skies overhead where the weather comes
sudden and violent. It is torrid in summer and glacial in winter, when the rivers and earth are
frozen solid. The spring thaw is rapid, turning the rivers into torrents full of floating ice. The low
lying areas become marshes during the spring and summer, full of a profusion of plants, nesting
geese and cranes and swarming fish, surrounded by clumps of tall grass and scrub, thickets full
of great wild beasts hunted by setting fire to the brush.

The fertile border areas of the great marshes were developed into mulberry groves and deep
green pastures for horses. The best land was drained and cultivated to produce millet, sorghum
and rice, wheat and hemp, beans and gourds. The fields were cultivated on the well-field model,
eight fields surrounding a central well. Nearby were houses of pounded earth, the hamlets where
the people lived in winter. The twenty-five families of a hamlet made up a group centered on an
Earth Altar with a cult of the Divine Couple, the Protectors. The manors of the nobles,
surrounded by a high pounded-earth wall and ditch, were interspersed among the hamlets. The
farms, fields, village clusters and manors were in turn clustered around the fortified cities, great
palaces and royal tombs. All these areas of culture were surrounded and divided by dense brush,
wild rivers and rugged mountains inhabited by wild animals, nomads, outlaws and barbarians,
tribal groups apart from the civilizing movement of the plains peoples.

The landscape is dotted with sites of close encounter with the spirit world: ancestral temples,
tombs, initiatory towers, grave mounds, earth altars, hidden mountain shrines and River-
Mountain festival sites. We see a great variety of people go about their lives here, peasants,
nomads, merchants, wandering sages, nobles and kings, shamans, officials and magicians,
husbands and wives, slaves and prisoners, children, craftsmen, soldiers and officers, courtesans,
and wide range of spirits and heroes eating and drinking, carrying out a variety of ritual actions
and feasts, loving and hating, working and hoping and scheming, making war and finding peace,
despairing and becoming enlightened, facing death and disaster or sudden joy.

The Center and the Edges

In old Chinese thought, an organized social and geographic unit - a land, region, province or
kingdom – is defined by a Center and the rippling waves of influence and ritual energy radiating
from it. In archaic China this was the King and his Court, the Center of power, high culture and
the magic of writing and high ritual that connected Heaven and Earth, assuring the flow of
blessings into and through the world of the All-under-Heaven.

This Center organized and deployed the territories ‘a thousand li around’ into circles of rich
surplus producing fields ringed by villages, manors and fortified cities. The lands, fields and
local altars they contained were focused on the Royal Altar that provided offerings to Shang Di,
the Supreme Above. The whole ritual landscape was surrounded by high Mountains to the North
and West, rushing Rivers to the South and great marshes draining down to the sea on the West.
These Mountains, Rivers and Marches were the oldest homes of the Hundred Gods (Shen) of the
edges and the archaic cults at holy sites that fed them.

The social center of this power was the She or Earth Altar, an interface of human and natural
interests that served as the community focal point. It ‘doubled’ the old Mountain and River sites
and was in turn re-doubled into the Altar in the Royal Temple. It integrated the cults of local
gods and spirits into the grand cult of the Primary Powers of Earth Mother and Heaven Father as
Ancestral spirits. This unification wove together two cycles of ritual and sacrifice, the River-
Mountain rites and festivals associated with Spring and Autumn, East and West, and the
elaborate cycle of rites for Ancestors associated with North and South, Winter and Summer.
The Royal Center became a great Sacred Mountain. It was flanked by approaches on the East
and West that invited incoming Spirit Guests and opened Gates to the North and South through
which the awesome power of the Royal Ancestors flowed. From this Royal Center the King and
his Diviners looked out to the powers on the far-off edges, prayed to them and saw the omens
coming in from the Four Directions or Hidden Lands, omens that could indicated the shifting
patterns of the Way.

The Shape of the Turtle

The sacred shape of this world was the form of Linggui, the Numinous Turtle that provided one
of its main oracles. The Fu-sang or Sun Tree from which the Ten Suns rise lies to the east; in the
far west the Ruo or Moon Tree on which they set. Each tree has a pool at its base in which the
Mothers bathe the suns and the moons. Beneath the earth are the underground Ghost River and
the Yellow Springs that connect the two trees and make them one, the World Tree or Bushy
Mulberry. Above is Sky, Heaven and the Great Bear or Dipper, the court of Shang Di, the Lord
Above who gives the fates and his court of Royal Ancestors. The flat, square Earth is spread
between the round sky and the underworld waters, extending to the Four Sides or Directions (si
fang), home of mysterious bird-headed wind spirits who are objects of high sacrifice. The Four
Hidden Lands and the square Earth revolve around an axis that connects Heaven, Earth and the
rushing Ghost River beneath. This ceremonial axis is a World Tree or axis mundi, a ‘zone of
absolute reality where there is perfect access to the spirit world.’ It can be established or invoked
at any site where the high ritual or divination is performed, particularly through the use of the
bronze sacrificial vessels or at the monumental Royal Tombs, gates to the Ancestors and the
High Lord. This center of the world is where the dead rest in peace and receive the great
offerings, the place from which their blessings flow.

II Themes of the Decades

Each Stage or Decade in the Symbolic Life that played itself out in this great ritual landscape
seems to have a basic developmental task or theme associated with it.

First Half of Life: The Hero's Journey

The First Decade (1-10, childhood) is an intensely self-contained time when the
child seeks to imagine a world in which to discover an identity.

The Second Decade (11-20, the Teens) presents a series of struggles with group and
individual identity, sexuality and an emerging personal destiny or mission.

The Third Decade (21-30, the 20’s) contains the first great Male and Female
Initiations where our adult Name and identity are roused and fixed. It begins the
search for an image of the deeper Self.

Second Half of Life: Facing the Gods

The Fourth Decade (31-40, the 30’s) consists of the heroic struggles to found a
dwelling, family and career that extend beyond the personal.
 The Fifth Decade (41-50, the 40’s) represents an emergence into higher levels of
culture and empowerment in society, conferring a new ritual status and power on the
now fully individualized being.

The Sixth Decade (51-60, the 50’s) confronts us with the proper exercise of power
and our responsibilities to the human community, releasing and fulfilling the
potential for present good and re-orienting us towards the great passage across the
river of life and death.

The Crossings (61-64) are a coda and a linking of cycles. They represent a birth into
the life of the spirit, the passage across the River of Life and Death and a link to the
new generations to come.

The Pairs in the Decades

Each Decade collects and specifically empowers five Pairs of hexagrams or Figures to create a
ritual narrative or passage. Understanding the mythic Story of a Decade depends on first seeing
the Pair Positions within each Decade not just as static themes or empty places but as symbolic
agents or ‘markers that do work’ that are part of the complex interpretive tradition created by the
overall Matrix of Change. Each is a characteristic resonance, stance and set of interconnections,
like sounding boxes or wind harps, masks or metaphors. As the stuff of change or yi flows
through each of these Pair Positions it is given a characteristic voice.

Further, each Pair occupying one of these Positions generates a set of other Relational Pairs
across its Crossline Matrix that link it to other Pairs and other Decades. Of particular interest
here are the 1:6 Crossline line interchange and the 6:1 Crossline line interchange. They show
which other site a Pair ‘directly exchanges ritual energy with’ (1:6 Crossline exchange) and
which it calls on to provide its ‘inner drive’ (6:1 Crossline exchange).

1:2 Position: The Gates of Change

The Originating 1:2 Position acts as an Axis and a Gate that rotates to open a new
configuration of the world of the Four Directions and change the energy level of the psyche.
It is like a set of doors swinging open and closed through which we emerge from a liminal
zone and are oriented to a new stage of life.
This position inspires and orients. It is monumental, positional and projective, charged with
high, centralizing energy, a place where we stand and look at numinous things revealed by
Hidden Powers. This is where what is Nameless emerges into the world of manifestation. It
is governed by the Protectors, the Divine Couple, and the Archaic Twins Wang Xian and
Wang Heng, powerful shamans and Sons of the Sun and the Moon who mediate the relation
between humans and the spirit.

1:2 The Dragon and the Dark Animal Goddess is the Two-Leafed Gate of Change through which
all things enter the All-under Heaven. It is an Engine and Primal Theme of Change that projects
Zones of Radical Transformation throughout the Matrix, recharging experience with meaning
and energy. It acts as the Gate to the first Decade of life when the child seeks to imagine a world
in which to discover a self. Look at the world of this Pair and you will see the imaginal forms
that can make a living world out of the Primal Chaos.

11:12 The New King and the Old King: High Rituals on the Sacred Mountain is a site of intense
ritual and mediating activity that connects the individual to cultural change. It shows the great
symbols of what is going and coming (wang lai) on the river of time and establishes a fertile
connection between Heaven and Earth. It exchanges ritual energy directly with the Royal Center
at 45:46 the Assembling Resources for the Great Project and Climbing the Sacred Mountain and
calls on the energy of the Royal Center at 25:26 Disentangling from the Ghosts that haunt old
tombs in order to Accumulate a Great new spirit to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Gate to
the Decade when we struggle with the relation between group and individual identity, sexuality
and an emerging personal destiny or mission. Look at the world of this Pair and you will learn to
discriminate between the images of a good culture and the images of an oppressive culture.
21:22 Initiation Sites: Eating Ancient Virtue and Bringing Home the Bride is a site of Male and
Female Initiation that contains a Zone of Radical Transformation where the Bright Omens (30)
that guide people’s lives arise from the Tiger’s Mouth (27) to eliminate the corruption of the
past. It exchanges ritual energy directly with The Royal Center at 35:36 Recognition and the
Difficult Journey and calls on the energy of 51:52 The Rouser and the Sacrificer who begin and
end all cycles to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Gate to the Decade of life when our adult
Name and identity are roused and fixed and we begin the search for an image of the deeper Self.
Look at the world of this Pair and you will see what must be embraced and what must be
discarded in order to become a sexually and culturally responsible adult.

31:32: The Sacred Place and Fixing the Omens of the Spirit is a site of intense shamanic and
ritual activity that contains a Zone of Radical Transformation, a Great Transition (28) when
individual experience can be transmuted into Flying words and symbols (62) that can cross the
boundary of life and death. A conjunction of the Operators, The Rouser and the Sacrificer, and
the Intermediaries, the Lady of Fates and the Joyous Dancer intensifies its power to bring the
hidden to expression to renew personal and cultural life. The Pair exchanges ritual energy
directly with 33:34 Retreat to the Mountain Shrine to activate Archaic energies that lies just
ahead and calls on the energy of 49:50 Revolution and re-casting of the Sacred Vessel to provide
its inner drive. It opens the Second Half of Life and acts as the Gate to the Decade in which we
struggle to found a dwelling, family and career that extend beyond the personal. Look at the
world of this Pair and you will see how to give the gifts of the spirit you are now experiencing an
enduring form in your heart.

41:42 The Offering and the Blessing, the two pillars of the act of sacrifice, is a site of intense
shamanic and ritual activity. It contains a Zone of Radical Transformation where our life is
passed through the two great cleansing sites, the Tiger’s Mouth (27) and the Opened Heart (61).
It exchanges ritual energy directly with 19:20 the Rituals of Mourning that release the spirit of a
deceased parent and calls n the energy of 3:4 Sprouting and Enveloping the new to provide its
inner drive. It acts as the Gate to the Decade when we emerge into higher levels of culture and
empowerment in society, conferring a new ritual status and power on the now fully
individualized being. Look at the world of this Pair and you will see exactly what must be
renounced and offered up and what must be protected to effect the passage to a new ritual status
and power.
51:52 The Rouser and the Sacrificer are powerful Wu or Spirit Workers that represent the gates
between winter and spring, the New King and the Old King, the celebrant and the sacrifice or
victim. They are part of the Sacred Sickness Pathway that connects personal disorders with
cultural change, exchanging ritual energy directly with the Royal Center at 15:16 the Activation
of Liminal Animal Powers that Prepare a Joyous Response to life and drawing on 21:22 Eating
Ancient Virtue and Bringing Home the Bride to provide its inner drive. The Pair acts as the Gate
to the Decade of life when we must deal with the proper exercise of power and our
responsibilities to the human community. Look at the world of this Pair and you will see which
old desires and memories must be sacrificed and which can be roused to a new awakening to
fulfill your cultural potential.

61:62 Centering and Connecting to the Spirits: The Opened Heart and the Flying Birdis a
Primary Site of Radical Transformation, an Engine of Change that connects with Zones of
Radical Transformation throughout the Matrix of Change to recharge experience with meaning
and energy. The Bright Omens and the Ghost Dancer act as Hidden Agents to intensify its inner
power and a conjunction of the Operators, The Rouser and the Sacrificer, and the Intermediaries,
the Lady of Fates and the Joyous Dancer intensifies its ability to bring the hidden to expression
to renew personal and cultural life. It acts as the Gate to the final stage of the symbolic life, birth
into the life of the spirit and the link to the generations to come. Look at the world of this Pair
and you will see what is truly significant in your life and how you might pass it on to a new
generation.

3:4 Position: Rites of Spring

‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’

The Inspiring 3:4 Position is an Approach to the great Centers of spirit and power, a process
through which identity is re-organized and personal energies mobilized. Here the Hidden
Spirit Operators ‘do work’ that will enable you to be charged with a higher level of energy.
The image of this Position is a container and a sharp instrument that penetrates or punctures
it. It is a continual alternation between rousing and limiting, containment and breakthrough,
protection and challenge.
This position is associated with Spring, the East, green, dawn, wind and wood, the time
when the juices rise and life awakes. It is governed by Zhen, the Rouser and Thunder spirit
and Sun, the Lady of Fates, the spirit of Wind and growing Wood who penetrates to the
core, finds the hidden sickness and couples the being with its fate. It evokes the violence
and fertility of Wang Hai, the archaic First Herdsman and War god and the Spring River-
Mountain Festival where souls re-enter the world.

3:4 The World Tree: Sprouting and Enveloping the New portrays the interaction between the
rousing birth of the World We Live In and the growth of a new being within it that is hidden and
nurtured by the ‘covered sky.’ It exchanges ritual energy directly with the Mission of this Decade
7:8 the Armies and the new Group that results and calls on the power of 41:42 the Sacrifice and
the Blessing that results to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Approach to the Centers of power
in the Decade of life when the child seeks to imagine a world in which to discover a self. Let the
process of this Pair contain your immaturity and ignorance and prepare you for your first
encounter with the high powers of the Center.

13:14 Festivals at the Outskirts Altar: The People Gather and the Bright Omen Emerges portrays
the interaction between the great Spring festivals that bring the people together at the Outskirts
Altar to meet the incoming spirits and the individual Greatness that can emerge from it. It
contains a Zone of Radical Transformation where the Inspiring Force of the Dragon (1) offers
Bright Omens (30) that can guide people’s lives, exchanging ritual energy directly with the 33:34
Retreat to the Mountain Shrine to activate Archaic energies and calling on the power of the 49:50
Revolution and the recasting of the Sacred Vessel to provide its inner drive. It acts as the
Approach to Centers of power in the Decade when we struggle with group and individual
identity, sexuality and an emerging personal destiny or mission. Let the inspiring and containing
process of this Pair provide you with a great vision of a future destiny and build the strength and
patience to face the hardships realizing this destiny will involve.

23:24 Stripping the Corpse and the Return of the Spirit portrays the interaction between a
process of stripping away the old and a reversal and renewal of personal experience brought
about by the entrance of a new sense of spirit. It contains a Zone of Radical Transformation
when we pass through the Tiger’s Mouth (27) that eats away the corrupted in order to contact
and manifest the Realizing Power of Earth and the Dark Animal Goddess (2). It exchanges ritual
energy directly with 2 The Dark Animal Goddess and the realizing power of Earth and calls on
the power of 27 the Tiger’s Mouth to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Approach to the
Centers of power in the Decade of when our adult Name and identity are roused and fixed and
the search for an image of the deeper Self begins. Let the inspiring and containing process of this
Pair strip away your old life, ready you for a new influx of energy and give you faith in the
overall processes of life.

33:34 Retreat and Advance: The Mountain Shrine and the Archaic Ancestorsportrays the
interaction between retreat and advance and strategies at the borders. It is the moment when our
inner attention turns from projecting into the future to learning the lessons of the past and
releasing their hidden energies. The Lady of Fates and the Joyous Dancer act as Hidden Agents
to intensify the inner power of this Pair. Part of the Sacred Sickness Pathway that connects
personal disorders with cultural change, it exchanges ritual energy directly with 13:14 The
People Gather and the Bright Omen Emerges and calls on 31:32 the Sacred Place and Fixing the
Omens of the Spirit to provide its inner drive. Let the inspiring and containing process of this
Pair connect you with the deep animal energies you will need to complete this period of trial.

43:44 Announce the Omen: Enter the Lady of Fatesportrays the interaction between the
challenge and courage necessary to announce an oracle at a critical moment and the mysterious
and feminine penetration of our psyche by the fate thus announced. A Nuclear or Core Theme of
Change, it contains a Zone of Radical Transformation, a Great Transition (28) that connects us to
the Inspiring Force of the Dragon (1). It exchanges ritual energy directly with 28 the Great
Transition, the emergence of the true individual, and calls on the power of 1 the Inspiring Force
of the Dragon to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Approach to the Center of power in Decade
where we emerge into higher levels of culture and empowerment in society. Let the inspiring and
containing process of this Pair slowly individualize you and move you toward you position and
power.

53:54 The Great Marriages: Gradual Advance and Radical Change portrays the interaction
between a marriage that proceeds in a recognized manner with one that involves a radical change
of state effected by hidden forces as a reflection of the soul’s journey. It is a Nuclear or Core
Theme of Change and a site of intense mediating and ritual activity that connects the individual
with cultural change, a dialogue between stability and radical change at the highest levels of
power. A conjunction of the Operators, The Rouser and the Sacrificer, and the Intermediaries,
the Lady of Fates and the Joyous Dancer intensifies this Pair’s power to bring the hidden to
expression to renew personal and cultural life. It exchanges ritual energy directly with 37:38 The
Shaman of the Shadows: Managing the Ghosts that Haunt the Dwelling and calls on the power of
39:40 The ‘Goings and Comings’ that Bring Deliverance from the sufferings of the past to
provide its inner drive. It acts as the Approach to Centers of power in the Decade of when we
must deal with the proper exercise of power and our responsibilities to the human community.
Let the inspiring and containing process of this Pair gradually mobilize the deep hidden forces
within you to effect a radical change in your state of being.

63:64 Burning Water and the Final Crossings portrays the paradoxical interaction of the Burning
Water, the transformative substance of the soul. It is Primal Gate of Change and a site of intense
ritual and mediating activity that connects the individual to cultural change presided over by the
Small Fox, a crafty shape-shifting animal at home in the dream-world, It exchanges ritual energy
directly with the 39:40 The ‘Goings and Comings’ that Bring Deliverance from the sufferings of
the past and calls on the power of the 37:38 The Shaman of the Shadows: Managing the Ghosts
that Haunt the Dwelling to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Approach to the invisible Center
of the birth into the life of the spirit and the link to the generations to come. Let the inspiring and
containing process of this Pair dissolve the negative emotions that bind you to any re-enactment
of past pains and sorrows.

5:6 Position: At the Royal Center

The Monumental 5:6 Position represents the Royal Center and apex, the experience of the
numinous attraction and power of the King and High Culture and centralizing power of the
Decade where Hidden Powers reveal numinous things. Here we seek audience, are
recognized and are charged with numinous given a mission or mandate (ming) to fulfil.
This Position suggests high religious ritual, councils of war and judgement, high divination
and the scribes who possess the secrets of writing, blood sacrifice and great alliances. It
reflects the desire to found a noble house and an ancestral cult, to become a great person
with an individual existence. It is associated with Li, Radiance and the Bright Omens,
fulfilment, sunlight and warmth, celebration, success, fulfilment, the South and the
mysteries of spiritual fertility and ripening.

5:6 The Temple and the Council: Waiting for the ‘Spirit Visitors’ and Arguing your Case
portrays our first experience of the two institutional pillars of the ritual and the legal worlds, the
Temple where spirits are called and the Council Chambers where judgment is given. It
exchanges ritual energy directly with the 47:48 the Oppressed Noble who must return to the
Common Source and calls on the energy of 9:10 Encountering the Liminal World: Gathering
your Ghosts and Treading out to Meet the Tiger to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Royal
Center of the first Decade when the child seeks to create a world in which to find a self. Look at
the world of this Pair and you will see and understand the first stirrings of the great change to
come.

15:16 The Grey Rat and the Elephant: Activating Liminal Animal Powers to Prepare the Joyous
Response portrays a young Noble training in the men’s quarters of the Royal Palace of the rising
Zhou dynasty and a young woman being prepared for marriage in the women’s quarters of the
palace of the older and established Shang rulers. Part of the Sacred Sickness Pathways that
connects personal disorders with cultural change, it contains a Zone of Radical Transformation
that works between the two, a Tiger Transformation that eliminates the corruption of the past,
allowing the Realizing Power of the Dream Animals, agents of Dark Animal Goddess (2), to
become Flying Words and symbols (62) that carry across the River of Life and Death. It
exchanges ritual energy directly with the Royal Center and Formal Audience Chambers at 35:36
Recognition and the Difficult Journeyand calls on the energy of 51:52 The Rouser and the
Sacrificer who begin and end all cycles to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Royal Center of
the Decade when we struggle with identity and its relation to society and culture. Look at the
world of this Pair and you will feel the stirrings of the Animal Powers of the deep psyche as they
work to open the mind of the Great Symbols of Change within you.

25:26 Disentangling from the Old Ghosts that Haunt old Tombs and Accumulating the Great
New Spirit portrays the old Royal Tombs and the ghosts and plague demons they contain and a
new field of activity being re-discovered in the oracle books that hold the ‘power and virtue’ of
the ancient sages. Part of the Sacred Sickness Pathway that connects personal disorders with
cultural change, it exchanges ritual energy directly with 11:12 The New King and the Old King:
High Rituals on the Sacred Mountain and calls on the energy of 17:18 Following the Spirit to
Renovate Corruption in the Parental and Ancestral Images to provide its inner drive. It acts as the
Royal Center of the Decade where our adult Name and identity are roused and fixed and the
search for an image of the deeper Self begins. Look at the world of this Pair and you will see
clearly what must eliminated and what must be followed in your search for your deeper Self.

35:36 The Rising and the Setting Sun: Recognition and the Difficult Journey portrays the Formal
Audience Chambers of the King and the wilderness at the borders that surrounds it, a contrast
between being recognized and being outcast. It exchanges ritual energy directly with 21:22 the
Initiation Sites and the Tiger Transformation (27) they contain, through which the Bright Omens
(30) that guide people’s lives arise, and calls on the energy of 15:16 the Activation of Liminal
Animal Powers that Prepare the Joyous Response to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Royal
Center in the Decade when we struggle to found a dwelling, family and career that extend
beyond the personal. Look at the world of this Pair and you will understand the connection
between the Bright Sun of recognition and the Dark Sun, the difficult mission of the outcast.

45:46 Gather the People and Ascend the Sacred Mountain: The Great Assembly and a Critical
Intervention portrays a King or Noble who gathers the people and their resources for a Great
Work and an Intermediary or Spirit Worker who ascends the Sacred Mountain to make a timely
intervention that gives the effort a place among the Ancestral Images. Part of the Sacred Sickness
Pathway that connects personal disorders with cultural change, it exchanges ritual energy
directly with 17:18 Following the Spirit to Renovate Corruption in Parental and Ancestral
Images and calls on the energy of 11:12 The New King and the Old King: High Rituals on the
Sacred Mountain to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Royal Center of the Decade when we
emerge into higher levels of culture and empowerment in society and are given new ritual status
and power as an individualized being. Look at the world of this Pair and you will see the diviners
ceaselessly at work on top of the Sacred Mountain, pulling up the past and linking you to the
great cycles of Change.

55:56 The New King who receives the Mandate and the Wandering Sage who Circulates it
through the Shadow Lands is the Royal Center of the ritual year and the ritual cosmos. It portrays
King Wu’s military capital at Feng at the time he received the Mandate of Heaven and launched
the armies into Shang to ‘renew the time’ and the shadowy Borderlands through which the
Mandate was circulated. It contains a Zone of Radical Transformation when the Bright Omens
(30) that guide people’s lives become Flying words and symbols (62) that carry the message
across the threshold of life and death. It exchanges ritual energy directly with 62 the Flying Bird,
the Engine of Change that carries the spirit of a life fully lived across the River of Life and Death
to a new generation, and calls on the energy of 30 the Bright Omens, the Engine of Change that
reveals the presence of the spirit in all things, to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Royal
Center of the Decade when we must deal with the proper exercise of power and our
responsibilities to the human community. Look at the world of this Pair and you will see the
rippling circles of light and abundant energy that spread from the true Royal Center of the ritual
world.

7:8 Position: Rites of Autumn

Releasing Words of Love and Death
The Realizing 7:8 Position: Mission is a challenge to enact the mandate from the Royal Center. It
is a struggle, an ordeal that must be faced or a challenge that must be confronted. Here the
Hidden Spirit Operators ‘do work’ to release stored energy into action that can effect change in
the world. It suggests armies, generals in the field, invasion of barbarian territory, fighting at the
borders, facing and dealing with angry old ghosts and the corruption of the past.

This Position evokes danger, death, harvest, marriages and the Autumn River-Mountain
Festivals. It is governed by Dui, the Joyous Dancer, Queen Mother of the West, Lady of Beasts
and Queen of the Dead who gives spirit voice in the human community and Gen, the Mountain
spirit and Sacrificer who brings the old cycle to an end and releases its lessons.

7:8 Changing the Face of the World: Launching the Armies and the New Group that emerges
shows thefocused and proper use of force that leads to the emergence of a new group and a new
way of thinking. It suggests the Autumn Harvest Festivals that celebrated both marriages and the
gathering of the armies and contains a Zone of Radical Transformation when the Ghost River
(29) emerges from beneath the Earth Altar (2) to change the face of the world. It exchanges ritual
energy directly with 19:20 Earthing the Ghost, Releasing the Spirit and Watching for the Omens
of the New and calls on the energy of 3:4 the Sprouting and Enveloping of new growth to
provide its inner drive. It acts as the Mission of the Decade when the child seeks to create a
world in which to discover a self. Move with the realizing process of this Pair and you can
profoundly change the way you think and find the people with whom you have spiritual kinship.

17:18 The Fathers and the Mothers: Following the Spirit to Renovate Corruption in Parental and
Ancestral Images shows a natural flow of inspiring new energy that leads you out of existing
structures in order to confront and renovate the corruption that clusters around inner parental and
ancestral images. A site of intense mediating and ritual activity, it is a key part the Sacred
Sickness Pathway that connects individual suffering to cultural change. A conjunction of the
Operators, The Rouser and the Sacrificer, and the Intermediaries, the Lady of Fates and the
Joyous Dancer intensifies this Pair’s power to bring the hidden to expression to renew personal
and cultural life. It exchanges ritual energy directly with the Royal Center at 45:46 The Great
Assembly and a Critical Intervention and calls on the energy 25:26 Disentangling from the
Ghosts that haunt old tombs in order to Accumulate a Great new spirit as its inner drive. It acts as
the Mission of the Decade when we struggle with group and individual identity, sexuality and an
emerging personal destiny or mission. Move with the realizing process of this Pair and you can
free yourself from the intergenerational traumas that haunt you and the world you live in.

27:28 The Tiger’s Mouth and the Great Transition: Emerging as a True Individualshows an
ordeal that corrects the sources of inner nourishment to allow the emergence of a true individual
free of collective pain and collective judgment. It is the home of the Tiger Spirit, a Primary Site
of Radical Transformation, a Nuclear or Core Theme of Change and a key site on the Sacred
Sickness Pathway that connects personal disorders with cultural change. A conjunction of the
Operators, The Rouser and the Sacrificer and the Intermediaries, the Lady of Fates and the
Joyous Dancer intensifies its ability to bring the hidden to expression to renew personal and
cultural life. It acts as the Mission of the Decade when our adult Name and identity are roused
and fixed and the search for an image of the deeper Self begins. Move with the realizing process
of this Pair and you can emerge as a true individual who will, in time, be of real help to others.

37:38 The Shaman of the Shadows: Managing the Ghosts that Haunt the Dwelling shows the
hidden connection between the inside, the safety of the hearth fire and family and the dangers of
the outside, the wilderness and the dangerous ghosts that haunt the dwelling. It evokes the
attempt of a young Zhou nobleman to found a house on the borders of the established world,
surrounded by the ghosts of the past and the excluded. A Nuclear or Core Theme of Change and
part of the Sacred Sickness Pathway that connects personal disorders with cultural change, it
exchanges ritual energy directly with 53:54 The Great Marriages, a dialogue between stability
and radical change through hidden forces at the highest levels of power and calls on the energy
of 63:64 Burning Water and the Final Crossings to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Mission
of the Decade when we struggle to found an individual dwelling, family and career that extend
beyond the personal. Move with the realizing process of this Pair and you will be able to
confront and manage the hidden forces that are threatening everything you most care about.

47:48 The Oppressed Noble returns to the Common Source shows the secret connections that
lead a noble out of the spiritual oppression of a corrupt system through a return to real human
community and a common source of strength or life-water that all can rely on. Part of the Sacred
Sickness Pathway that connects personal disorders with cultural change, it contains a Zone of
Radical Transformation when the Great Individual (28) confronts the Ghost River (29) and the
shades of the past. It exchanges ritual energy directly 57:58 The Lady of Fates and The Joyous
Dancer, the two great Intermediaries who give the spirit a place in the human world and calls on
the power of the Royal Center at 5:6 The Temple and the Council, our first experience of the
dangers of the ritual and the legal worlds, to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Mission of the
Decade when we emerge into higher levels of spirit and empowerment in society. Move with the
realizing process of this Pair and you can reconnect to real human community and the eternal
way of water.

57:58 The Lady of Fates and The Joyous Dancer shows the two great Intermediaries who give
the spirit a place in the human world, laying out the offerings, binding the fates, finding the
hidden sickness and giving the bright spirits a voice in the human community. It exchanges ritual
energy directly with the 9:10 Gathering your Ghosts and Treading out to Meet the Tiger, our first
encounter with the Liminal World, and calls on the energy of 47:48 the Oppressed Noble returns
to the Common Source to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Mission of the Decade when we
must deal with the proper exercise of power and our responsibilities to the human community.
Move with the realizing process of this Pair and you can help to give the spirits a healing voice
in the world around you.

9:10 Position: Childhood’s End

The dissolving 9:10 Position is a Transition or Liminal Zone, a passage between stages that
opens the world of the ghosts and spirits. It is a night-sea or underworld journey through the
death realms that is the shadow or inversion of the Gates of the 1:2 Position. Here the Hidden
Spirit Operators ‘do work’ that dissolves an old identity after it has served its purpose and
releases the spark, the unformed yet numinous potential of the new.

This position is associated with Winter, the North and the Mountain, Qian, the labouring Dragon,
and Kan, the Ghost River and Ghost Dancer. It evokes black waters, midnight, heavy labor and
lonely striving. As a hidden connection between Heaven, Earth and the Underworld Waters, it
also evokes Yu the Great, the shaman and culture founder with a foot in both the world of the
living and the world of the dead.

9:10 Encountering the Liminal World: Gathering your Ghosts and Treading out to Meet the
Tiger portrays a liminal process whereby the ghosts or parts of ourselves that are emerging from
the underworld waters are gathered and nurtured to prepare the moment when we Tread out to
encounter the creative and destructive spirit of the Tiger in order to receive a new destiny. The
beginning of the Sacred Sickness Pathway that connects personal disorders with cultural change,
it contains a Zone of Radical Transformation where the Inspiring Force of the Dragon (1)
emerges into the Opened Heart (61) to eliminate the corruption of the past. It exchanges ritual
energy directly with 57:58 The Lady of Fates and The Joyous Dancer, the two great
Intermediaries who give the spirit a place in the human world and calls on the energy of 5:6 the
Temple and the Council, our first experience of the dangers of the ritual and the legal worlds to
provide its inner drive. It acts the Transition from the Decade when the child seeks to create a
world in which to discover a self to the Decade when we confront the problems of group and
individual identity, sexuality and an emerging personal destiny or mission. Move with the
liminal process of this Pair and you will emerge from childhood into an image of your greater
mission and identity.
19:20 Earthing the Ghost, Releasing the Spirit and Watching for the Omens of the New portrays
a sojourn in the Mourning Hut through which a young person dies and is re-born into a parent’s
status. It shows the ceremonies at the funeral that quiet the ghost or passion-body and release the
spirit into a new Ancestral image and the opening of a ritual space where the omens of the new
spirit’s manifestation in the world can be observed. The Rouser and the Sacrificer act as Hidden
Agents to intensify the inner power of this Pair. It exchanges ritual energy directly with 7:8
Launching the Armies and the New Group that emerges and calls on the energy of 41:42 The
Sacrifice and Blessing to provide its inner drive. It acts as the Transition from the Decade when
we confront the problems of group and individual identity, sexuality and an emerging personal
destiny or mission to the Decade when our adult Name and identity are roused and fixed and we
begin the search for an image of the deeper Self. Move with the liminal process of this Pair and
you will be made ready to step into your adult identity and see its manifestations in the world
around you.

29:30 The Ghost River and the Bright Omens is the Inner Axis of Change, a connection of the
fundamental powers that operates within the Great Individual (28) who has emerged from the
ordeal of the Tiger’s Mouth (27). It is an Engine of Change and a Primary Site of Radical
Transformation, releasing the Bright Omens (30) that guide people’s lives from the underworld
Ghost River (29) or dark river of souls. It acts as the Transition from the Decade when our adult
Name and identity are roused and fixed and we begin the search for an image of the deeper Self
to the Second Half of Life and the Decade where we struggle to found an individual dwelling,
family and career that extend beyond the personal. Move with the liminal process of this Pair and
you can extend your real identity into the world of manifestation.

39:40 The ‘Goings and Comings’ that Bring Deliverance portrays a dialogue (wang lai) across
the River of Life and Death that can deliver us from suffering, an exorcism and an interchange
that releases the energy bound in past fixations. A Nuclear or Core Theme of Change, it
exchanges ritual energy directly with 63:64 the Burning Water and the Final Passages and calls
on the energy of 53:54 The Great Marriages, the dialogue between stability and radical change at
the highest levels of power as its inner drive. It acts as the Transition from the Decade when we
struggle to found an individual dwelling, family and career to the Decade of higher levels of
empowerment in culture that confer a new ritual status on the fully individualized being. Move
with the liminal process of this Pair and you will be released from the compulsive suffering that
is holding you back.

49:50 Revolution and Casting the New Vessel shows a revolution rising from the depths that
melts or skins away the face of the old in order to recast it as a new Sacred Vessel, a paradigm of
collective destiny that re-connects us to the world of the Spirit and the Ancestors. It is a key site
on the Sacred Sickness Pathway that connects personal disorders with cultural change, evoking
the Tiger, the Queen Mother of the West, Lady of the Beasts and Queen of the Dead and Yu the
Great, the Limping God and culture hero. It exchanges ritual energy directly with 31:32 The
Sacred Place and Fixing the Omens of the Spirit and calls on the energy of 13:14 Festivals at the
Outskirts Altar: The People Gather and the Bright Omen Emerges as its inner drive. It acts as the
Transition from the Decade of life when we emerge into a new ritual status and power to the
Decade when we must deal with the proper exercise of power and our responsibilities to the
human community. Move with the liminal process of this Pair and you will be re-connected to
the world of the spirits and the ancestors at the highest levels.

59:60 Dispersing the Old Self and Articulating the New Time portrays the sacrifice and
dissolution of an old identity that reveals the key moments where we can articulate the river of
time into a new life for all, a new ritual year and ritual cosmos. The culmination of the Sacred
Sickness Pathway that connects personal disorders with cultural change, it contains a Zone of
Radical Transformation where the Ghost River (29) flows through the Opened Heart and is
purified (61). It exchanges ritual energy directly with the great Engine of Change 61 The Opened
Heart and calls on the energy of the rushing and dissolving waters of the Ghost River (29) as its
inner drive. It acts as the Transition from the Decade when we must deal with power and our
responsibilities to the human community to the birth into the life of the spirit, the passage across
the River of Life and Death and a link to the generations to come. Move with the liminal process
of this Pair and you will be received into the heart of life and become an inspiration to the
generations to come.

III Decades as Symbols

If we look at the Decades as a Xiang or Symbol they reveal more mysterious dynamic, a
continual making, dissolution and re-making characteristic of a Strange Attractor.
Understanding the dynamics of a Decade as a Symbol or Xiang depends on seeing the Pair
Positions not just as forms or themes but as ‘markers or agents that do work’. They continually
project and re-gather themselves in time and space as dynamic dance between Inspiration, the
power of the Sun and the Dragon whose Inspiring vertical Force loops through boundaries,
projects pathways and activates ancestral energies and Realization, the cycling Moon and the
Dark Animal Goddess or Horse Mother who roams the wide horizontal Field of Earth, carrying
the ‘symbols of the spirit’ to her children to bring them ‘safety and security’. Each step in the
dance is punctuated by a return of and to the dark rushing Ghost River that dissolves old form
and gathers the beings back into the fertile womb of chaos that runs beneath all.
This process is reflected in the old Daoist metaphysical image:
The Way gives birth to the One;
The One gives birth to the Two;
The Two gives birth to the Three;
The Three gives birth to the Ten Thousand Things.

The Way gives birth to the One

The Axis and Gate: 1:2 Position changes the energy level of the psyche and provides key
images of a new configuration of the world of the Four Directions. It is like a set of doors
swinging open and closed through which we emerge from liminality and are oriented to a
new stage of life.

Mythically, this is the Great Mountain at the archaic edge of things. It emerges directly from the
Way as the One Alone that contains both Primal Powers. It stands at the borders of existence,
both inside and outside the world in potential like a set of great monumental doors that open
hidden energy pathways that energize the life to come. In the linear narrative we experience this
position as a sudden opening to a new level of experience where we emerge from liminality and
are oriented to a new stage of life by the images of new possibilities and challenges.

The One gives birth to the Two

The Mountain of the One becomes the Two by mirroring and projecting itself as a River at the
opposite extreme of the Decade. Thus the 1:2 Position enters time as the Beginning by producing
a dark double of itself, a Liminal Transition Zone, and projecting it as the End of each cycle.

The Transition or Liminal Zone 9:10 Position is a passage between stages that opens the
world of the ghosts and spirits. It dissolves an old identity after it has served its purpose and
releases the unformed yet numinous potential of the new.

This 9:10 Position represents an inversion of the energy of the 1:2 Position, a dark mirror that
reverses the polarity of the Gates and draws things down into the chaos that lies beneath and
around the entire process. This is the dark, rushing Ghost River where everything dissolves into
its constituent parts and returns to the chaos from which it emerged. In the linear narrative we
experience this as a night-sea journey where Hidden Spirit Operators ‘do work’ that dissolves an
old identity and releases the spark, the unformed yet numinous potential of the new.

The Two gives birth to the Three

Just as the distant Rivers and Mountains were doubled into the Earth Altar in the Royal Palace,
so the two Positions that form the limits of a Decade unite to project the 5:6 Position as Royal
Center.

The Royal Center 5:6 Position represents the experience of the numinous attraction and
power of the King and High Culture. It is the Decade’s centralizing power, a place where
we seek audience, are recognized and charged with a Mission.

The 5:6 Position is the high centralizing place in each Decade where numinous things are
revealed. It draws, collects, centralizes and intensifies the power of the limits and sets it moving
into the world. In the linear narrative we experience this as a place where we seek audience, are
recognized and charged with a numinous mission or mandate (ming) to fulfil.

The Three gives birth to the Ten Thousand Things

The Royal Center then splits its Inspiring and Realizing components to establish flanking
positions or wings that surround the central position like the mirrored slopes of a mountain.
These are the places where the iterating work, the work of the Three is done, a continual re-
doubling that produces change.

The Approach 3:4 Position is a place where identity is re-organized and personal energies
mobilized, a continual process that alternates between rousing and limiting, containment
and breakthrough, protection and challenge.

The image of the 3:4 Position is a container and a sharp instrument that penetrates or punctures
it. It is a continual alternation between rousing and limiting, containment and breakthrough,
protection and challenge. In the linear narrative we experience this flank as the journey up the
Mountain towards the summit. Here the Hidden Spirit Operators ‘do work’ that will enable us to
be charged with a higher level of energy.

The Mission 7:8 Position represents a mandate from the Center that can lead to a change of
state. It is a struggle, an ordeal that must be faced or a challenge that must be confronted.

The 7:8 Position evokes danger, death, harvest, marriages. It suggests armies, generals in the
field, invasion of barbarian territory, fighting at the borders, facing and dealing with angry old
ghosts and the corruption of the past. In the linear narrative we experience this flank as the
journey down the Mountain carrying the mandate towards enactment. Here the Hidden Spirit
Operators ‘do work’ to release stored energy into action that can effect change in the world.

The Decades as a whole set the stage on which the Rituals of developing an individual identity
and relating it to the Ancestral foundation of life take place. They are a ritual playing field where
beginnings and endings are continually separating and re-converging, the spiralling steps of the
process that Jung called individuation.
Though the linear story line runs through each Decade, its hidden inner process is continually
doubling back on itself to point at a mysterious center ‘whose circumference is nowhere and
whose center is everywhere’. A Decade is, to quote W.B. Yeats again, like ‘a Great Egg that
turns itself inside out without breaking its shell.’

IV Trigrams in the Decades

To explore the Decades and track the imaginal operations they contain we also need a sense of
how the Eight Trigrams, the Bagua or Eight Spirit Helpers act in the Ritual World that the
Decades portray.

The Trigrams of Heaven and Earth are the vertical dimension or Axis of the Ritual World
of Change. They form the Gates through which all things enter the world and the Sacred
Mountain at its center from which all blessings flow. In the system of the Decades they
represent the inner images of Father and Mother and the functions of Intuition and
Sensation.

Qian, Heaven is the Inspiring Force of the Dragon and all that is above, the Father and Intuitive
Power, the Sun and the Great Royal Ancestors, the directed flow of time. It is where the hidden
spirit inspires awe and makes war. As the inner trigram it brings inner perseverance. As the outer
trigram it confers single-mindedness and faith in action through connection with the spirit.

Kun, Earth is the Realizing Energy of the Dark Animal Goddess and all that is below, the
Mother, Sensation, the Moon, the tireless Mare, the field of space extending to the Four Sides,
the Earth that supports and nourishes all and offers symbols and omens that provide safety and
security. It is where the unnamed spirit is offered service at the Earth Altar. As the inner trigram
it gives access to deep inner devotion. As the outer trigram it opens a spreading field of
realization and a deep faith in the overall processes of life.
The trigrams of Fire and Water are the prima materia of the Ritual World of Change, the
Burning Water or ‘soul-stuff’ that forms its Inner Axis. In the system of the Decades they
represent the two poles of individual identity, conscious and unconscious, Self and Ego, and
the organ orbits that work to connect them and release the Name or Mandate that Heaven
gives as we enter this world.

Kan, Rushing Water is the Ghost River, the underworld of the unconscious stream of the past. It
is the grave and the fear of what is in the grave, ghosts, souls, passions and dark fates, and the
courage and labor of the Ego necessary at a critical time, a test or kairos. This is where the
hidden spirit rewards those toiling in the Pit. As the inner trigram it brings you containment of
fear and impulse when facing dissolution, danger and toil. As the outer trigram it gives you the
ability to manage the flow and flux of events.

Li, Fire is Radiance and the heart, congregating warmth and bright spirit, conscious awareness
and the stream of the future, clarity, the gift of language, the revelation of the Self, our Name and
the blessings it brings as a connection between the generations. It is where the hidden spirit
reveals itself in the Bright Omens, the net of words and language. As the inner trigram it offers a
warmth and clarity that provides real inner guidance. As the outer trigram it reveals the Bright
Omens that let you find real directions in life.

The trigrams of Thunder and Mountain are the Gates between all cycles in the Ritual World
of Change. In the system of the Decades they represent the Operators, masculine
individuating powers that challenge and protect, rouse and limit. They embody Animus,
directed Thinking and Feeling that establish, purify and focus the mind. Their joint action is
exemplified in 27 The Tiger’s Mouth and 62 The Flying Bird.

Zhen, Thunder: is the Rouser, Exorcist and Gate of Spring, a fertilizing shock that breaks the
shell, opens the buds, rouses the spirit, eliminates deadwood and drives away ghosts. It is where
the hidden spirit manifests as quake and thunder. It clears the Feeling Function by focusing fear
and anxiety on correcting your stance and your person. As the lower trigram it brings the shock
of inner enlightenment. As the outer trigram it acts as a revitalizing force that spreads through
the world, a liberating awareness of the whole.

Gen, Mountain is the Sacrificer, the Limit that stills, stabilizes and articulates the thinking
function, releasing souls from the past patterns. It marks the end of a cycle, a still point in all
turning, a reflecting on the past that articulates the future. It is where the words of the hidden
spirit bind us to accomplish fate. As the inner trigram it offers self constraint as an effective inner
base. As the outer trigram it reveals the patterns that mark real endings and beginnings.

The trigrams of Wood/Wind and Mists/Lake, Spring and Fall, are the horizontal Axis of the
Ritual World of Change. In the system of the Decades they represent the Intermediaries,
feminine individuating powers that create, deepen and express the inner life. They embody
Anima, psychic awareness, subtle body, the soul connection and the mysteries of love and
death, of Karma and the Collective Unconscious. Their joint action is exemplified in 61 The
Opened Heart and 28 The Great Transition.

Sun, Wind, Wood is the Lady of Fates or Karma, the Intermediary who matches and couples the
beings, finds the hidden sickness and brings each thing to its fate. She is the foundation of the
inner life of the soul, entering, supporting and nourishing it from beneath, supple, flexible and
subtle. This is the place where the hidden spirit works through those who lay out the offerings.
As the inner trigram it develops inner self-cultivation as a dependable base. As the outer trigram,
it is a subtle pervading influence lets you acquire a place where you can influence the world you
live in.

Dui, Mists, Lake is the Joyous Dancer, the Intermediary who contacts the hidden spirits of the
great Collective Unconscious and gives them a voice in the human world. She is the spirit and
expression of the inner life of the soul, the mists that rise from still waters and the stimulating
words that persuade, cheer and urge on. This is the place where the hidden spirit speaks and
spreads joy. As the inner trigram it promotes inner self reflection. As the outer trigram it gives
you the ability to express the hidden spirit in the human community.

Ideal and Shadow

The Ideal Form and the Shadow Site form a pair of figures that let you grasp the ideal potential
of the situation and a necessary transformative potential that is, for the moment, shadowed and
unavailable but will manifest spontaneously if you do not seek it out. This focuses you on the
sort of motivations and activities that the Primary Figure seeks to inspire and those it asks you to
let go of.

The Ideal Form gives you a hexagram that represents the most effective way to think about your
entire situation, the ideal way to visualize it and act on it. It will further the emergence of the
bright spirit and idealizing energies that the situation contains.

This is a quite effective perspective that was developed over the last few years after I came
through contact with the students of an old Chinese master in South Africa. It works by
reflecting the positions of the trigrams of a Figure in the King Wen or Later Heaven Sequence of
Trigrams back into the Fuxi or Early Heaven Sequence. It is a brilliant move that has a solid
foundation in Daoist thinking about the relation of these two primal trigram sequences.

The Shadow Site gives you a hexagram that represents what is, at the moment, counter-indicated
in your situation, covered by a sort of negative screen that can contain often painful memories.
This screen or shadow is blocking transformative energy. If you completely release your
awareness from these configurations by focusing on the Ideal, the necessary energy the Shadow
Site contains will manifest itself spontaneously.

I had been pondering the possible meanings of what I call the Shadow Site, the reflection of a
given hexagram in the Reverse Sequence of the 64 hexagrams, for quite a while. One of its
functions made immediate sense to me when it was paired with the Ideal Form as a sort of
negative mirror. This is the way Change seems to work, tactically pairing opposites with a
situational rather than an abstract moral judgment on their innate qualities. Another realization
came as I was working in depth with the Reverse Sequence in deep divinations as representing a
kind of mystical re-birth, a union that can only be achieved through indirection or not-acting
(wu-wei). From this came the awareness that whatever is shadowed is necessary for the
completion of the transformative possibilities of the moment but cannot be reached through
conscious action. It can and will manifest synchronistically, however, when there is no conscious
effort directed towards it. This sort of indirection frees the quality in question from the linear
flow of time and the karmic chain of cause and effect.

I have tried these out in quite a few divinations and, to my mind, they add a special and quite
effective way to see what we should and should not be doing, practically rather than morally, at a
given moment along with what we might achieve directly and what we can achieve only by
renouncing our desires for it.

Working with the Ideal and Shadow:

Here is a quick example of how the Ideal Form and Shadow Site can help clarify which
conscious attitudes are effective in a reading and which are not, giving an idea of the hidden
potential that can manifest spontaneously if we do not focus on it. I asked a question to Change
about how we can best read the answers it gives us.

Question: ‘What would you (Change) like to say to us about reading your answers to our
questions?’
The Answer was Hexagram 3 Sprouting as Primary Figure with a Transforming Line in the first
position, producing the Relating Figure 8 Grouping. The Answer is notated like this: Answer: 3.1
> 8 Grouping.
This is the basic situation:

3 Sprouting/The World Tree ZHUN: Fu

Begin, establish, found, cause to grow; difficulties at the beginning, birth pains,
arduous, demanding; gather your strength to surmount obstacles; seeking a bride,
massing soldiers, establishing a base; vitality, the inner river of strength, thunder in
the waters, the spark of life; the World Tree, beginning of a new time.
This is an Inspiring Figure, the Approach to Centers of Power in the stage or Decade
of life when the child seeks to create a world in which to discover a self. The old
character shows a deeply rooted sprout that is emerging through the surface of earth,
the image of a child being born.
Core theme: 23 Strip away the past.
We are at the beginning of a process of Inspiration and are enjoined to act in this
manner in order ‘to create a world in which to discover a self’

Initial Nine
A stone pillar. The riders wheel and turn.
Trial: Advantageous for a residence. Harvesting.
Advantageous to install lords as helpers.
Your purpose is moving correctly. Value what is below. The Great acquires support of the
common people. This is the standing stone in front of an ancestral temple, sprouted from the
earth. Stop and establish your foundations. Connect this experience to your own deep roots.
Empower others to help you. You are on the right track. This is not a time to act on impulse.

If we do so Change is capable of regrouping the way we think and completely changing our
sense of spiritual kinship with the world around us:

8 Grouping/Calling the Spirits BI

Mutual support; join together, ally with, align; change the basic way you think and
who you are grouped with; coordinate, approach, accord with what is good; work
together, work towards; finding true spiritual kin and spiritual connection; the new
group of Lords and Protecting Spirits that emerges after a conflict.
This is a Realizing Figure. It contains a Zone of Radical Transformation that acts as
the Mission of the stage or Decade of life when the child seeks to create a world in
which to discover a self. The old character shows two people who look backward in
order to know the future.
Core theme: 23 Strip away the past.

I used the Ideal Form and Shadow Site to see what overall stance we could best take towards the
act of reading and what the hidden potential could be.
Ideal and Shadow: Think of this as a time to hide your light and begin the difficult journey that
leads to deliverance (36). Your message to future generations (62) will then arise of itself.
The Ideal Form in our Reading is 36 Brightness Hiding.

36 Brightness Hiding/Calling Bird MING YI

Hide your light, protect yourself; injury, proscription, oppression by hidden
influences, barbarians and vulgar uncultured people; accept the difficult journey and
the mandate you have been given; an omen bird calling from the darkness; the
setting sun and the west wind that blows from the Realm of the Dead.
This is a Realizing Figure, the experience of the Centers of power in the stage or
Decade of life when we struggle to found an individual dwelling, family and career.
The old characters show the Sun and Moon and an archer with arrows. They suggest
the violent and ambivalent hero Yi the Archer, who shot down the Ten Suns that
threatened to destroy the world by fire.
Core theme: 40 Deliverance from past suffering.

This tells us that it is indeed the right time to accept the difficult task, to step outside the
established rules, to dim the light of our usual awareness, to let ourselves be wounded, to journey
through the demon’s country our way of thought has created for itself, acting from hiding to
brighten what must be brightened and darken what must be darkened. This is what brings
deliverance from the past, inculcating a deep faith in the feminine processes of life. It is directly
connected to our Relating Figure (8) and the ‘new grouping’ of thoughts or categories that can
emerge, the ‘night-sea journey’ that can make it real for us.
The Shadow Site for our reading, what is counter-indicated but can appear spontaneously if we
do not focus on it, is 62 Small Traverses/The Flying Bird.
 62 Small Traverses/The Flying Bird XIAO GUO
A dangerous transition; stay in the process, adapt to each thing, be very careful, very
small; cross the threshold, surmount the difficulties, transgress the norms, go outside
the limits; words and deep feelings that carry the spirit of a life fully lived across the
River of Life and Death to a new generation; the undifferentiated flow of life.
This is a Realizing Figure and Engine of Change, a Gate to the next stage of life, the
birth into the life of the spirit. The old characters show a river between two banks, a
foot, the number three and a crossroads or decisive moment that is seen as a
mountain ridge and a closed mouth.
Core theme: 28 the Great Transition.

This tells us that when we read the answers from Change we are not at the end of something, but
the beginning. We must not proceed through the Small, adapting to what already exists, but
through our sense of a Great new image or purpose. This connects directly to the message of the
Primary Figure, 3 Sprouting. We are not consciously preparing a legacy for future generations
here, but concentrating the work at hand - our own birth into the tradition and the help we might
give to others in the present moment. When I personally looked at the Karmic Nodes attached to
this Figure (9:10, 15:16, 31:32, 41:42, 55:56 and 59:60) I found that each represented a quite
difficult and dangerous situation, emotionally and intellectually, where I was forced to adapt and
be very careful in order to survive and carry something out of the dangerous situation as ‘a Gate
to the birth into the life of the spirit.’

This is what I should NOT remember or use when I encounter an answer from Change. If I free
myself from these memories, not letting them color my sense of the answers it might offer but
rather stay in the difficult journey of the present moment, the hidden language of Change will be
released spontaneously for all to use and I myself might emerge as a ‘Great Individual’ (28) able,
as the Daoists say, to ‘tell for myself whether the water is hot or cold’.

Pairs and Crossline Omens

Each hexagram in Change has a paired figure or double associated with it. These sets of two
interconnected six-line figures or Pairs are the basic units in the Matrix of Change. The Pair
holds the two Primal Powers (yin and yang, Dragon and Dark Animal Goddess) in a single
effective image, an interchange between Inspiration and Realization that provides a unifying
model for your situation as a whole.

A Pair is a subtle interpretive tool. Each locates and describes a deep transformation, a specific
paradigm with its own thematic concerns. The Matrix of interconnected lines generated by a Pair
relates it to other sites in our symbolic life, both past and future. These paradigms and their
interconnections are described in the section called The Pair in the Matrix of Change.

The interaction of the Pairs also establishes basic sites where the omens of Change can be
displayed in their complexity across the spindles of Inspiration and Realization, circulating us
through a series of related images that establish the deep background and prognosis of a
situation. These are the Crossline Omens.

Internal Dynamic and Matrix of the Pair

Each Pair generates a set of other Paired figures across the internal matrix of its lines. These
Pairs of Generated Figures describe the interchange between the interconnected lines and themes
of the two hexagrams that make up the Pair. These interconnections are places where a given
Pair is connected with other Pairs in the Matrix, exchanging energy and information backwards
and forwards in the stream of time. Through the model of the Decades they can point at specific
ages and events in a person’s life that may be relevant to the situation at hand, the Karmic Nodes.

Types of Pairs: Rotational

The 64 gua or six-line diagrams of Change constitute 32 pairs. Of these, 28 pairs or 56 diagrams
are related to each other by a process called inversion or rotation: one figure in a Pair becomes
the other figure when it is inverted or rotated on its central axis. These are called Rotational
Pairs. They reflect the process called hua: gradual, normal change. It is the norm in the matrix
and reflects the regular exchange between the two halves of a theme or story.

Types of Pairs: Symmetrical or Conversional

Another, smaller group of Pairs do not change when rotated or inverted (1:2, 27:28, 29:30, and
61:62). To effectuate the change here, each individual line must be transformed or converted
(bian) into its opposite. These Symmetrical or Conversional Pairs (1:2, 27:28, 29:30, and 61:62)
are the Engines of Change, Primary Sites of Radical Transformation where the stream of time is
disconnected, turned, and re-connected in a different way. They reverse entropy, re-charging a
situation by connecting it to primal sources of energy.

Types of Pairs: Sites of Intense Mediating Activity

There is a further set of four Pairs (11:12, 17:18, 53:54, and 63:64) that change through both
rotation and conversion. I characterize these as Sites of Intense Shamanic and Ritual activity that
mediate between the worlds, connecting the primary powers to personal life.

Irregular Rotational Pairs: Local Zones of Radical Transformation

The final link in the in the dynamic of the Pairs weaves the transformative potential of the
Primary Sites of Transformation or Engines of Change into 12 Irregular Rotational Pairs.

A normal Rotational Pair generates a regular set of other paired Figures across its matrix.
However, there is a notable exception to this rule: sometimes two interconnected lines of a
Rotational Pair change to produce the same hexagram; and when they do the hexagram they
produce is always one of the 8 Symmetrical Figures, the Primary Sites of Radical
Transformation (1:2, 27:28, 29:30, 61:62). This significant irregularity in the normal process of
change (hua) shows a place where radical transformation (bian) is possible because the material
in question is pulled back through two Primary Sites of Radical Transformation. I call these
powerful anomalies Zones of Radical Transformation.

The Crossline Omens

All of these dynamics are directly expressed in the Crossline Omens that are given with each of
the Transforming Lines in this translation. Crossline Omens trace the inner pathways of Change
across the internal Matrix of a Pair. They move from a given Transforming Line through the
lines generated in the Relating Figures associated with the change and connect with the
Crossline. What emerges is a hidden pathway, a profound and precise portrait of change in a
given moment that allows shen, a moment of spirit and enlightenment to emerge.

The Crossline Omens represent a deep and hidden dialogue between the Primal Powers in a very
specific situation. It has been my experience they are extraordinarily effective in activating the
hidden pathways and images through which transformation can be activated. They can truly
contribute to an understanding of the precise ways Change is moving, linking us to the magical
power of the mythological mind.

Using Crossline Omens

Each Pair or set of two interconnected hexagrams in Change generates a set of other paired
figures across its Internal Matrix. These sets of Generated Pairs do many things. They describe
the overall interchange between the themes of the two hexagrams involved; they connect the Pair
in question to other sites in the overall Matrix or Sequence and produce the Karmic Nodes; and,
perhaps most important for those of us who need specific help in negotiating a tricky situation,
they generate the Crossline Omens. While the Transforming Lines of Change show particular
points where it is at work, the Crossline Omens open the hidden pathways through which the
possibilities of transformation can be realized.

How the Crossline Omens are Made

Crossline Omens trace the inner pathways of Change across the Internal Matrix of a Pair. They
begin in a given Transforming Line in one hexagram, move through the lines generated in the
Relating Figures associated with the change as a whole, and emerge in the connected
Transforming Line of the second hexagram.

Each Transforming Line in the texts we present is made up of a translated text and a commentary
that offers direct divinatory advice. Beneath it is the Crossline Omen. It begins with a description
of the Line Position, the place or voice from which Change is ‘speaking’ or ‘calling’ and a
Decimal Notation of the Omen then offers images from the lines in the Generated Pairs that
describe the hidden pathway between the interconnected Transforming Lines. (The phrase Go
back and accept the challenge is a reminder that a particular Crossline reads backwards in the
King Wen Sequence). The final phrases of the Crossline Omen relate you to one of the Four
Gates of Change (1, 2, 63, and 64 - through successive nuclear hexagrams) and, when relevant,
include a description of the hidden zone of transformation that is exerting an influence on the
process.

What the Crosslines Do

A Crossline Omen represents a dialogue between the Primal Powers, the Dragon and the Dark
Animal Goddess (hexagrams 1 and 2), in a very specific situation. It offers a profound and
precise portrait of change in a given moment, a little epiphany of spirit and enlightenment that
emerges from the interconnection of the opposites. The Transforming Lines and the Crossline
Omens in Change seem to exist in a sort of compensatory or complementary relationship related
to the old myth of the King and his Dark Brother or Sage, or the Sun Tree and the Moon Tree
with the flow of the underworld Ghost River connecting them. The Transforming Line shows the
overt situation while the Crossline Omen shows a hidden pathway or dark teaching (nei yeh) that
compensates, modulates or reinforces the overt situation, opening the hidden transformative
potential and offering suggestions about how to realize it. In practice, I have found these deep
pathways can truly contribute to an understanding of the precise ways Change is moving, linking
us to the magical transformative power of the mythological mind. They are where we encounter
the real transformative power of the oracle, what I call the Voices of Change.

Using the Crosslines

I tend to use the Crossline Omens as Voices at the culmination of a Reading, setting up a context
of intellectual and feeling associations first by circulating through all the positions of the
Reading Matrix. The only way I can really illustrate this (rather than analyzing it) is to take you
through an example of building the contexts, asking you to enter the spirit of the reading so you
might experience what the Voice of the Crossline can do when it is dropped into the web of
connections. Here is the example. We asked a question to Change about how we can best read
the answers it gives us.

Question: What would you (Change) like to say to us about reading your answers to our
questions?

The Answer: Hexagram 3 Sprouting as the Primary Figure, with a Transforming Line in the first
position, producing the Relating Figure 8 Grouping. The answer is notated like this 3, 9/1 > 8
Grouping.

As we worked through the Reading, we built up a rich context for the Crossline. We learned
through the Relating Figure that we are related to the overall situation of ‘Reading an Answer’
through a radical change in the way we group our thoughts and the people with whom we feel
spiritual kinship (8). As Winter, this means finding the seed of the new by grinding away old
forms of thought, which was reinforced by Grouping’s Core Theme (23), the need to ‘strip the
corpse’ of an old identity and its old ways of thought. We had a clue to how we can enter the
extended realm of the reading in the Trigrams: inner devotion to this process can give us the
ability to manage the flow and flux of life, the endless images and ideas life is constantly
generating. We must not impose an a priori idea or plan on this flux, but empower the images
and ideas that arise to help connect us to the great change of awareness.

The Pair told us that we are in an Inspiring phase when we encounter the images of Change,
seeking inspiring inner images, and that we are also in early childhood here, seeking a way to
find an identity within its great world. We must establish the deep foundations of Change within,
enveloping and nurturing the ‘birth of the new,’ for there is great hidden potency here, a
possibility to ‘renew the time.’ The disordering of our previous ways of thinking would be a
conspicuous sign that the process is really beginning.

The primary Figure (3) talked about the difficulties, the confusion and the profusion we face
when we first encounter the richness of the images of the Change. This encounter can sprout a
new world of meaning, an approach to real centers of power. It can inspire us, rousing new
growth. We might see ourselves as seeking a bride, a ‘sprout,’ a new imaginative or anima
possibility, massing our strength to find it and looking for clear signs to differentiate and relate
the various kinds of imagery. The push behind this search is a release from whatever in the past
holds our creative energy in check.

The Response gave us our first reading strategies: Do not impose ideas, accept the myriad
intuitions. Follow the yielding path and empower helpers – the related figures of the Matrix that
can open the various perspectives. We must gather this energy to surmount the obstacles to
understanding, to break through the conceptual crust, the hard pounded earth of old ideas and
monotonous, deadening language. This is an exciting time, full of possibilities, the opening of a
new world of insight and imagination that can reveal the sacred cosmos.

The Shaman Speaks said there is a rousing force at work deep in the River of Ghosts now that
will reward us for our hermeneutic labor if we accept the shock of its enlightening force. The old
world is dissolving all around us as we encounter the images of the Change, while a fertile new
cycle sprouts within to open in our imagination. If we want to realize this we must give each
kind of image its place in the new world that is emerging.

The Core Theme of the Primary Figure (23) is the same as the Relating Figure, reinforcing its
meanings. So we must focus on the necessity to strip away all our cognitive pre-conceptions, our
need to assimilate the images of Change to moral patterns or philosophical ideas. We must ‘give
freely to what is below’, activating the hidden force of the complexes, to use psychological
terms, letting the bright light of our ego-certainties flow back into the fertile darkness. This
connects us to one of the Hidden Winds that flow through Change, here the Earth, the Goddesses
(2) and their great power of realizing things, making the symbols real in our lives and
imagination.

The Inner Operator (24) spoke a great return in the inner world that re-establishes our relation to
something that as been lost or repressed in the development of our identity and our culture. We
should see whatever emerges as we strip away our cognitive patterns, all the little intuitions and
insights carried by the psycho-active images, as truly significant and nurture them carefully. Bar
the passages, it says. Leave the complicated and return to the simple. As our inner inspiration,
this can bring a great faith in the realm of the feminine and the overall processes of life. It will let
us respond fully, joyously and spontaneously when the real meaning emerges rather than
engaging in more logic-chopping and premature analysis.

The Outer Operator (44) told us about the connection between the inner images and the events of
a reading, a connection the old diviners called xiang or ‘matching.’ Here the ‘matching’ will
come through ‘strange encounters,’ synchronicities that occur as the new feminine power works
its way into our relation with outer events (44) from below. Things will ‘grip’ us with a power
outside of logic. Then, in the words of Dazhuan, ‘spontaneously the Way will arise.’

The Ideal Form (36) told us this is the time to accept the difficult journey and spread the mandate
(Ming) to the ‘hidden lands,’ the shadowy parts of the soul. This can change the way we perceive
ourselves and our world and let us be of real help to others. It is what brings deliverance from the
past, inculcating a deep faith in the feminine processes of life. The Shadow Site (62) said we
must not proceed through being very Small, adapting to what already exists, but through a Great
new image or purpose. We are not preparing a legacy for future generations here, but
concentrating the work at hand - our own birth into the tradition and the help we might give to
others in the present moment.

The Time Cycle showed the Hidden Wind of 2 Field and the feminine power of Earth acting
through the Core Theme of 23 Stripping. It enters the cycle at the Fall position, described by 20
Viewing and the Ancestor’s Eyes. This is the place where we ‘harvest the crop and gather the
insights.’ This Figure is about divination and the effect of a new ancestor spirit that is released
from the world of death and mourning. So we begin our reading of the answers from Change
here, in the Tower where initiation begins, looking out at the world to see the effects of this
spirit, of the cleansing of our ancestral or parental images. We watch the hidden signs from a
distance and think of the common good. We begin to set up teachings for all and ascend to a
higher level of awareness.

The energy and insights gathered here are then pushed on into Winter, represented by the
Relating Figure 8 in our basic reading, a new grouping of thoughts. Here the personal grinding
occurs, stripping away the chaff to find the seeds of new growth. It is where the new world
represented by the symbols of Change and their way of connecting to ancestral energies truly
grips us. We are challenged to find a new base of mutual support and spiritual kinship, to
become part of the new group of lords and helping spirits that emerges.

The Hidden Wind then pushes us on into Spring and our Primary Figure 3, the Sprouting of a
new world that springs up through our experience of the giving the symbols a place in our heart-
mind. As we establish the new world, confront the difficulties, seek the bride and watch the
World Tree emerge, a new kind of significance dawns that can give us the ability to use the clear
signs that relate the groups of kindred spirits and kindred meanings to deliver us from the
suffering of the past.

As Summer ripens the fruits of our reading process, we experience the Blessing that comes from
the sacrifice of our intellectual presuppositions (42) and can extend them to others. This is a
fertile and expansive time, a time of creative transformation in which we can help the energies of
Change extend themselves. We acquire a place where we can influence the world we live in,
where we visualize improvement, shift our position and give the omens an enduring form. I
would ask you to hold all this in mind, envision your self as one who is first entering the great
mysteries of ‘reading Change,’ and feel how the Crossline resonates. This Voice speaks to the
very Beginnings of the profound change that a reading can work in our awareness and give us
directions on how to root or sprout it in our heart ands in our world.

Initial Nine
A stone pillar.
The riders wheel and turn.
Trial: Advantageous for a residence. Harvesting.
Advantageous to install lords as helpers.
 Your purpose is moving correctly. Value what is below. The Great
acquires support of the common people. . This is the standing stone
in front of an ancestral temple, sprouted from the earth. Stop and
establish your foundations. Connect this experience to your own deep
roots. Connect with and empower others to help you. You are on the
right track. This is not a time to act on impulse.

Inspiration Beginning (3.1 [8.1 : 7.6] 4.6): You have is a connection to the spirit that will carry
you through, filling the vessels to overflowing. You receive a mandate to lay out a new city and
receive the dwellers. Go back and accept the challenge. Do not act like an outlaw, violent and
impulsive, for you would be smiting the very envelopment that will bring things to maturity.
Find supportive friends. Be open and provide what is needed. You are being influenced by a
transformation at the inner centers of life, when the Ghost River (29) emerges from Earth (2) to
change the face of the world.

If we have done our work well in the overall Reading, this Voice will act like a stone thrown into
a still pool, the pool of meanings our reading has created, and its effects will ripple out into our
awareness in an ever-increasing circle. This spreading circle of awareness is what we can take
away with us. It then becomes our job to give it an enduring form, so that it can influence our life
and the lives of those around us.

The Voices of the Lines

Multiple Transforming Lines
One of the most common problems encountered by users of Yijing is the problem of conflicting
line readings and the confusion they produce. Any hexagram contains a variety of conflicting
omens attached to its lines, but what can we do when these radically conflicting omens are given
as the response to our specific question?

One source of this confusion lies in the ideas we have inherited about the nature of the different
line positions. It has its root in a Han Dynasty Confucian re-interpretation of the structure of a
hexagram based in ‘correctness,’ ‘correspondence’ and yin-yang line analysis that effectively
silenced the many voices and interconnections of old tradition’s ‘calling’ lines (yaoci).

A first step in re-claiming these old voices is to look deeper into the ‘meaning’ of the line
positions themselves, how they create meaning. Rather than seeing them from the perspective of
a homogenizing moral philosophy, we might see each line position as a characteristic resonance
and stance, like sounding boxes or wind harps or metaphors. As the stuff of change or yi flows
through each of these ‘six empty places’ it is given a characteristic voice. The important thing to
realize here is that even though a hexagram may describe or embody a particular ‘field of
image,’ these images do not speak with a single voice or have a single meaning any more than
we do. Here is a description of these voices based on the dynamics of interconnecting Pairs.

Line 1
The Voice of Beginnings, the first entrance of things into the psyche or the first stirrings of a
process of manifestation. Things here are barely conscious, the dim stirrings of a return of the
spirit (24) or the entrance of a new fate (44). This is a receiving position. It receives energy and
information from another Pair or from a Crossover within the Pair it is a part of. It is in dialogue
with Line 6, a dialogue of beginnings and endings.

Line 2
The Voice of the Inner World Center, describing how things register, affect and motivate the
center of our inner life and awareness, the heart mind. It speaks of inner meaning and focus, the
possibilities of effective inner organization (7) and achieving a harmony with others on the basis
of shared inner values (13). It is in dialogue with Line 5 about the possibilities of connecting our
inner and outer lives.

Line 3
The Voice of what is Approaching the Threshold, the crossover between the inner or
foundation trigram (zhen) and the outer or ‘distress’ trigram (hui). It explores the motivation
behind our need to express things, questions of inner balance (15) and real paths and steps (10).
It is in dialogue with Line 4 as the entrance to an initiation site or liminal zone connected with
the animal powers, particularly the Tiger (27), the Grey Rat (15) and the Elephant (16).

Line 4
The Voice of what is Arriving, After the Crossing of the Threshold. It speaks of how the
future might be prepared (16) by accumulating ‘small things’ and gathering the ghosts that can
lead to what is greater (9). The traditional place of the Minister, it is in dialogue with Line 3 as
the exit from an initiation site or liminal zone.

Line 5
The Voce of the Outer World Center, our relation to structures of power and influence, the
traditional line of the King. It speaks of the ‘new grouping of spirits and lords’ (8) that can reveal
the Great Being or Great Idea (14). It is in a dialogue with Line 2 about the possibilities of
connecting our inner and outer lives.

Line 6
The Voice of the Culmination of the process, the traditional line of the Sage. It tends to offer
wisdom or warning, emphasizing a decisive breakthrough and parting with the past (43) and the
need to strip away the outmoded (23). It is a projecting position, sending information and energy
to another Pair or powering the Crossover within the Pair it is a part of. It is in dialogue with
Line 1, a dialogue of beginnings and endings.

These Line positions are only one part of a complex interpretive method that includes Crossline
Omens and the place of a Pair in the overall Matrix, but a feeling for the different voices can help
make sense of an otherwise very confusing reading and point at deeper things.

Here is a radical example. When asking about a major professional change, a risky move at a
crisis point in her life that involved a change of status, income, ambitions and goals, an inquirer
received the Answer 24, 9/1, 6/6 > 23.
On the surface the two omens, the first line and the sixth line, are diametrically opposed to each
other. The first is one of the great images of a Return of and to the spirit:

Initial Nine: Zone of Radical Transformation

Not distancing the Return.
No harm or cause for sorrow.
The Way to the Source is open.
This means adjusting the total personality. You have been keeping at
a distance, probably because of pain or isolation. Now is the time to
let it go. Return to the Way. The spirit is emerging. Do not just think
about, do something. The Way is fundamentally open.

The second is one of the great images of total disaster, the return of a fatal delusion:

Six Above: Zone of Radical Transformation

Delusion Returning. Losing the Way.
There will be calamities and blunders.
If you try to move the legions, it will end in Great destruction.
Trap! The Way closes for the city and its leader.
This will end in ten years of uncontrolled chastisement.
Trap! The way of the leader is reversed. You are returning to an old
delusion, blinded by self-deception and infatuation. If you go on in
this way, your hard won growth will be destroyed. It will take at least
ten years to deal with the repercussions of this catastrophe. The Way
 is closing. Think about where this desire comes from. Whatever you
do, do not act it out.

If these omens are read through the single voice of moral prediction they can only be seen as a
complete and quite frightening deadlock or dilemma that can paralyse the inquirer, a catastrophic
fault. However, if they are read as ‘a dialogue of beginnings and ends’ at the very limits of
personal awareness we can hear them differently. The two contradictory omens become a
dialogue between a Voice of the Beginnings that affirms the enterprise as a ‘Return to the Way
that should not be kept at a distance’ that will eliminate the ‘cause for sorrow’ and a far-seeing
Sage Voice describing a fatal delusion that must be stripped away in order that the Return might
succeed.

Further information from the Matrix would then show us that this dialogue is a Zone of Radical
Transformation where the inquirer must ‘pass through the Tiger’s Mouth (27) to connect with the
realizing power of Earth (1) and the Dark Animal Goddess.’ The Tiger’s Mouth (27), the great
initiation site where the corruption of the past is eaten away, also appears as the Inner Operator
in the reading, with the Great Transition (28) when one emerges as a true individual as the Outer
Operator, the possibility to be realized. This brings the Relating Figure 23 Stripping the Corpse
into stark relief. It points at the absolute necessity to strip away the compulsive delusions of
control and power the Sage Voice is speaking in the top line.

This way of reading focused the inquirer on her own inner corruption, her hidden collusion with
the very organization she was seeking to escape. It involved her in an exploration of a series of
traumatic experiences indicated by the Karmic Nodes, insisting that she focus on this inner work
rather than imposing a premature ‘direction’ on things (23), a direction that could only lead to
disaster. By truly listening to these voices of Change and doing considerable inner work to ‘fix’
the challenging omen they offered she was led to a happier and more fulfilling life rather than
exchanging one prison for another.

The Voices of the Lines II

When we work with Change, the Transforming (bian) or Calling (yao) Lines often form the
central and most active part of our reading. Each hexagram has specific word-omens ‘attached’
to each of its Lines that ‘call out’ to us when empowered by the consultation process. These Line
readings locate precise points where ‘change’ is at work, transforming a situation. One of the
most common problems encountered by users of Yijing is the problem of conflicting line
readings and the confusion they produce. By its nature, any hexagram will contain a variety of
different word-omens attached to its lines, but what can we do when radically conflicting omens
are given as the response to a specific question?

One major source of this confusion lies in the ideas we have inherited about the nature or
meaning of the different Line Positions, coupled with a moralistic description of the yin and yang
energy that occupies them. It has its root in a Han Dynasty Confucian re-interpretation of the
structure of a hexagram based on ‘correctness,’ ‘correspondence’ and a moralistic yin-yang line
analysis that effectively silenced the many voices and interconnections of the earlier tradition
(yaoci). To my mind this is a kind of curse, perhaps the greatest obstacle we encounter in an
attempt to understand the workings of Change.

A first step in re-claiming these old voices is to look deeper into how the Line Positions
themselves create meaning, how they ‘charge’ an omen. Rather than seeing them from the
perspective of a homogenizing moral philosophy, we might see each Line Position as a
characteristic resonance, stance and set of interconnections, like sounding boxes or wind harps,
masks or metaphors. As the stuff of change or yi flows through each of these ‘six empty places’
it is given a characteristic voice. The important thing to realize here is that even though a
hexagram may describe or embody a particular ‘image field’ they do not speak with a single
voice or have a single meaning any more than we do.

The Line Positions are part of a complex mythic interpretive practice created by the overall
Matrix of Change that includes Crossline Omens and the projective nature of the Primary Pairs
or Engines of Change (1:2, 27:28, 29:30, and 61:62). The Matrix seems to provide each Line
Position with a Generating Source in the Primal Pair 1:2 Dragon and Dark Animal Goddess, a
Projected Field of activity in one of the other Primary Pairs and a Zone of Radical
Transformation where the Drive of the Position acts on a Screen Memory of painful past
experiences that color our awareness (gui, ghosts) to release awareness or bright spirit (shen).

Here is a description of these Line Positions and their Voices based on the complex interactions
of the Matrix. If we look at the mythic images the Matrix provides we can develop a feeling for
the different Voices can help make sense of an otherwise very confusing reading and connect
with the deep Dynamic of Change as it operates in the particular position to transform our soul or
imagination.

Line 1
Line Position 1 is the Voice of Beginnings. It speaks of the first entrance of energy into the
psyche and the first stirrings of a process of manifestation. This is a receiving position that takes
in energy and information from other Pairs. It is linked with Line Position 6 Culmination in a
dialogue of beginnings and endings that fully manifests as the Pair 27:28 Tiger’s Mouth and the
Great Transition, the process through which we emerge as a true individual.

Line 1 Dynamic: The source of creative energy is dormant now, immersed in the primal waters,
while the forms of manifestation take shape. You are challenged to go back and eliminate
emotional corruption, for the returning spirit is working through a screen of painful memories of
past encounters charged with sexual energy and need for recognition, carefully preparing the
emergence of the new. Make the sacrifice and have no fear for the Way to the Source is open.

Generating Source
1.1 2.1
Treading frost culminates in
Immersed Dragon, do not use!
hardening ice.
Projected Field
28.1 Inversion 27.1
 Tiger’s Mouth. Abandoned by the
Great Traverses. Offer the sacrifice Numinous Turtle, you say: ‘View our
using a mat of white mao-grass. Jaws hanging down.’ Trap! Way
closes.
Memory Screen/Drive
44.1 (Inversion) 24.1(Inversion)
Zones of Radical Transformation
Coupling. Lady of Fates.
Attach it to the bronze spindles. Have
a direction to go. Not distancing the Return. No harm
See the Trap: entangled pig balking or cause for sorrow.
at the sacrifice. The Way to the Source is open.
A connection to the spirits will carry
you through.

Line 2
Line Position 2 is the Voice of the Inner World Center. It speaks of how things affect and
motivate the center of inner life and awareness. This is an empowering position linked with Line
Position 5 Outer World Center in a dialogue about the relation of our private and public life that
fully manifests as the Pair 29:30 the Ghost River and the Bright Omens that form the Inner Axis
of Change.

Line 2 Dynamic: Creative energy is appearing in the inner center now. The field of realization is
straight, square and great. You are challenged to go back and work with the Ghost River of the
past to release the Radiance of the Source. You have a mandate. The energy is centered and
correct. Work through the screen of painful memories of your past failures to live up to the
images of your Ancestors and the ideals they represent. Let the distress you feel return you to
the Way. There is no need to repeat past mistakes.

Generating Source
1.2
See the Dragon in the fields!
See the Great People. Harvest.
Projected Field
30.2 Inversion
Yellow Radiance. The Bright Omen. Ghost River. Pit with sheer sides.
Way to the Source is open.
Memory Screen/Drive
13.2
Zones of Radical Transformation
2.2
Straight, Four Sides, Great.
Ancestor’s Eyes.
No need to repeat or rehearse.
Nothing not advantageous.
29.2
Seek and acquire through the Small.
7.2
 Located in center of Legions. Way is
Harmonizing People in the Ancestral open.
Hall. Distress. The King bestows a mandate three
times.

Line 3
Line Position 3 is the Voice of what is Approaching the Threshold. It speaks of the motivation
behind your need to express yourself and take action, the crossover between the inner foundation
(zhen) we have established and the outer distress (hui) we must face. This is a dangerous liminal
position linked with Line Position 4 Arrival as an initiation site, a process that fully manifests as
the Pair 61:62 The Opened Heart and the Flying Bird that connects our inner and outer lives and
passes what we have learned to a new generation.

Line 3 Dynamic: You face adversity day and night, striving for mastery, while a containing
beauty secretly surrounds you. You are challenged to work through a screen of painful memories
of your failures to live up to the demands society has placed upon you and your own need for
power you can never really achieve. If you can let go of your misplaced ambitions and toil on
humbly you will bring everything you desire to completion.

Generating Source
1.3 (inversion) 2.3
Jade talisman held in mouth.
Noble One completes day, using
Containing beauty that empowers.
Force, Force.
If you follow the King’s service, the
At night alarms and adversity,
time of no accomplishment comes to
hungry souls and angry ghosts.
end.
Projected Field
61.3 62.3
Opened Heart. Connecting to Center.
Small Traverses. Flying Bird.
‘We have taken the enemy.’
You can not Exceed defending
Sometimes we drum, sometimes we
yourself against this.
stop.
If you carry on, you may be killed.
Sometimes we weep, sometimes we
Trap! Way closing.
sing.
Memory Screen/Drive
10.3 (Inversion 15.3
Zones of Radical Transformation
Someone squints and can see. Grey Rat working. The Realizing
Someone limps and can Tread. Person, toiling, toiling through
Someone Treads on Tiger's tail. It Humbling,
mauls them, brings what he desires to completion.
like a Soldier acting as Great Leader. Way opens.
Line 4
Line Position 4 is the Voice of what is Arriving, After the Crossing of the Threshold. The
traditional line of the Minister, it speaks of how the future can be prepared. This is a dangerous
liminal position linked with Line Position 3 Approaching the Threshold as an initiation site, a
process that fully manifests as the Pair 61:62 The Opened Heart and the Flying Bird that
connects our inner and outer lives and passes what we have learned to a new generation.

Line 4 Dynamic: The unnamed creative spirit is playing in the primal abyss while everything in
the outer world is held in the fertile chaos of infinite possibilities. Let go of what you usually
depend on and meet the new spirit. You are challenged to work through a screen of memories of
discord, fear and bad blood between friends, families, clans and compatriots to call in all the
projected parts of your soul. Have no doubts. This will open the mind of the great symbols and
gather what belongs together like a hair clasp gathers the hair.

Generating Source
1.4 (inversion) 2.4
‘Someone’ is playing in Primal Bundled in the bag. Without fault,
Abyss. without praise.
Projected Field
61.4 62.4
Opened Heart. Connecting to Center. Small Traverses. Flying Bird.
‘Changes are coming’: the Moon is You do not pass by, you meet it.
Almost Full. Let the adversity that is going be a
The horse's yoke-mate disappears. necessary warning.
This is not a mistake. Do not use it in a long-term Trial.
Memory Screen/Drive
9.4 (Inversion) 16.4
Zones of Radical Transformation
Gathering the Ghosts. Procession to Hesitating Elephant. Do not doubt!
the altar. This source Provides For Great
A connection to the spirits will carry acquisitions.
you through. You join friends together like a string
Bad blood leaves and apprehension of cowries, as a hair clasp gathers the
departs. hair.

Line 5
Line 5 is the Voice of the Outer World Center. The traditional line of the King, it speaks of
your relation to structures of power and influence. This is an empowering position linked with
Line Position 2 Inner World Center in a dialogue about the relation of your private and public
life that fully manifests as the Pair 29:30 the Ghost River and the Bright Omens that form the
Inner Axis of Change.
Line 5 Dynamic: Creative energy appears in the Heavens above while hidden process at the
center of things open the Way to the Source. You are challenged to go back and work with the
Ghost River of the past to release the Bright Omens it contains. Let your tears flow freely. Work
through the screen of painful memories of all the times you sought to overpower others with the
magnificence of your ideas and purposes. If you let go of your compulsive need to be the leader
of the group, your true virtue will shine and attract those who belong with you. The Earth Spirit
is already appeased.

Generating Source
1.5 (inversion)
Flying Dragon in the Heavens. See
the Great People! Harvest.
Projected Field
30.5 Inversion
Radiance. The Bright Omen.
Tears flowing like rivers, lamenting
like mourners at a funeral. The Way
opens.
Memory Screen/Drive
14.5
Zones of Radical Transformation
Great Being. Great Possessions.
You have a connection to the spirits
that carries through to others.
An awesome presence! Mingle and
you will impress them. Way is open.
2.5
Yellow lower garments. The Way to
the Source is open.
29.5
The Pit is not full.
The Earth Spirit is already appeased.
8.5
Illustrious Grouping!
The King uses beaters on three sides
of the hunt.
He lets the game go that runs before
him,
The capitol's people are not
frightened away.

Line 6
Line 6 is the Voice of the Culminations. The traditional line of the Sage, it offers both
accumulated wisdom and warning. This is a projecting position that sends energy and
information to other Pairs. It is linked with Line Position 1 Beginnings in a dialogue of
beginnings and endings that fully manifests in the Pair 27:28 Tiger’s Mouth and the Great
Transition, the process through which we emerge as a true individual.

Line 6 Dynamic: Creative energy is returning to the yin. Do not seek dominance. The Dragons
are mating in the wilderness outside of your awareness and their blood flows down like the rains
to fertilize your heart-mind. You are challenged to work through a screen of memories of the
times when you failed to openly stand by what you knew was right. If you give way and return
with the retreating energy you will be nourished at the source. If you step out into the dangerous
waters rising all around you, you will be swept away. There is a ripe fruit not eaten that you must
carry away. Take the chance. Do not just change your face.
 Generating Source
1.6 2.6
Dragons grapple in countryside.
Overbearing Dragon, heading into
Blood flows down, indigo and
the gully.
yellow.
Projected Field
28.6 Inversion 27.6
Tiger’s Mouth. Nourished at the
Great Traverses. If you exceed source.
stepping in to the water now, You face Adversity, the hungry souls
you will be submerged to the top of and angry ghosts.
your head. The Way opens. Step into the Great
Stream.
Memory Screen/Drive
43.6 23.6
Zones of Radical Transformation
Stripping the Corpse. ‘A ripe fruit
Deciding and Parting. Not
not eaten.’
announcing the omen.
The Realizing Person acquires a cart.
Completing this closes the Way.
Small People Strip their faces.

Reading Between the Lines

Here is a radical example. When asking about a major professional change, a risky move at a
crisis point in her life that involved a change of status, income, ambitions and goals, an Inquirer
received the Answer 24.1.6 > 23.

On the surface the two omens, the First Line and the Sixth Line, are diametrically opposed to
each other. The first is one of the great images of a Return of and to the spirit:

Initial Nine: Zone of Radical Transformation

Not distancing the Return.
No harm or cause for sorrow.
The Way to the Source is open.
This means adjusting the total personality. You have been keeping at
a distance, probably because of pain or isolation. Now is the time to
let it go. Return to the Way. The spirit is emerging. Do not just think
about, do something. The Way is fundamentally open.

The second is one of the great images of total disaster, the return of a fatal delusion:

Six Above: Zone of Radical Transformation

 Delusion Returning. Losing the Way.
There will be calamities and blunders.
If you try to move the legions, it will end in Great destruction.
Trap! The Way closes for the city and its leader.
This will end in ten years of uncontrolled chastisement.
Trap! The way of the leader is reversed. You are returning to an old
delusion, blinded by self-deception and infatuation. If you go on in
this way, your hard won growth will be destroyed. It will take at
least ten years to deal with the repercussions of this catastrophe. The
Way is closing. Think about where this desire comes from. Whatever
you do, do not act it out.

If these omens are read through the single voice of moral prediction they can only be seen as a
complete and quite frightening deadlock or dilemma, a catastrophic fault that can paralyze the
inquirer. However, if they are read as ‘a dialogue of beginnings and ends’ at the very limits of
personal awareness we can hear them differently. The two contradictory omens become a
dialogue between a Voice of the Beginnings that affirms the enterprise as a ‘Return to the Way
that should not be kept at a distance’ for it will eliminate the ‘cause for sorrow’ and a far-seeing
Sage Voice describing a fatal delusion that must be stripped away in order that the Return might
succeed.

Further information from the Reading Matrix would then show us that this dialogue is a Zone of
Radical Transformation where the inquirer must ‘pass through the Tiger’s Mouth (27) to connect
with the realizing power of Earth (1) and the Dark Animal Goddess.’ The Tiger’s Mouth (27),
the great initiation site where the corruption of the past is eaten away, also appears as the Inner
Operator in the reading, with the Great Transition (28) when one emerges as a true individual as
the Outer Operator, the possibility to be realized. This brings the Relating Figure 23 Stripping
the Corpse into stark relief. It points at the absolute necessity to strip away the compulsive
delusions of control and power the Sage Voice is speaking of in the top line.

This way of reading focused the Inquirer on her own inner corruption, her hidden collusion with
the very organization she was seeking to escape. It involved her in an exploration of a series of
traumatic experiences indicated by the Karmic Nodes, insisting that she focus on this inner work
rather than imposing a premature direction on things (23), a direction that could only lead to
disaster.

We focused on the deep line dynamics and the Crosslines or hidden pathways, letting them speak
directly and exploring their connections to her personal experience. Here are the Beginnings:

Line 1 Dynamic: The source of creative energy is dormant now, immersed in the primal waters,
while the forms of manifestation take shape. You are challenged to go back and eliminate
emotional corruption, for the returning spirit is working through a screen of painful memories of
past encounters charged with sexual energy and need for recognition, carefully preparing the
emergence of the new. Make the sacrifice and have no fear for the Way to the Source is open.
Realization Beginning (23.6 [2.6 : 2.1] 24.1): You have stripped away the outmoded and found
the new. Now take in the fruits of your actions. Move on, carry it all away with you. Do not go
back to your old ways. The Dragons grapple and mate in the wilderness and their blood flows
down as the fertilizing rains. The marriage time draws near. Be open and provide what is needed.
This is a transformation when you pass through the Tiger’s Mouth (27) and connect with the
realizing power of Earth (1) and the Dark Animal Goddess.

And here is the Culmination and way to Realization:

Line 6 Dynamic: Creative energy is returning to the yin. Do not seek dominance. The Dragons
are mating in the wilderness outside of your awareness and their blood flows down like the rains
to fertilize your heart-mind. You are challenged to work through a screen of memories of the
times when you failed to openly stand by what you knew was right. If you give way and return
with the retreating energy you will be nourished at the source. If you step out into the dangerous
waters rising all around you, you will be swept away. There is a ripe fruit not eaten that you must
carry away. Take the chance. Do not just change your face.

Culmination and Communication (23.1 [27.1 : 27.6] 24.6): You must confront basic questions of
support and intimacy, the place where you feel at home. Take a stand for change, for it is not
working now. If you simply ignore the message, the Way will close. You must decisively
confront and overcome the seductive delusions of wealth, power and fear. Strip away the old and
you will be nourished at the source. Be open and provide what is needed. This is a
transformation when you can pass through the Tiger’s Mouth (27) and connect with the realizing
power of Earth (1) and the Dark Animal Goddess.

Now, this is indeed a deep and complex divination but by truly listening to these voices of
Change and doing considerable inner work to ‘fix’ the challenging omen and the way of
realization they offered the Inquirer was led to a happier and more fulfilling life rather than
exchanging one prison for another.

Change Operators
The Change Operators are a powerful modern technique for determining and differentiating the
specific transformative action of the Two Powers in a given situation. They can give us a sense
of effective inner and outer strategies and a much clearer understanding of the dynamic of
Change. These Change Operators work from the positions of the Transforming Lines in the
Primary Figure, no matter whether they are yin or yang. I developed these as Boolian Algebra
functions that describe how things are changed from one form to another in conjunction with
Andreas Schoter.

How the Change Operators Work

The Inner Yang or Inspiration Operator describes the inner transformative aspects of a situation.
It offers an effective stance or strategy to take towards the Inner World and the sources of
inspiration it offers and is related to the Inspiring Force of the Dragon of Figure 1. To find the
Inner or Inspiration Operator, you place a yang or strong line in each place where change is
occurring in the Primary Figure, and a yin or supple line in each stable place. This is
independent of the particular quality of the changing and stable lines in the Primary Figure.

The Outer Yin or Realization Operator describes the places where change occurs and its
possibilities of realization. It offers an effective stance or strategy towards the Outer World and
the possibility of realizing your desires and is related to the Realizing Power of the Field and the
Dark Animal Goddess of Figure 2. To find the Outer or Realization Operator, you place a yin or
supple line in each place where change is occurring in the Primary Figure, and a yang or strong
line in each stable place, independent of the particular quality of the changing and stable lines.

The Change Operators in a Reading

Here is an example of how the Change Operators can work in an actual Reading. We asked a
question to Change about how we can best read the answers it gives us.

Question: What would you (Change) like to say to us about reading your answers to our
questions?
The Answer was Hexagram 3 Sprouting as Primary Figure, with a Transforming Line in the first
position, producing the Relating Figure 8 Grouping. The Answer is notated like this:
Answer: 3.1 > 8 Grouping.
I used Change Operators to explore how our reading of Change could influence our Inner and
Outer lives.
The Inner Inspiration Operator in our reading is 24 Returning, the Pair to our Core Theme (23).
This pairing or doubling shows that Stripping the Corpse of out old ways of thought will
manifest particularly as an inner inspiration that brings a Return of love and spirit.

24 Returning Fu
Love and spirit return after a difficult time; renewal, rebirth, re-establish
relationship; go back to the beginning, leave the complicated and return to the
simple; death as a return to the source; a new soul enters the world; site of creative
transformation. A Realizing Figure, approach to centers of power in this stage of life
and central theme of Change. Season: Spring, rousing new growth. Core theme: 2
Field, primal power of realization. Trigrams: Thunder below Earth. Accepting the
shock of inner enlightenment now brings a deep faith in the overall processes of life.
Bar the passages and do not travel. Stimulus: 16 Preparing for the real call to action.

This speaks of a great return in the inner world that re-establishes our relation to something that
as been lost or repressed in the development of our identity and our culture. We should see
whatever emerges as we strip away our cognitive patterns, all the little intuitions and insights
carried by the psycho-active images, as truly significant and nurture them carefully. Bar the
passages, it says. Leave the complicated and return to the simple. Rouse the new growth. As our
inner inspiration, this can bring a great faith in the realm of the feminine (2) and the overall
processes of life. It will let us respond fully, joyously and spontaneously when the real meaning
emerges rather than engaging in more logic-chopping and premature analysis. The Outer
Realization Operator in our Reading is 44 Coupling or the entrance of the Royal Bride.

44 Coupling/Royal Bride Gou

 Meet, welcome, open yourself to; act through the yielding and the feminine; strange
and lucky encounters; intense contact, gripped, overcome by passion, all forms of
sexual intercourse; the Royal Bride arrives at the borders of awareness, carrying a
new destiny; site of creative transformation. A Realizing Figure and central theme of
Change, the approach to centers of power in this stage of life. Season: Fall,
harvesting the crops and gathering the insights. Core theme: 1 Inspiring Force of the
Dragon. Trigrams: Wind below Heaven. Inner self-cultivation now lets you connect
action with the spirit. Spread the new mandate to all the hidden lands. Stimulus: 9
Accumulating the Small and Gathering in your Ghosts.

This tells us about the effects of the inner return on the outer world, the connection between the
inner images and the events of a reading that old diviners called this dang or ‘matching’ the
images to the situation at hand.

Here this ‘matching’ will come through ‘strange encounters,’ synchronicities that occur as the
new feminine power works its way into our relation with outer events. Things will ‘grip’ us with
a power outside of logic. In the words of Dazhuan, ‘spontaneously the Way will arise.’ This kind
of self-cultivation, the cultivation of the real and surprising power of the images or symbols to
work in and on the soul can spontaneously change the way we perceive ourselves and our world
and let us be of real help to others.

Time Cycles
The Time Cycle links four hexagrams that share the same Nuclear Lines through the symbols
and images of the Four Seasons. This places your situation in the oldest description of divinatory
time. Use the Time Cycle to relate your situation to one of these Seasons and look backwards
and forwards to see where it came from and how it can be developed. Seeing your situation
through these images and their interconnection is felt to connect you with the spirits of the Four
Sides or Hidden Winds and assure the flow of their joyous blessings.

How a Time Cycle is Made

Technically, a Time Cycle is made up of four hexagrams that share the same four inner lines (2-
5), lines that represent a Core Theme of Change. The differing top and bottom lines (1 and 6)
attached to this Core have been used for ages to represent the Four Seasons, the oldest
description of divinatory time and process.

Spring (yang below, yin above): rousing new growth.

Summer (yang below, yang above): ripening the fruits.
Fall (yin below, yang above): harvesting the crop and gathering the insights.
Winter (yin below, yin above): finding the seed of the new by grinding away the old.

The Time Cycle is not a simple circle but a spiral, constantly evolving and deeply connected
with the mythic world and the creative dynamic of divinatory time. The intersection of the
Nuclear Figures or Core Themes with the Four Seasons and the complex interconnections
between the various Time Cycles this intersection creates reveal a forgotten hidden agenda of
Change, organized by the Four Hidden Winds that circulate throughout the Matrix.

Working with a Time Cycle

Here is an example of how the Time Cycle can amplify and deepen a reading. We asked a
question to Change about how we can best read the answers it gives us.

Question: What would you (Change) like to say to us about reading your answers to our
questions?
Answer: 3.1 > 8 Grouping.
The Answer was Hexagram 3 Sprouting as Primary Figure, with a Transforming Line in the first
position, producing the Relating Figure 8 Grouping.

In the reading, I used the Time Cycle to connect our attempt to read the answers of Change with
this old sense of creative process. In this Reading the Time Cycle focuses on Fall. That is where
the action of our Core Theme (Nuclear Hexagram) emerges into time.

Fall (N1= 23 Stripping N2=2 Field)

This is its story:

Releasing the Ancestor’s Blessing
The Realizing Power of the Field enters in Fall though the act of Stripping away the old and
outmoded, creating a contemplative space where the spirit of the new can be divined and
recognized. You find the seed of the new in Winter through a radical re-Grouping of thoughts
and those with whom you feel spiritual kinship. This rouses new growth in Spring, Sprouting and
opening a new world. Ripen the fruits in Summer by pouring in energy and attention. This sets
off a flow of Blessings from the Ancestors, re-animating the cycle.

The Hidden Wind of 2 Field,the Realizing power of Earth and the Dark Animal Goddess pushes
into the center of this Cycle, acting through the Core Theme of 23 Stripping. It enters our cycle
in the Fall position, here described by Figure 20 Viewing and the Ancestor’s Eyes. This is the
place where we ‘harvest the crop and gather the insights.’

Figure 20 is about divination and the effect of a new ancestor spirit released from the world of
death and mourning. We begin our act of reading here, in the Tower where initiation begins,
looking out at the world to see the effects of this spirit, of the cleansing of our ancestral or
parental images. Here we watch the hidden signs from a distance and think of the common good.
We begin to set up teachings for all and ascend to a higher level of awareness.

The energy and insights gathered here are pushed on into Winter, represented by (8), the new
grouping of our thoughts. This is also the Relating Figure in our basic reading. Here is where the
personal grinding occurs, stripping away the chaff to find the seeds of new growth. It is where
the new world represented by the symbols of Change and their way of connecting to ancestral
energies truly grips us. Here we are challenged to find a new base of mutual support and spiritual
kinship and become part of the new group of lords and helping spirits that emerges.

The Hidden Wind of the Realizing Power, expressed through the activity of Stripping, then
pushes on into Spring and our Primary Figure 3, the Sprouting of a new world that springs up
through our experience of the actually encountering the symbols and rousing the new growth by
giving them a place in our heart-mind. As we establish the new world, confront the difficulties,
seek the bride and watch the World Tree emerge, a new world of significance dawns. It can give
us the ability to manage the flow and flux of events, to use the clear signs that relate the groups
of kindred spirits and kindred meaning to delivers us from the sufferings of the past and the
oppression of outmoded ways of thinking.

As Summer ripens the fruits of the reading process we experience the Blessing (42) that comes
from the sacrifice of our intellectual presuppositions. This is a fertile and expansive time in
which the ancestors accept our sacrifice and give their blessings, a time in which we can help the
energy extend itself. We acquire a place where we can influence the world we live in, where we
visualize improvement, shift our position and give the omens an enduring form in our hearts.

Reading and Interpreting Answers

The answer to a question you pose to Change comes through one of its 64 Figures and the web of
interconnections it generates, the Reading Matrix. It offers you symbols meant to make you
aware of and help you connect with the hidden forces active in your situation. Through
interacting with the symbols we find the hidden forces shaping the moment (shi) and discover
the most efficacious ways to act. By imagining yourself and your situation through the symbols
of the oracle you can re-direct the manner in which you are thinking about things. This process
creates bright spirit or intuitive clarity, called shen ming. Traditionally, this is ‘finding the mind
of the Way.
Reading the Answers
Reading the answers that Change gives us always starts with an entry into its language of
symbols and myths, but the Oracle is traditionally used in two different though related ways. It
can give quick, concise answers to pressing problems or supply the background and insight that
lets us understand the situation in depth, generating an effective strategy that can provide for
long range planning. The concise approach mobilizes and focuses our energy by resolving
immediate doubts. The deeper approach can engender a real transformation of basic attitudes and
thoughts and open us to the deep transformative process that lie behind the situation. In either
case, we are concerned with releasing the imaginative possibilities of the words and interrelated
diagrams by matching them (dang) to our situation through a mixture of intuitive and analytical
thought.

Basic Reading and Extended Reading

This basic reading consists of the Primary Figure, the Transforming Lines with their
Crossline Omens, and the Relating Figure.

The Primary Figure, the hexagram generated directly by the casting, provides a basic answer to
the question. It describes an archetypal situation and suggests overall strategies to effectively
understand and deal with it.

The Transforming Lines and Crossline Omens show particular points where change is at work
and the hidden pathways through which the possibilities of transformation ca be realized.

The Relating Figure shows how we are related to the situation presented by the Primary Figure.
It can represent future potential, overriding concerns, a warning, a goal, a desired outcome or a
past situation that brought us to the present question.

I often begin a reading by looking at this Relating Figure and trying to understand its
significance.

The next thing I look at is the Primary Figure, the basic answer to the question. If you want to
go deeper into the situation, you can explore it in the section called the Pair in the Matrix of
Change. This section gives you 1) basic information on the themes and actions of the Pair. If
you want to go deeper you can look at 2) the connection of the theme of this Pair with other sites
and themes in the Matrix. If you want to explore the deep connections of this Pair to yourself as
an individual, you can use 3) the Karmic Nodes.

From the Pair I pass to the Primary Figure, the figure directly generated by the casting process.
The Primary Figure offers a basic answer to your question. It describes an archetypal situation
and suggests strategies to effectively understand and deal with it. It is your entrance to the Matrix
of Change. All of the previous associations provide a deep background to the encounter with it
and the further images of its Matrix. In contrast to the other figures in the Matrix, here we look
at all the texts of the hexagram in detail.

1. The first text, the Header or Keywords, introduces the hexagram.

 2. The Myths for Change gives you the story of the time coming from the old myth and
ritual world and can considerably deepen our understanding of how the figure works in
our psyche.
3. The Response is direct divinatory advice, coming from the oldest levels of the textual
tradition, the Zhouyi, followed by a paraphrasing commentary. It is followed by a wider
set of associations or contexts that extend the Name of the Figure and fix its multiple
possibilities in our imagination and the old character that gives a vivid graphic image of
the its ancient roots.

The next two sections of the hexagram text come from the Commentary traditions.

4. Commentary on the Response offers traditional philosophical and moral reflections

from the Tuan Zhuan, the first and second of the Ten Wings. This is how you can think
about the reading. Imagine it as an old Scholar speaking to you and counseling you.
5. Symbol Tradition comes from the tradition of the Bagua or Eight Helpers and reflects
their interaction into a stance that we might take toward the process we are going
through. It rouses our sense of the hidden forces at work. Imagine this as a Shaman
speaking to you about the mysterious forces hidden behind the world of appearances.
6. The Transforming Lines and Crossline Omens, the last part of the hexagram texts,
show the places where we encounter the real transformative power of the oracle, what I
call the Voices of Change. The Transforming Line shows the overt situation; the
Crossline Omen shows a hidden pathway or dark teaching (nei yeh) that opens the
hidden transformative potential and how to realize it.

If you are looking for a Concise answer, this will end your reading. If you want to proceed to an
Extended reading, take a quick look at the lines and the positions they speak from, but hold them
in reserve while you build up a greater context by circulating through the other parts of the
Matrix. This will give the Lines a particular power and clarity when you use them at the end of
the reading to summarize all that has happened.

The Extended Matrix

1) The first figure in the Extended Matrix is the Core Theme or Nuclear Figure made out of the
inner four lines of the Primary Figure. It also connects us to the Time Cycle or Cycle of Seasons
seen later. The Core Theme represents the motivating energy situated at the heart of the Primary
Figure, connecting the hidden cause of the situation with its goal. It tells you about the hidden
influence and where it is acting and links your situation to one of the Four Gates and Hidden
Winds of Change (1 and 2, 63 and 64).

2) The next figures in the Extended Matrix are the Change Operators, derived from the position
of the transforming lines, independent of their quality as yang or yin. These are a modern
discovery, related to Boolean algebra functions that describe how things are changed from one
form to another. The Change Operators show the specific transformative actions of the Two
Powers in your situation and suggest effective strategies to take towards the inner and outer
worlds that can align you with these Powers.
3) The next figures in the Extended Matrix are the Ideal Thought Form and the Shadow Site.
These are included in the Header for your Primary Figure, but it is a good idea to re-consider
them here. The Ideal Form and the Shadow Site form a pair of figures that let you grasp the
ideal potential of the situation and the attitude or place that is counter-indicated, the specific
thing that is not in harmony with the time. This focuses you on the sort of motivations and
activities that the Primary Figure seeks to inspire and those it asks you to let go of.

4) The final part of the Extended Matrix is the Time Cycle or Cycle of Seasons. The Time Cycle
links four hexagrams through the images of the Four Seasons to place your situation in the oldest
description of divinatory time. Use the Time Cycle to relate your situation to one of these
seasons and look backwards and forwards to see where it came from and how it can be
developed.

Ripples in the Pond

With the overall context developed through the Extended Matrix you can now listen to the
Voices of Change, the Transforming Lines and Crossline Omens. If you have done our work
well in the overall reading, these voices will act like stones thrown into a still pool, the pool of
meanings our reading has created. Their effects will ripple out into awareness in an ever-
increasing circle.

Fixing the Omen:

Giving Change a Place in your Life
Using Change is the art of finding and empowering the great symbolic images in our lives.
Through them our actions can resonate with the spirit and connect with its hidden transformative
power. This symbolic approach helps us live our lives fully and freely by keeping us in touch
with the on-going process of the Real, what the Old Sages called the Way.

‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities’

A reading engenders a circle of awareness that moves through us like ripples through still water.
It then becomes our job to give it an enduring form, connecting in deeper and deeper ways over
time so that it can influence our life and the lives of others. There are many ways to do this: keep
a diary, make a collage or picture, create a short phrase, little poem, even a movement phrase
that calls the reading to mind, find or make an object to symbolize the reading and put it on your
Dwelling Altar where it connects with the power of your personal ancestors.

The tradition calls this heng or Fixing the Omen. It is where the images from Change become a
part of our life, where we take responsibility for the gift of the spirit. The Pair 31:32 describes
the overall process. We might consider the Myths for Change section of Figure 32 to better
understand it.

Heng, Persevering or Fixing the Omen, refers to creating rituals and symbols that fix a spirit
influence so that it endures in your life. This symbolic activity is similar to writing down a
dream, perceiving its ‘message’ and making a symbol of it that recalls the influence and acts as a
guide to action. This gives form and enduring influence to the message from the spirits, making
their power and virtue (de) endure in the heart. It extends to fixity of purpose, constancy and
faith in the images as a personal characteristic. This is particularly important for diviners and
spirit-workers. It is what makes their power firm. It is what keeps harm away. Confucius said: ‘It
is said in Change: A man without heng will not succeed as a Wu-Intermediary. How true! Not
fixing the de, the power and virtue of an omen, leads to failure. Just reading it is not enough.’
Such fixings range from literal rituals through meditations that ‘fix’ the heart to ceremonies of
marriage that ‘fix’ the attraction. The word is related to keng, which suggests the Moon Cult that
read the Changes, the oldest form of Yi divination. The character also suggests the regular
movement of a boat between two shores, the faithful heart, laws and habits, continuity in
development. It implies the continued interaction of spirits and humans and delivers a warning:
one who does not fix the realizing power of the omen given by the spirit faces disaster.

The stabilizing rite (heng) may be a rite first performed at the appearance of the new moon to
make things endure through the lunar month. It involved drawing circles or spirals around the
omen-objects. These circles and spirals, seen in the character, are symbols of endurance in time,
in the endless succession of moments. They point at sanctifying a centre so it will endure, like
the circular furrow plowed around a new city, the rings that lovers share, the circle a shaman
draws around a patient. This fixes the insight or experience of the spirit firmly in the mind so that
it comes back every time the situation arises. This circular repetition and dedication changes the
very shape of the heart-mind, becoming a paradigm through which we habitually act.

Fixing the Omen is a very potent practice. Each time we use symbols this way we generate shen
or spirit and over time a quantum change occurs in the empty centre we create by getting our
ambitious ego out of the way. We acquire a powerful helping spirit and access to a higher
personality called the Sage-Mind. We become aware of the way or Dao and set foot on the path
of the Junzi or Realizing Person. This effects a transformation of character and a liberation from
compulsion and fear that can have profound effects on everything we encounter.

http://www.greatvessel.com