Some ways Yi doesn’t answer your question

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Hilary • 4 Comments

This oracle, as I keep saying, isn’t a slot machine. It’s not ‘insert question, get answer’.
Someone who is completely familiar and comfortable with Yi does not therefore receive the
answers to all their questions and live in a state of perfect certainty. What they are is deeply
engaged in conversation with the whole reality – and because this is real conversation, it
isn’t under control.
Probably everyone has encountered the idea that hexagram 4, Not Knowing –
‘Not knowing, creating success.
I do not seek the young ignoramus, the young ignoramus seeks me.
The first consultation speaks clearly.
The second and third pollute the waters,
Polluted, and hence not speaking.
Constancy bears fruit.’
– is Yi’s way of saying, ‘Nope. Too many questions, not answering.’ Of course, hexagram 4
is more than that. But it’s also very far from being Yi’s only way of responding without
answering. Actually, there are probably 4096 of those – but here are some I’ve noticed
quite frequently over the years:
Hexagram 29:
‘Repeating chasms.
There is truth and confidence.
Holding your heart fast creates success.
Movement brings honour.’
More even than hexagram 4, the Repeating Chasms can convey the message that some
things are just not available to be known. You want something clear-cut, graspable, with
bright well-defined edges – but the reality is possibly-bottomless pits of swirling water. In
some situations, pleading ‘I want to understand!’ is really a way of saying, ‘I want the
situation to be different! I want there to be a clear answer!’ If there isn’t, Yi will say so. It
will show you where you are and guide you through – which can be quite annoying when
what you wanted was a transporter that would beam you into an alternate reality. ‘Yes,’
says Yi, ‘this is terrifying and confusing. Here’s how to navigate: hold your heart fast and
act.’
Other ‘Yes, confusing, isn’t it?’ readings might be 30.1,

‘Treading in confusion.
Honour it,
Not a mistake.’
or 31.4,

‘Constancy brings good fortune, regrets vanish.

Wavering, wavering, going and coming,
Friends follow your thoughts.’
Both of these suggest that your confusion is not the disaster you may think. You are
beginning to see, or you are in the midst of transition, and there’s nothing intrinsically
wrong with that. Both also have that navigation advice: ‘honour it’; ‘constancy brings good
fortune.’

Of course, if you have spent weeks dithering over a decision, consulting friends, family and
Google, and turn to the oracle in the hope it will finally make your mind up for you, and Yi
says,

‘Constancy brings good fortune, regrets vanish.

Wavering, wavering, going and coming,
Friends follow your thoughts.’
…well, your first response might be along the lines of ‘Very funny, Yi.’ Then after you’ve
gone back and re-read the beginning of the line, you might ask, ‘Yes, but constancy to what?‘
And the answers available for this are either supremely unhelpful or perfect, depending on
your point of view. ‘Constancy to what you know. Constancy to revealed truth. Constancy to
your intent.’
We often turn to Yi for help with decisions – and Yi has never made a decision for anyone. It
never makes your mind up for you, though it might reveal your mind to you. But it does
have quite a repertoire of ways to say, ‘Make your own mind up.’ For instance…
Hexagram 40.

‘Release. The southwest is fruitful.

With no place to go,
To turn round and come back is good fortune.
With a direction to go,
Daybreak, good fortune.’
You are advised either to get going as soon as you can, or to let the idea go and come back.
Yes, but which? That would depend on whether or not the path you’re considering leads
anywhere worth being. You are utterly free to choose. This can also be a remarkably
annoying, or embarrassing answer.

Then there’s Hexagram 43, Deciding – could this hexagram name be a hint? – with its fifth
line that says, ‘Decide! Decide!’

And 60, Measuring, that says ‘Bitter measures do not allow for constancy.’ So are you being
advised to impose limits, or that the measures you have in mind wouldn’t be sustainable?
Well, that would depend on whether they are bitter – how they taste. The proof of the
pudding…
Or 64.6 –

‘Being true and confident in drinking wine,

Not a mistake.
Soaking your head,
Being true and confident, losing your grip on that.’
– it’s not wrong to find truth and confidence in drinking wine, but it’s possible to overdo it,
to ‘soak your head’ and lose your grip. So are you being just confident enough, or too
confident? Time to conduct your own sobriety test.

In all these readings (and doubtless many more), the question’s turned back to you: you
judge, you decide. Ultimately, that’s how Yi always works with decisions.
‘What if I go down this road? Or that one?’
‘Well, here’s a picture of what’s down this road, and one of what’s down that one. Which do
you prefer, or feel you need now?’
This is one reason why the whole idea of a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ hexagram is twaddle of
the first order. You might have had more than enough life-in-free-flow to last you; someone
else might be eager to escape artificial boundaries and inhibitions. So is Hexagram 59 a
good hexagram?
Among those ‘you decide’ readings are also those that encourage you to see and take in the
evidence already available.
‘He’s ignoring all my messages, he’s unfriended me on Facebook, and when I saw him on the
street with another woman he sprinted across the road almost as if he were trying to avoid
me! What’s happening?’
‘Hexagram 20. Seeing.’
This probably does not mean that he is stepping back and contemplating his relationship
options before committing himself.
Hexagram 27 (‘see the jaws!’) and 10.6 (‘observe the footsteps’) can also be ways Yi
encourages you to notice what’s in front of you.

Then there are readings – maybe the most devastating to receive – that question (or just
condemn) your way of asking or motives for doing so. Hexagram 4 is one of these;
Hexagram 8 can be too, probing into your original reason for divining – but I’d rather
receive one of those than 27.1,

‘Giving up your own spirit tortoise,

Gazing at me with jaws hanging down.
Pitfall.’
or 57.6,

‘Subtly penetrating under the bed,

Losing your property and axe.
Constancy, pitfall.’
which may tell me I’m abandoning my own spiritual or moral autonomy by asking like this.
Then there’s 21.6,
‘Shouldering a cangue so your ears disappear.
Pitfall.’
which ‘suggests’ I stopped listening a while ago. These answers aren’t always excoriating
criticism of the person asking – that depends on the context – but it’s pretty clear when
they are. Ouch.
As I was saying, there must be 4096 ways for Yi not to answer the question – in other
words, any reading can challenge your line of questioning and the assumptions behind it.
‘How can I achieve x?’
‘No, you can’t achieve x.’
‘What if I did y?’
‘Y isn’t really what you’d be doing.’
Readings often challenge the imagery you’re thinking in – asking how to fight something,
for instance, and receiving Hexagram 43 (‘fruitless to take up arms’), or how to act to
transform things and receiving Hexagram 52, Stilling… and so on. 4096 ways.
Unchanging readings, too, can sometimes hand the question back to you. The ‘missing’
relating hexagram and change patterns in an unchanging reading can indicate that the role
or agency of the querent is likewise ‘missing’ – and sometimes that can point to a lack of
clear intention and true will to act behind the question. (Only sometimes, not always – for
example, it could also indicate that you have no role, or it can just be a very simple answer.)
So an unchanging answer can have a ‘yes, and…?’ tone to it.

My most recent unchanging reading came when I’d been thinking about my original
inspiration and vision for WikiWing, and asked what would be the right course of action for
it in the context of other plans (I’ll explain soon!). I received Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm,
unchanging – which points me straight back to that original vision and inspiration and asks,
‘…so, where will you go with that?’ That’s a common question for unchanging readings to
ask: ‘where are you going with this?’ or ‘why?’ or ‘what for?’

But then changing readings can do the same, especially with multiple moving lines that
clearly can’t all apply at once.
‘How will this work out?’
‘Like this… or like this. It depends…’
It depends on where you stand (line position) and where you’re coming from (zhi gua for
the line) and so on. Readings with the underlying question, ‘is this a good idea, or not?’
often seem to get answers that come down to, ‘first, clarify what you’re actually doing.’
And finally, there are those very occasional readings that change the subject utterly. You
asked about that, but this is more important. I find that such readings are very rare indeed,
and I recommend being very slow to conclude that this is what you have unless there’s
overwhelming external evidence to that effect. (For instance, you asked at the weekend
about what you expected to be doing on Tuesday, but the answer turns out to advise you
how to cope with the life-changing event on Monday that derailed all your plans.) Without
 this, leaping to the conclusion that this just can’t be about what you asked can mean
missing a lot of chances to learn – it can be a way of denying and blocking the conversation.
The thing is… talking with Yi is a conversation. That means everything is open for
discussion and nothing can be withheld. You can (and should) use your question to clarify
your own intent, but there is no way to instruct Yi on what isn’t up for discussion – no ‘if
this is a daft idea, I don’t want to know’ or ‘be kind and spare my delicate sensibilities’. It’s
an oracle; it isn’t tame. All you can do is work with it, let it change how you see things and
guide you along paths whose existence you’d never suspected. While Yi may or may not be
answering your question, it is certainly answering you.
Filed Under: Divination tips, I Ching
← Myth and legend in hexagrams
Yi and decisions: a cautionary tale →
4 responses to Some ways Yi doesn’t answer your question

1. knot says:
August 21, 2015 at 1:55 pm
This is a fantastic post. I wish I’d read it much earlier in my experience with yi, but
it’s a terrific reminder even now, when I’ve slowly gotten it through my thick head
how often this happens. I think you should make it a sticky in the Shared Readings
forum.

BTW I also often get 39 and its lines as a sort of “fyi, at the end of this line of
questioning is a brick wall, so why not turn around now” sort of answer.
Reply

2. Hilary says:
August 21, 2015 at 3:15 pm
39, too? As I suspected, there are at least 64 ways.

It’s an odd article for me to write, as I spend a lot of my time encouraging people to
believe that yes, this really is answering their question, just not as they’d
anticipated. Glad you liked it, anyway!
Reply

3. Fey Wolf says:

August 21, 2015 at 10:07 pm
 On reading the last sentence I feel illuminated, really)
I guess, 11.4 with its ‘flattering, flattering’ and ‘not relying on her own rich
resources’ (Legge’s translation of the commentary) can be such an answer-not-
answer as well. I got it thrice for these few weeks and finally start to realise
something.
Reply

4. Hilary says:
August 23, 2015 at 8:19 pm
Make that 4096 ways…

https://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/answers/2015/07/26/some-ways-yi-doesnt-answer-your-
question/