Core and satellites (Loi va Ve tinh)

The core of the Yi is the outcome together with the timing of that outcome; the satellites are the pieces of information appearing in the hexagram. This information will not necessarily appear in every hexagram, nor will every hexagram report the same kind of information; rather it appears in the order of what is pressing for the matter.

The “fill in the blank” trap

Someone takes a new job: for this person, meeting a legal misfortune will take priority over being liked by colleagues. Because there are only 6 lines, the whole picture is not reported, and the use of the Yi also lies in the quality of “many”. If the information in the first hexagram does not satisfy, one can go on with further hexagrams to ask directly about the outcome one needs to know. Say the first hexagram does not report the salary, but one needs to know it in order to choose how to negotiate: then ask a new hexagram with Wealth as the Target line. Trying to find every piece of information one wants in the first hexagram will drop one into the “fill in the blank” trap, that is, looking for the answer to a question that has no answer; and then, because one believes the answer exists, one will think up an answer and believe it. This leads to a formula that will not hold in another case, and if one clings to that formula, one falls into a black hole with no way out — this can be seen as a trap of knowledge.

Questions with no answer yet

Questions do not necessarily have an answer as of now. There are many questions whose real answer is only known with the help of other things that the future supplies. Take the shape of the earth: only much later were people sure the shape was not what it was once thought. At that earlier time the answer did not exist because knowledge did not allow it — people had not yet passed beyond the atmosphere. The earth's shape was still guessed from the ground underfoot: some saw it flat and guessed a plane, some saw it curved and guessed a sphere. Because there is only one earth, it came to no more than argument; but other matters are not quite like that. A chicken is an animal; an animal is not necessarily a chicken. If one applies a formula for determining what an animal is, drawn from the chicken, then on reaching the elephant it cannot be settled; and if one then determines what elephant and chicken have in common to find a formula, on reaching the eagle it must be drawn again. That information can be seen as satellites; in substance it is the core. Making a dark area and believing in it, or not believing in it, both create resistance along the road, if one means to go far.

Reconsidering

Reconsidering is always necessary, because it took a long time to go from the hypothesis that the earth is a sphere to the certainty of it. However, always remember that a hypothesis can be wrong; reality is not a proposition that goes as one wishes. Reconsidering old books, or earlier knowledge, is entirely right, because each age differs. In the old days there were no telephones, no aeroplanes, which is why the Target lines corresponding to those two only appeared later. But stay wary: the attitude of the inventor is not the right attitude for the scholarly road. Right a few times, one takes oneself for a revolutionary and denies everything old, and will surely fall into a black-and-white situation, where all that is old is wrong and all that is new is right. But the old has its right parts too: for it to have survived until now there must be a reason for that vitality — do not look down on the ancients. It is only that the constraint of their age left the ancients without the conditions to think broadly, or to meet enough situations to draw out correct formulas. Deny what is right and there will come a time of contradicting this contradiction, and so of error. The road is long, it need not be straight, but the walking is always interesting; right or wrong, do not keep it to yourself.

See also

• Target line (Yong Shen)
• Adaptable Target line (Thong Bien)
• The break in the Yi (Tinh dut gay)
• Principles of reading a hexagram

— Bốc Dịch Đại Toàn, Vi Nhật Sơn · bocdichvotranh.com