Hexagram 64 > 53
When I was in a corporate management position, I dealt with a great deal of daily uncertainties (and the accompanying anxiety).
There were angry clients, demanding upper management moments, and at least one case of an employee committing sexual harassment.
During this time, I was doing *a lot* of I Ching readings.
Amidst all of the daily question marks, I decided to start doing a reading for every waking hour of my life.
That was a lot of coin shaking.
And my first bout of the process lasted about two years.
Not only did it make my days feel more manageable (and less imposing), it offered me countless readings to draw insights from to figure out what a line and hexagram meant when they actually played out in real life.
At the time of writing, I've started up the practice again.
The Benefits of An Hourly I Ching Reading
While there's something to be said for meeting the rawness of reality without any supposed safeguards, there's another conversation that having an hourly I Ching reading to make sense of what you might, and what you just experienced, provides comfort, even when consequential calamities have the power to give you pause.
Let's talk about some of the specific benefits:
- 1) Generating Data To Learn The I Ching Better
The thousands of hourly readings I did for two years asking 'what do I need to know about ____ hour' gave me more data than I could have gained from scouring page after page of Google results about the oracle.
Part of the reason for this: I journaled a brief summary of what happened during the hour of every reading, giving me information that would later inform the horoscopes you see on this site, and every reading I've done since.
There's no better way to learn the I Ching than to see how things actually play out in real life.
- 2) Knowing What's To Come Allows You To 'Choose' It With More Open Arms
I've written about 'choosing', but I have to say that the concept didn't really exist to me when I first used this practice.
In my recent experience with hourly readings, though, seeing a hexagram 29 pop up for, say, 11 am, allows me to choose it ahead of time, and then face it as a cause in the situation, instead of someone being sadly rained on by the downpour that life is.
If the concept of choosing what is is hard for you to come to terms with, I suspect it might be easier if you at least know what the contours of what your waking hours might look like.
Having this knowledge can sometimes help you prepare, and minimize the negatives.
It doesn't solve every problem, or eliminate every risk (nothing can), but I do find it to be a way of safeguarding that also doubles as something that's fun to do.
Your results may not be the same, but I hope they are.
- 3) You Get Instant Meaning When The Negative Things Happen
Even if you're just using something like the James Legge translation I provided on Two Dreams, or if you're drawing from your own personal experience of each hexagram and line, it's helpful to see how things played out exactly as they said they would.
You got Hexagram 56.6 for your 3 pm hour and you did end up burning a bridge, just like the line indicated.
Or you got Hexagram 55.6 and found yourself isolating at 5 pm, even when you didn't want to choose the accompanying loneliness. But at least it all 'made sense' that that's what happened.
Using a good translation, like James Legge's, can help you get by and get meaning from your hourly readings, but I do admit that having tens of thousands of readings under your belt helps a bit more.
If you'd like me to do hourly readings for you, check out my On-Call Oracle service offering.
But if you're going it alone, I can tell you that from my experience, I've found the shake-ups easier to stomach when I've seen them spoken through the metaphors and imagery found in the text of the I Ching.
Final Thoughts
If you did an hourly reading for the rest of your waking (and sleeping life), the additional knowledge wouldn't allow your to circumvent your inevitable demise.
We can't eliminate all risk. On the other hand, we can't foresee every satisfying surprise.
Life is about meeting the inherent risk inside of it with as much personal empowerment as we can muster (in my opinion, anyway).
With all of that said, sometimes this additional practice can beat some heedfulness into our sometimes hot-heads, so we can make our lives as un-messy as we possibly can.
And then when it all blows up in our face, at least we can look at our reading that yelled "Hexagram 29!" and remind ourselves that it might have been meant to be.