First reading

Question: ‘What do I need to focus on now so that I can be living my best life in my third age?’ Answer: Hexagram 23, Stripping Away, changing at lines 1,2,3,4 and 6 to 34, Great Vigour. changing to With her very first question to the Yi, Parmjit asked for focus, and received five moving lines; she was looking for direction, and her reading started with Hexagram 23 (‘no direction bears fruit’!). But it’s still the beginning of a beautiful friendship…

Here’s Yi doing something I’d never seen before: echoing and resonating with a Sanskrit mantra. Sana dreamt the Gayatri mantra; when she woke, she asked Yi for a picture of her inner landscape, and cast Hexagram 35, Advancing – – without changing lines. No decisions to be made or problems to be solved in this reading – just a gift to receive.

Here’s episode 64 of the podcast, with a reading about recovery from depression: How to be well? By Limping with Clarity… changing to This looks like a complicated reading, but it really isn’t. If you’d like to share a reading of your own on the podcast, you can do that at onlineclarity.co.uk/share. Private reading chats are included in Change Circle membership at onlineclarity.co.uk/circle.

A reading for a decision this time: Sha asked, “If I build another tech company, what will the experience be like?” Yi answered with Hexagram 27, Nourishing, changing at lines 2 and 3 to 26, Great Tending: changing to So that gave her an interesting couple of moving lines: ‘Unbalanced nourishment.Rejecting the standard, looking to the hill-top for nourishment.Setting out to bring order – pitfall.’ ‘Rejecting nourishment.Constancy, pitfall.For ten years, don’t act.No direction bears fruit.’ It looks as though the experience would be not much fun at all – but why…?

Bill asked about his dating prospects, and received – of all things – the sixth line of Hexagram 24, Returning… changing to …which is exactly no-one’s favourite line. So how do you respond when Yi’s answer is all doom and gloom, and really not what you hoped to hear? You explore… so we did. Bill kindly interviewed me for his blog afterwards: here’s his article.

A listener’s reading for this month’s podcast: Ann asked, ‘How do I integrate myself as an artist with everyday life?’ And Yi answered with Hexagram 14, Great Possession, changing at lines 1 and 3 to 64, Not Yet Crossing. changing to (If you enjoy this, please share it!)

That’s something I asked Yi recently, and it answered with Hexagram 23, Stripping Away, changing at lines 1 and 6 to 24, Returning – changing to I think this is a lovely, fascinating, satisfying reading, so I’m sharing a few thoughts on it with you for this episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoy it! (If you’d like to have a free reading on the podcast, you’re very welcome to book one here.) An update… Just after publishing this episode, I was sorting through some foraged chestnuts when I found the one whose photograph you can see above. I didn’t roast it; I’m going to take it with me on my next foraging walk to the local woods and tuck it into the leaf litter.

Brian asked, “Why am I compelled to leave my job and join Greenpeace?” and Yi responded with Hexagram 18, ‘Work on what has been spoiled’ in the Wilhelm/Baynes translation he was consulting. This was in 1982: we’re revisiting the reading and learning from it, 43 years on. Things we mention… The ‘entangled pair’ – both inverse and complementary – of hexagrams 17 and 18: paired with And the nuclear story of Hexagram 18, passing through hexagrams 28, 54 and 27, which you can build from all its component trigrams: And not least the I Ching Foundations Class – starting soon, see www.onlineClarity.co.uk/class !

In this episode, Natalia is asking a wide-open question: where is she to go next? And Yi’s answer combines focus with openness: Hexagram 7, the Army, changing at line 2 to Hexagram 2, Earth: changing to (You may notice something different at the beginning and end of this episode. The music is the same – the Allemande from Bach’s first suite for ‘cello – but since there’s some ambiguity about the public domain status of the recording I’ve been using in previous episodes, I’ve switched to a lovely, eloquent performance by Colin Carr, published by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and available here in full under this Creative Commons licence.)

(Just one reading, sorry, not a universal formula.) Paloma asked what to do about her worrying pension-less state, and cast Hexagram 5, Waiting, changing at lines 4 and 5 to 34, Great Vigour – changing to So we talked about patience, and self-care, and standing firm, and also not standing firm at the bottom of a hole… If you have a reading you’d like to share on the podcast, please book yourself a slot here!