I Ching Basics

 

These are single topic focused articles explaining the basics of the way we work with the Yijing (I Ching). 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.

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.