The Inner Discipline of Interpretation

Understanding matters more than the outcome

The first discipline after receiving a result: no emotional reaction. An ominous reading is no reason for gloom, an auspicious one no reason for pride. The Yi is about change. A good reading now does not mean good forever; a bad one does not mean bad forever.

The point of casting is not to alter the outcome but to understand: to see roughly how the matter will develop next and then meet it with the right attitude, growing in virtue, ability and wisdom along the way. Sometimes a cast on an important matter tells you plainly that it cannot be forced, and then you can stop straining. That equanimity is itself a gain.

A life is a continuous process; never judge anything by a single moment. The student who comes top of the entrance exam may not have an easy road; someone who misses out now may find the way opening a few years later. Until the coffin lid is closed, the verdict is not in.

So when the result comes, sit quietly and give the whole hexagram time: its name, its image, its judgment, the relevant lines. Your own affairs deserve the time.

The adept does not divine; human counsel and the counsel of spirits

Xunzi wrote that “those who are good at the Yi do not divine”, and the line is often quoted against divination. But it is one of three sayings: “Those good at the Odes do not recite them; those good at the Yi do not divine; those good at the rites do not officiate.” One who truly knows poetry does not quote it all day; one who truly knows ritual does not go about playing master of ceremonies; one who truly knows the Yi draws its principles into self-cultivation and does not cast over every matter. Together the three say: do things in due measure, value substance over show. Xunzi is not rejecting divination; he is rejecting dependence on it.

The legitimacy of casting can be seen in two lines of the Great Commentary. The first: “Human counsel, the counsel of spirits; the common people share in the ability.” Whether a matter succeeds depends partly on human effort and partly on factors beyond human control; as the proverb has it, people plan and heaven decides. The procedure of the Yi lets one touch that second part, and “the common people share in the ability” means that ordinary people who learn it can take part.

The second: “Without teacher or guardian, it is as if one faced one's parents.” Teachers and guardians were the officials who taught and protected young nobles. After middle age you have neither; you have become the elder and must decide alone. Learning to consult the Yi is like still having parents to look after you and a teacher to remind you. This is not superstition. It is the admission that every person has attachments and blind spots.

Meaningful coincidence; one matter, different people

Why does casting work? One useful description is “meaningful coincidence”. The psychologist C. G. Jung, who wrote the foreword to the English translation of Richard Wilhelm's German Yijing, proposed synchronicity: events occurring together can be linked by meaning rather than by cause. Science follows the causal line of time; the Yi follows these correspondences of meaning. Each has its own domain.

An example. A man is agonising over whether to accept a posting elsewhere. He steps out of his door and hears a magpie, the bird of good news, and something in him stirs. A neighbour hears the same bird, but has nothing on his mind, and for him it is just birdsong. Coincidence becomes meaningful only to someone holding a question. That is why you must have a question before casting, and why the clearer the question, the better the chance figure will fit.

It also follows that a hexagram speaks from the questioner's own position. The same matter cast by different people may give different results. Two partners whose business fails: one has plenty of other assets and shrugs; the other staked everything and cannot recover. If each asks about the same failure, their hexagrams will naturally differ. Following's second line says “clinging to the little boy, one loses the grown man”, its third “clinging to the grown man, one loses the little boy”. A mother who goes abroad to look after her son “loses” her husband; one who stays with her husband “loses” the son. The same family means something different to each member. Where several people are involved, let each cast for himself.

Three rules for reading for others, and keeping a record

Once you know how, people will ask you to read for them. Three rules apply.

No mystification. The procedure is entirely public and the texts are printed in black and white; there is no secret of heaven to leak. Do not make a hexagram sound unfathomable. The Yi is a learning conducted in broad daylight.

No telling people what to decide. Say what the texts say and how they might be understood, never “you should do this”. You do not know the whole of another person's situation, and if you advise, one day they will say you told them to. No one can carry that responsibility. The decision belongs to the person who asked.

No personal gain. Never take money. The moment you charge, you become a fortune-teller, and the learning of the Yi should have nothing to do with money.

One more point. Reading for yourself, your family or the people you care about most is the hardest of all; concern clouds judgment, and you will tend to read in what you hope for. Interpretation needs detachment. Better to know a few more hard facts than to add imagination and emotion.

Finally, keep a written record: the date, the question, the method, the numbers, the original and resulting hexagrams, the text the answer fell on, how you read it at the time, and what actually happened. Only then will you see your blind spots. Practise once a week, and in two or three years you will have met most of the sixty-four once or twice and come to know them without forced memorisation. By then you will be reading not just a book, but a Yijing with your own name written through it.