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Gathering Together45
Coming together for a shared purpose; unity and collective effort lead to strength. It's time to rally support and focus on communal goals.
↓ Line 1
Initial sincerity is important, but it must be maintained. Inconsistency leads to confusion. However, reaching out can restore harmony and resolve issues.
↓ Line 4
This line indicates a time of great success and prosperity, free from any fault or blame.
↓ Line 6
There may be sorrow or emotional release, but it is a natural process and carries no fault.
↓ Increase42
Growth and progress: Favorable conditions and efforts lead to increase and success. Be generous, share your gains, and stay humble.
45 Gathering Together
Other titles: Gathering Together, Massing, The Symbol of Gathering into One, Assembling, Congregation, Gathering, Unity, Accord, Making Whole, Focusing, Marshalling One's Forces, Clustering, Finished
Judgment
Legge: When forces are gathering, the King goes to his ancestral temple. For successful progress, maintain firm correctness and see the great man. A large sacrifice brings good fortune -- proceed toward your destination.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Gathering Together . Success. The king approaches his temple. It furthers one to see the great man. This brings success. Perseverance furthers. To bring great offerings creates good fortune. It furthers one to undertake something.
Blofeld: Gathering Together -- success! The King approaches the temple. It is advisable to see a great man, which will ensure success. Persistence in a righteous course brings reward. Great sacrifices are offered -- good fortune! [These were religious sacrifices, but they may be taken to mean that the time has come for us to make important sacrifices of another sort.] It is favorable to have in view a goal (or destination).
Liu:Gathering. Success. The king attends the temple. It is of benefit to see the great man; this leads to success. Continuance benefits. Offering a great sacrifice leads to good fortune. It benefits one to go somewhere.
Ritsema/Karcher:Clustering, Growing. The king imagines possessing a temple. Harvesting: visualizing Great People. Growing. Harvesting Trial. Availing-of the great: sacrificial-victims significant. Harvesting: possessing directed going. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of collecting and assembling. It emphasizes that bringing people and things together through a common feeling or goal is the adequate way to handle it...]
Shaughnessy: Finished: The king enters into the temple; beneficial to see the great man; receipt; beneficial to determine. Using the great animal offering is auspicious; beneficial to have someplace to go.
Cleary (1): Gathering is developmental. The king comes to have a shrine. It is beneficial to see a great person; this is developmental. It is beneficial to be correct. It is good to make a great sacrifice. It is beneficial to go somewhere.
Cleary (2):Gathering is successful. The king goes to his shrine. It is beneficial to see a great person; this leads to success, etc.
Wu: Congregation indicates that the king comes to his ancestral temple. It will be advantageous to see the great man. There will be pervasion, if persevering. It will be auspicious to use big sacrificial animals in the offerings. It will be good to have undertakings.
The Image
Legge: A marsh above the earth -- the image of Contraction. The superior man, in accordance with this, assembles his weapons in readiness for unseen contingencies.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Over the earth, the lake: the image of Gathering Together. Thus the superior man renews his weapons in order to meet the unforeseen.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes a marshy lake rising above the earth. The Superior Man gathers together his weapons in order to provide against the unforeseen. [This is a time when foresight is required of us, too.]
Liu: The lake on the earth symbolizes Gathering. The superior man keeps his weapons prepared to meet the unexpected.
Ritsema/Karcher: Above marsh with-respect-to earth. Clustering. A chun tzu uses eliminating arms to implement. A chun tzu uses warning, not precautions.
Cleary (1): Moisture rises onto the earth, gathering. Thus do superior people prepare weapons to guard against the unexpected. [When practitioners of the Tao get to where the five elements are assembled and have been returned to the source, when everything acquired is obedient to their will, if they do not know how to prevent danger and take perils into consideration, eventually what has been gathered will again disperse, and they will not be able to avoid the trouble of losing what has been gained… “Weapons” means the tools of wisdom, the work of silent operation of spiritual awareness. When the primordial has been congealed, it is not subject to injury by acquired conditioning, but it is still necessary to dissolve the influence of personal history before nature and life can be stabilized. If there is any remaining contamination, eventually conditioning will reassert itself and the primordial will again become fragmented. Therefore the work of guarding is indispensable.]
Wu: The marsh is above the earth; this is Congregation . Thus the jun zi causes the nation to be armed in preparation for contingencies.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: Contraction shows massing for union through Cheerfulness and Obedience. The dynamic line is responded to in his ruling central place, hence the idea of union. With the utmost piety the king presents his offerings to the spirits in his ancestral temple. Union with the great man is effected through correctness. The law of heaven demands a sacrifice. Contemplation of the way forces are gathered shows us the way of heaven, earth and all of nature.
Legge:Contractionmeans collecting together, or things so collected. The hexagram deals with the union between the ruler and his ministers -- between high and low in the kingdom. This state is to be preserved through the influence of religion and the great man, who is a kind of philosopher king who meets the spirits of his ancestors in the temple. Whatever he does will succeed because he is correct and right, and his great sacrifices are in harmony with the times.
The two trigrams represent Docility and Cheerfulness. The dynamic fifth line has his proper magnetic correlate in line two -- which gives the idea of union. Ch'eng-tzu says that the ordinances of heaven are simply the natural and practical outcome of heavenly principle.
A marsh above the earth must be kept in by dykes -- so the Contraction must be preserved by precautionary measures, the chief of which is to be prepared to resist attack from without, and to quell internal rebellion.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: Forces are assembling for integration -- focus inward, sacrifice your autonomy and allow the Self to guide the Work.
The Superior Man pulls himself together to face the unknown and preserve the Work. “Forewarned is forearmed.”
Psychologically, Contraction depicts a time when inner components of the psyche assemble for recombination into a new pattern. It is significant that this is the time when “the king goes to his ancestral temple.” That is, the governing intelligence turns toward the template or ideal image of the Work as it exists in its consummate state. (See commentary on hexagram number fifty-nine, Expansion, for further discussion of the symbolism of the ancestral temple.) If the gathering forces integrate in conformity with this archetype, the Work is thereby advanced.
He, therefore, who perceives himself to associate with God, will have himself the similitude of Him. And if he passes from himself as an image to the archetype, he will then have the end of his progression. Plotinus
In addition to being a gestalt of future perfection, the temple is the home of the ancestors: a karmic repository of all that has gone into the Work via the will and intent of former historical ego-personalities. This archetype of "the ancestors" is described by the Lakota shaman, Black Elk, in his Great Vision. Note that the "grandfathers and grandmothers" are present when the people are "walking in a sacred manner" -- i.e., conforming to the ideal archetypal pattern of the Work:
But I was not the last; for when I looked behind me there were ghosts of people like a trailing fog as far as I could see -- grandfathers of grandfathers and grandmothers of grandmothers without number. And over these a great Voice -- the Voice that was the South -- lived, and I could feel it silent. And as we went the Voice behind me said: "Behold a good nation walking in a sacred manner in a good land!"
The Ancestral Temple then, symbolizes the Work in progress as it exists outside of temporal awareness. At death the karmic complexes of the psyche, released from their spacetime ego-body, assume new configurations in hyperspace in accordance with the accomplishments of the just completed lifetime. Ideally, the ancestors and their heirs (choices and their consequences) within the Ancestral Temple undergo purification: this is what Individuation (the Work) is all about.
At the end of the dying process consciousness divides into the consciousness of one's parents and one’s children, and then it moves through these modalities, and then divides again. It's moving forward into the future through the people who come after you, and backward into the past through your ancestors. Terence McKenna --The Archaic Revival
In the multidimensional realms "beyond" our material world, time does not exist. In some way unimaginable to us, past, present and future are consolidated into an eternal Here and Now. Thus our choices in spacetime can have consequences in hyperspace which are inconceivable to us in the current situation. So if the Self (as manifested in the oracle) often seems to be tyrannically unreasonable, it is arguably because of the ego's dimensional myopia.
The Spirit ... may know the most violent love and hatred possible, for it can see the remote consequences of the most trivial acts of the living, provided those consequences are part of its future life. In trying to prevent them it may become one of those frustrators dreaded by certain spirit mediums. It cannot, however, without ... assistance ... affect life in any way except to delay its own rebirth. With that assistance it can so shape circumstances as to make possible the rebirth of a unique nature. W. B. Yeats --A Vision
Such conceptions of cause and effect seem irrational to ordinary awareness, yet quantum physicists hypothesize future events which affect the present as well as the past. The idea is not a new one:
Indeed, the hero of Hebrew myth is not only profoundly influenced by the deeds, words and thoughts of his forebears, and aware of his own profound influence on the fate of his descendants; he is equally influenced by the behavior of his descendants and influences that of his ancestors. Thus King Jeroboam set up a golden calf in Dan, and this sinful act sapped the strength of Abraham when he pursued his enemies into the same district a thousand years previously. Graves and Patai --Hebrew Myths
Should the ego's choices and their consequences not conform to the Self's intent, a rather cancerous growth is implied in which dynamic and magnetic forces are improperly consolidated -- in I Chingterms, dynamic and magnetic are mismatched. Through this "infidelity" of correlates the Work is thus adulterated and falls short of the archetypal ideal.
That the greatest effects come from the smallest causes has become patently clear not only in physics but in the field of psychological research as well. How often in the critical moments of life everything hangs on what appears to be a mere nothing! Jung -- The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales
Contraction is a compression inward toward a center. Psychologically, this can be regarded as an integration of complexes. Once the implosion completes itself, it is implied that the growth cycle reverses itself to expand away from the center. (Cf., hexagram number fifty-nine, Expansion, in which the ancestral temple is also mentioned.) The following hexagram, Pushing Upward,is the inverse of this one, and depicts a similar upward expansion of energy.
The archetypal themes displayed here are those of Solve et coagula, Implosion-Explosion, Contraction-Expansion, Black Hole-White Hole, Day and Night of Brahma, etc.
Line 1
Legge: The first line, magnetic, shows its subject with a sincere desire for union, but unable to carry it out, so that disorder is created. If she cries out for help to her proper correlate, all at once her tears will give place to smiles. She need not mind the temporary difficulty; as she goes forward, there will be no error.
Wilhelm/Baynes: If you are sincere, but not to the end, there will sometimes be confusion, sometimes gathering together. If you call out, then after one grasp of the hand you can laugh again. Regret not. Going is without blame.
Blofeld: When sincerity (or confidence) does not remain until the last, dispersal and assembling will alternate. There was a cry, but one reassuring clasp of the hand made him ready to laugh [Perhaps we shall experience an unnecessary fright] -- no cause for anxiety. Advancing now will entail no error.
Liu: In the beginning sincerity, later change. Disorder and gathering alternate. If you cry out, after grasping someone's hands you will smile again. No fear. Go with no blame.
Ritsema/Karcher: Possessing conformity, not completing. Thereupon disarraying, thereupon Clustering. Like an outcry, the-one handful activates laughing. No cares. Going without fault.
Shaughnessy: There is a return that does not end, but then is disordered and then
finished. It is as if he cries out, one room in laughter; do not pity them; in going there is no trouble.
Cleary (1): Having sincerity that is not conclusive, there is disorder and mobbing. If you cry, in a moment it’ll turn to laughter; don’t grieve. To go is blameless. [ This is gathering in the sense of reforming error and returning to correctness.]
Cleary (2): There is trust, but it does not last to the end. There is disorder and mobbing. If you cry, laughter is mixed in. Do not worry; it is blameless to go.
Wu: He has confidence, but does not keep it long. He is perplexed about the congregation. If he calls for help, he will soon find himself holding hands with his friend and smiling. He should not be worried. Going ahead will be blameless.
Hua Ching-Ni: Even if one has unquestionable sincerity, the correct purpose of the gathering may not be clearly understood. Confusion may arise. Clarity and order are brought about by patience, firmness and the demonstrated sincerity of the group. Then the gathering becomes a happy one. There is nothing wrong. Proceed.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: Her mind and aim are thrown into confusion. Wilhelm/ Baynes: The will is in confusion. Blofeld: Alternating dispersal and assembly betoken indecision. Ritsema/Karcher: One's purpose disarrayed indeed. Cleary (2): Confusion of mind. Wu: Because he wavers.
Legge: Line one is magnetic in a dynamic place. Her proper correlate is line four, but they are separated by the intervention of two magnetic lines. The consequence is shown in the first part of the symbolism. But she is possessed with the desire for union, which is the theme of the hexagram, and by calling out to her correlate she obtains help. Sorrow is thereby turned to joy.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: At the outset, the man desires union. But confusion and indecision exist because he is separated from his associates. He calls for help, which is provided, thereby transforming distress into joy.
Wing: Your hesitation to fully unite with others and make a commitment to shared goals creates indecision in your life. Only by penetrating to the center will you resolve this problem. Locate the leader or central compelling force. If you ask for help now you will receive it.
Editor: The image here is one of indecisive confusion which can only be resolved by making a proper connection. This line often refers to your lack of confidence in making proper choices related to the Work -- sometimes a crisis of faith in the Work itself is implied.
To be born as a human being is a privilege, according to the Buddha's teaching, because it offers the rare opportunity of liberation through one's own decisive effort, through a "turning-about in the deepest seat of consciousness..." W.Y. Evans-Wentz --The Tibetan Book of the Dead
A. Good intentions can't replace effort -- your heart is in the right place, but you need to make some necessary connections to achieve your goal. Pull yourself together.
B. Confusion demands the re-establishment of equilibrium; making a connection leads to accord. Seek appropriate assistance.
Line 4
Legge: The fourth line, dynamic, shows its subject in such a state that, if he is greatly fortunate, he will receive no blame.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Great good fortune. No blame. [This describes a man who gathers people around him in the name of his ruler. Since he is not striving for any special advantages for himself but is working unselfishly to bring about general unity, his work is crowned with success, and everything becomes as it should be.]
Blofeld: Great good fortune and no error!
Liu: Great good fortune. No blame. (But the position is not correct.) [Incorrect behavior breeds trouble.]
Ritsema/Karcher: The great significant, without fault.
Shaughnessy: Great auspiciousness; there is no trouble.
Cleary (1): Great fortune, no fault.
Cleary (2): If there is great good fortune, then there is no blame.
Wu: Great auspiciousness. No error.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: His position is not the proper one to him. Wilhelm/Baynes: For the place demands nothing. [Footnote by C.F. Baynes: "The Chinese text reads literally, ‘The place is not correct.’ Wilhelm's translation follows suggestions of the Chinese commentators."]Blofeld: Because the line, though a firm one, is not in the ruling position. Ritsema/Karcher: Situation not appropriate indeed. Cleary (2): There is no blame only if there is great good fortune, because one is out of place. Wu: He is out of place.
Legge: Line four has his correlate in line one, and he is next to the ruler in line five. We may expect a good auspice for him. Because he is dynamic in a magnetic place caution is intimated.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The man rallies the people to the country's service. This brings good fortune to himself, though he does not actively seek it.
Wing: In this position you gather with others to serve a larger goal. Such sacrifice will meet with personal success.
Anthony: Sometimes in striving for unity, we find it necessary to go alone, with our acts being misunderstood. However, because we work unselfishly to bring about general unity, our work is ultimately successful.
Editor: Note that this line (minus the Confucian commentary) is unambiguously favorable. Line four and the ruler above him are the only yang lines in the hexagram, and since the idea of the figure is the focusing of disparate forces for union, we can think of these parallel lines as the hexagram's "lenses," or focal points. Although dynamic in a magnetic place, if line four abides correctly all will be fortunate. This suggests a kind of passive virtue which attracts devotion, inspires emulation or draws higher energy into the situation without acting itself. A proper ego/Self relationship may be inferred from this. Liu, who usually does not translate the Confucian commentary, here includes it in parenthesis. In contrast to the other translators, his personal commentary is negative. Cleary’s Confucian commentary rationalizes the seeming anomaly.
I have come to know myself, and I have collected myself from everywhere, and I have not sown children to the Archon but have uprooted his roots and have collected the dispersed members, and I know thee who thou art: for I am of those from above. Epiphanius -- Panarion Haeresium 26. 13
A. You're sitting pretty: don't push your luck.
B. “Handsome is as handsome does."
Line 6
Legge: The sixth line, magnetic, shows its subject sighing and weeping; but there will be no error.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Lamenting and sighing, floods of tears. No blame.
Blofeld: Sighs and lamentations, but no error. [We shall be afflicted by distress, but through no fault of our own.]
Liu: Lamentation and deep sighing, with tears from the eyes and dribbling from the nose. No blame.
Ritsema/Karcher: Paying-tribute: sighs, tears, snot. The above not-yet quiet indeed.
Shaughnessy: Snuffling tears and snivel; there is no trouble.
Cleary (1): Sighing and weeping. No blame.
Wu: He is weeping and sniffling. No error.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: She sighs and weeps. She does not yet rest in her topmost position. Wilhelm/Baynes: He is not tranquil at the top. Blofeld: For this top line presages distress. Ritsema/Karcher: The above not-yet quiet indeed. Cleary (2): [This is because of] not being comfortable at the top. Wu: He is uneasy to be in the top position.
Legge: Line six is magnetic and at the extremity of the figure, yet still anxious for union. But she has no proper correlate, and all below are united in line five. Although she mourns her isolation, her good nature will preserve her from error and blame. Resting in the topmost position of the upper trigram of Frivolity she might be expected to abandon the cause of Contraction, but she cannot bear to do it.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The man does not remain inactive in his high position but seeks alliance with another, who misjudges him. He is saddened by the rebuff. But the unity will come eventually as a result of his determination.
Wing: Any approach toward union will meet with rejection. This will bring you frustration because your intentions are misunderstood. Turn your attention inward instead, in order to penetrate the meaning of this disharmony. An inner accord with your Self will strengthen your position, and unity may become possible after all.
Editor: The image suggests the tension of an incomplete synthesis, or a failure due to lack of capacity rather than wrong intent. Ritsema/Karcher translate "snot" as: "YI: mucous from the nose; snivel, whine." The line can sometimes just mean that the Work is often unpleasant and difficult, and sorrow is a natural and not blameworthy response to it.
There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the "thorn in the flesh" is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent. Jung -- Psychology and Alchemy
A. Although the synthesis is incomplete, your goodwill preserves you through the crisis.
B. "You can't win 'em all" -- no need to whine about it.
42 Increase
Other titles: The Symbol of Addition, Gain, Augmenting, Help from Above, Benefit, Advantage, Profit, Expansion
Judgment
Legge: Increase denotes advantage in every movement which shall be undertaken -- it will be advantageous even to cross the great stream.
Wilhelm/Baynes:Increase. It furthers one to undertake something. It furthers one to cross the great water.
Blofeld: Gain. It is favorable to have in view some goal (or destination) and to cross the great water (or sea).
Liu:Increase. It is of benefit to set forth. It is of benefit to cross the great water.
Ritsema/Karcher: Augmenting , Harvesting: possessing directed going. Harvesting: wading the Great River. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of increase and advance. It emphasizes that expanding the quantity and quality of your involvement is the adequate way to handle it. To be in accord with the time, you are told to augment!]
Shaughnessy:Increase:Beneficial herewith to have someplace to go; beneficial to find the great river.
Cleary (1): For Increase, it is beneficial to go somewhere; it is beneficial to cross great rivers.
Wu: Gain indicates an advantage in having undertakings and in crossing a big river.
The Image
Legge: Wind over thunder -- the image of Increase. When the superior man perceives good, he moves toward it; when he perceives his faults, he eliminates them.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Wind and thunder: the image of Increase. Thus the superior man: if he sees good, he imitates it; if he has faults, he rids himself of them.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes wind and thunder. The Superior Man, seeing what is good, imitates it; seeing what is bad, he corrects it.
Liu: Wind and thunder symbolize Increase. When the superior man discovers good, he follows it. When he has errors, he corrects them.
Ritsema/Karcher: Wind, thunder. Augmenting. A chun tzu uses visualizing improvement, by-consequence shifting. A chun tzu uses possessing excess, by-consequence amending.
Cleary (1): Wind and thunder increase. Thus do superior people take to good when they see it, and correct whatever faults they have.
Wu: Wind and thunder make Gain. Thus, when the jun zi sees a good deed, he improves his own at once; when he realizes he is making a mistake, he corrects it at once.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: Increase shows the upper trigram brilliantly decreased to augment the lower. What descends from above reaches to all below, and the satisfaction of the people is without limit. Advantage in movement is shown in the blessings dispensed by the second and fifth lines from their correct positions. The action of Wood shows that it is advantageous to cross the great stream. Through the trigrams of Movement and Humility there is unlimited daily advancement -- heaven dispenses and earth produces, and all proceeds according to the requirements of the time.
Legge: Increase has the opposite meaning to hexagram number forty-one, Compensating Sacrifice [Decrease]. What king Wen had in mind was a ruler or a government operating to dispense benefits to the people and increase their resources. The two important lines in the figure are the correlates two and five. The general auspice of the hexagram is one of being successful in one's enterprises and of overcoming the greatest difficulties.
The formation of the trigrams here is the reverse of that in the preceding hexagram. The people are full of pleasure in the labors of the ruler for their good. "The action of Wood" in the Confucian commentary refers to the upper trigram, which is the symbol of Wind and Wood. From wood boats are made on which the great stream may be crossed. In three hexagrams, this, fifty-nine and sixty-one, in which this is the upper trigram, we find mention made of crossing the great stream. In the Image thunder and wind are seen to increase one another, and their combination gives the idea of Increase.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: Take advantage of your opportunities.
The Superior Man recognizes his duty and rectifies his mistakes. Or: "Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative."
If the ego's sacrifices for the good of the Work are described in the previous hexagram, here we see the inverse image of that figure in which it is the Self who bestows its blessings upon the psyche. The one implies the other -- in the words of an old Blues lyric: "If you don't put somethin' in, you can't get nothin' out..." The forty-first and forty-second hexagrams are intimately related, and in their interaction portray the active progress of the Work. To paraphrase the last sentence of the Confucian commentary: "The Self dispenses and the ego produces, and all proceeds according to the requirements of the time."
If a man continually weighs his actions and aims at the mean, he is in the highest of human ranks. In that way, he will come close to God and will attain what belongs to Him. This is the most perfect of the ways of worship. Maimonides -- Eight Chapters