What does 元亨利贞 really mean?

[forestofclarity]

3 hours ago, Taomeow said:

I'd start very simple though, with just trying to get some answers to your real life questions and see how helpful (or not) you find what the I Ching tells you. 

 

That makes sense. That is how I generally started to familiarize myself with the Tarot back in the day. 

[ChiDragon]

On 11/15/2025 at 7:07 AM, forestofclarity said:

Would it make more sense to familiarize with the foundational hexagrams first? 

To be more precise, it make more sense to familiarize with the foundational trigrams first.

Edited 11 hours ago by ChiDragon

[Taomeow]

2 hours ago, ChiDragon said:

To be more precise, it make more sense to familiarize with the foundational trigrams first.

 

That's done in a few minutes and a lifetime.  You don't need a lifetime to ask your first I Ching question.  You do need a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the foundational trigrams, sure, as well as with all the other "prerequisites."  But then you need a few hours to familiarize yourself with their behavior in hexagrams, and then a few days to start grasping what a changing line means, and a few years to understand where it might be coming from and where it's headed, and a couple decades to learn to read the Changes in the hexagrams via the images without having to look at the comments, and then to discern those hexagram images in the real-life environments so your street might become your I Ching, and maybe master the Plum Blossom technique while at it, and then your familiarity with the I Ching begins.  You will not only see its images, you will hear its voice.  You will have gained a mentor and a friend.    

 

But if you don't use it as an oracle at all, the way its creators intended it to be used, it remains silent and lifeless to you.  The dry, aged, dead and silent yarrow stalks will never bloom into flowers of wisdom in your hands unless you pick them up and use them.  You may learn the theoretical part in your head, but if you study the map yet never walk the territory...  that's a very limiting endeavor for a Traveler of Time and Space the I Ching has been created for.    

 

Also sprach Taomeow.   

[ChiDragon]

7 hours ago, Taomeow said:

You do need a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the foundational trigrams,

It took me more than few minutes to familiarize the 8 trigrams. BTW the intend of the Yijing was not for fortune telling in the first place. If someone start using it to predict the future, one is only picked up somewhere in the middle and skipped to learn what Yijing was all about.

[Sanity Check]

7 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

That's done in a few minutes and a lifetime.  You don't need a lifetime to ask your first I Ching question.  You do need a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the foundational trigrams, sure, as well as with all the other "prerequisites."  But then you need a few hours to familiarize yourself with their behavior in hexagrams, and then a few days to start grasping what a changing line means, and a few years to understand where it might be coming from and where it's headed, and a couple decades to learn to read the Changes in the hexagrams via the images without having to look at the comments, and then to discern those hexagram images in the real-life environments so your street might become your I Ching, and maybe master the Plum Blossom technique while at it, and then your familiarity with the I Ching begins.  You will not only see its images, you will hear its voice.  You will have gained a mentor and a friend.    

 

But if you don't use it as an oracle at all, the way its creators intended it to be used, it remains silent and lifeless to you.  The dry, aged, dead and silent yarrow stalks will never bloom into flowers of wisdom in your hands unless you pick them up and use them.  You may learn the theoretical part in your head, but if you study the map yet never walk the territory...  that's a very limiting endeavor for a Traveler of Time and Space the I Ching has been created for.    

 

 

 

 

Intuition versus deductive reasoning.

 

While mystical intuition might access information that is accurate, it seems as if there is a universal law in place preventing said data from being particularly useful. Or having direct real world application.

 

To cite an example, in years past I was a consistently winning gambler in sports. Used a variety of deductive reasoning, science and observation in an effort to accurately predict the outcome of events. 

 

This is the type of data people generally seek when approaching mysticism.

 

I would guess my data, math and science based approach would yield better results in sports gambling than any type of divination or oracle. 

 

And so in terms of wisdom and intellect I'm still waiting for someone to put forth a good explanation for why or how intuition based mysticism might be considered worth pursuing. When there is so much that can be done with logic & data.