I Ching with Clarity podcast – I Ching with Clarity

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.)