I Ching, Yijing or Zhou Yi
"Oracle of the moon": © 2000 LiSe
Imagine you cast hexagram 17 with lines 1 and 2 changing. The relating hexagram will be 47.
In 17 the lower or inner trigram is
Thunder, this is the 'inside' of your question, how you feel, or you versus someone else, or here versus elsewhere. In this case Thunder, energy, start, you want to or have to make something happen.
It is not easy, the situation is confining, 47. But in this case, you need to use energy or a new start to solve or improve it.
The upper or outer trigram can be the other, outside, the world. But if you (inside) ask someone/something outside: that one is often Yi itself. Yi's advice is Lake, the upper trigram of 17: reckon with other people, exchange, the space in which you are or in which this takes place. So Lake is not only the outside itself, it is how Yi directs you. It is the quality of what you need to do, or the space in which you act.
So what should you do? That is what the moving lines tell you.
They give advice. When a line sound nice, it usually means that doing what it says is right. If the line sounds negative, then it tells you what not to do. It is very seldom a dire prediction, usually just useful advice how to avoid it.
I chose hex.47 as relating hex, because it is not very hard to describe. Most hexagrams have a much wider range of meanings. It doesn't mean that 47 is narrower, it just needs less description.
I have a 'real' example, also with 47
Our phone company fused with another one. They had to move the data of all customers. The next day 4 of our 6 phones didn't work anymore. We couldn't reach the support, because it seemed a large part of all clients were complaining. After several weeks we could finally reach the helpdesk and they gave us the advice you need when a phone stops working. They maintained that it was a problem of the phones, not caused by the migration. Mailing didn't help either, they gave just more of the same advice.
So I asked Yi how to solve the trouble with the phones: 12/2,6 - 47. Duh... Hex.47 was exactly how we felt. Confined, no working phones, no help, no solution.
Here small men is the one guy: just one person versus a gigantic company, the big guy.
Lower trigram 12, Earth: our question was how to get our phones functioning again, and since it changes to Water, it has to do with moving.
Yi's advice was to follow the existing laws (trigram Heaven): first asking the helpdesk, but when that road doesn't work, to follow the next law: find another one who can do the job. Heaven changes to Lake: when the rule of the responsible party doesn't work, look around in society, and there the rules can be found in someone who knows, an expert.
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