An I Ching Reading

I ching coins

This evening, I threw an I Ching on a ghostwriting project. It’s an 80,000 word biography and must include a book proposal, query, and a lot of research. I figured this project would take me a year and I wouldn’t have time for much else. I told the man the range for my price. His budget was considerably lower. I read through the material he sent and while the story is a good one, the time element looked huge.

So I threw an I Ching – 3 coins tossed 6 times. Head count 3, tails count 2.The number 6 is a broken line – ying – changing to a solid line. The number 9 is a solid line – yang – changing to broken.

Here’s what I got:

So this hexagram is #2, The Receptive
6 _ o _
8 _ _
8 _ _
8 _ _
8 _ _
8 _ _

With the sixth line changing to solid, this is what the second hexagram looks like this:

___
_ _
_ _
_ _
_ _
_ _This hexagram is #23, Splitting Apart.This number is infamous-

I immediately wrote Adele Aldridge – author and I Ching master. She, like author Nancy Pickard, understands the Ching in ways that I do not.

Even though the interpretations of the Ching are written in terms of life in ancient times, there’s a resonance in the explanations but it’s also evident in the titles of the hexagrams.

Hexagram 2, I think, was addressing how receptive I was to his monetary offer, even though it was well below the figure I’d given him. But that 6th line, where the broken #6 turns solid, seized me. It created Hexagram 23. Splitting Apart.

If you draw Hexagram 23 and ignore the meaning, you won’t escape the repercussions. “The dark lines are about to mount upward and overthrow the last firm, light line by exerting a disintegrating influence on it. The inferior, dark forces overcome what is superior and strong, not by direct means, but by undermining is gradually and imperceptibly, so that it finally collapses.”

No, thanks.

Part of what I’m learning in these ghostwriting projects is within the first paragraph or so, I can tell whether the project will work for me. But when I’m uncertain, I toss a Ching. That usually seals the deal for me one way or another