The Great Vessel Blog

The I Ching’s Ten Year Cycles – A Structure within the King Wen Sequence

We are all used to a number of models which explain the shape our lives.

There is the, Birth, Childhood, Adolescant Struggle, Young Adulthood, Mature Adulthood, Middle Age and Old age and Death, model.

On top of this we might have a career plan which executive career mentors now promote. Each go ahead executive should now have a ten year plan it seems.

The King Wen sequence is structured around Decades. These 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.

Given the complexity of each hexagram it is quite a profound model.

Stephen Karcher explores the basics of this in his article, “The Decades and the ritual World of Change”

I have found it very worthwhile to reflect on my past in terms of this model. I have also found it useful to consider what I am doing with my life in the present, considering it against the images of the hexagrams for my current time of life.

I suspect there might be great value in using this when counselling others. On a number of occasions I have helped people who were quite unhappy and for whom it transpired that they were trying to find fulfilment in ways no longer appropriate to their time of life.

However I imagine that sometimes our lives run behind and at others they may well run ahead of the model.

Kevin