Month: September 2024

2 – Two   K’un / Receptive Force

Earth above and Earth below:
The Earth contains and sustains.
In this situation, the Superior Person should not take the initiative; he should follow the initiative of another.
He should seek receptive allies in the southwest; he should break ties with immovable allies in the northeast.

Responsive devotion.
Receptive influence.
Sublime Success if you keep to your course.

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

This is a time for dealing with reality as it is, not as you would have it be.
If you realize that in this situation you are the receptor, not the transmitter of the stimulus, you will find yourself reaching goals that seemed unattainable under your own steam.
If you persist in futile efforts to be the Shaper rather than the Shaped, you will completely miss this unique opportunity.

Six at the top means:

The battling dragons are too evenly matched.
Each spills black and yellow blood to the soil below.

Dragons fight in the meadow.
Their blood is black and yellow.

In the top place the dark element should yield to the light. If it attempts to maintain a position to which it is not entitled and to rule instead of serving, it draws down upon itself the anger of the strong. A struggle ensues in which it is overthrown, with injury, however, to both sides. The dragon, symbol of heaven, comes to fight the false dragon that symbolised the inflation of the earth principle. Midnight blue is the color of heaven; yellow is the color of earth. Therefore, when black and yellow blood flow, it is a sign that in this unnatural contest both primal powers suffer injury.¹

1. While the top line of THE CREATIVE indicates titanic pride and forms a parallel to the Greek legend of Icarus, the top line of THE RECEPTIVE presents a parallel to the myth of Lucifer’s rebellion against God, or to the battle between the powers of darkness and the gods of Valhalla, which ended with the Twilight of the Gods.

Six in the third place means:

Hide your brilliance.
Feeling no threat, they won’t resist the completion of your goal.
All you lose is credit for the accomplishment.

Hidden lines.
One is able to remain persevering.
If by chance you are in the service of a king,
Seek not works, but bring to completion.

Kemsit, the Nubian queen of the Egyptian King Mentuhotep II (2061-2010 B.C.), and her servants

If a man is free of vanity he is able to conceal his abilities and keep them from attracting attention too soon; thus he can mature undisturbed. If conditions demand it, he can also enter public life, but that too he does with restraint. The wise man gladly leaves fame to others. He does not seek to have credited to himself things that stand accomplished, but hopes to release active forces; that is, he completes his works in such a manner that they may bear fruit for the future.

52 – Fifty-Two.  Kên / The Mountain

Above this Mountain’s summit another more majestic rises:
The Superior Person is mindful to keep his thoughts in the here and now.

Stilling the sensations of the Ego, he roams his courtyard without moving a muscle, unencumbered by the fears and desires of his fellows.
This is no mistake.

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

There is a higher vantage point available to you, but it is obscured by the visible peak of personal ambition.
To climb to this higher plane, you must shake off the desires and fears of the conscious, visible world around you.
To make this journey you must quiet the Ego, empty your mind of past and future, and dwell totally in the moment at hand.
Thorough mindfulness of what is before you is the only tranquility.
Be. Here. Now.