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The Cauldron50
Transformation and nourishment lead to inner and outer change. Embrace renewal by discarding the old and refining the new.
↓ Line 1
The beginning of a process of transformation. It is beneficial to clear away the old to make way for the new.
↓ Line 4
A warning of potential failure due to instability or lack of support. Care must be taken to avoid disaster.
↓ Line 6
The culmination of efforts leads to great success and recognition. Everything is favorable.
↓ Peace11
Harmony and prosperity arise when opposites attract and balance is maintained. Positive energies are in alignment, and collaborative efforts lead to growth and advancement. Embrace peace and cooperation for continued success.
50 The Cauldron
Other titles: The Cauldron, The Vessel, Rejuvenation, Cosmic Order, The Alchemical Vessel, "A complete transformation of a person or circumstance." -- D.F. Hook
Judgment
Legge: The Sacrificial Vessel means great progress and success.
Wilhelm/Baynes:The Cauldron. Supreme good fortune. Success.
Blofeld: A Sacrificial Vessel -- supreme success!
Liu:The Cauldron. Great good fortune. Success.
Ritsema/Karcher:The Vessel, Spring significant. Growing. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of the imaginative capacity of a sacred vessel. It emphasizes that securing and imaginatively transforming the material at hand is the adequate way to handle it. To be in accord with the time, you are told to: hold and transform things in the vessel!]
Shaughnessy:The Cauldron: Prime auspiciousness; receipt.
Cleary (1): The cauldron is basically good; it is developmental.
Cleary (2): The Cauldron is very auspiciously developmental.
Wu: The Cauldron indicates great auspiciousness and pervasiveness.
The Image
Legge: Wood under a fire -- the image of a Sacrificial Vessel. The superior man maintains his correctness in every situation to secure the appointment of heaven.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Fire over wood: the image of The Cauldron. Thus the superior man consolidates his fate by making his position correct.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes fire upon wood. The Superior Man, taking his stance as righteousness requires, adheres firmly to heaven's decrees.
Liu: Fire above wood symbolizes the Caldron. The superior man makes his destiny firm with a correct position.
Ritsema/Karcher: Above wood possessing fire. The Vessel. A chun tzu uses correcting the situation to solidify fate.
Cleary (1): There is fire on top of wood; a cauldron. Thus do superior people stabilize life in the proper position.
Cleary (2): Fire over wood -- The Cauldron . Leaders stabilize their mandate by correcting their position.
Wu: There is fire on wood; this is The Cauldron . Thus the jun zi rectifies his position and consecrates the mandate.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: The image of the Sacrificial Vessel shows us wood entering a fire, which suggests the idea of cooking. The sages cooked their sacrifices to God and nourished their able ministers with feasts. We have the trigrams of Flexible Obedience and Quick Intelligence, with the magnetic line advanced to the ruler's place and responded to by her dynamic correlate below. All these things give the auspice of successful progress.
Legge: The written Chinese character for Sacrificial Vessel represents a cauldron with three feet and two "ears" used for cooking and preparing food for both the table and the altar. The hexagram pictures this vessel -- the divided first line represents the feet, the three undivided lines above represent the body, the divided fifth line shows the ears (or carrying rings), and the top line is the handle by which the container is carried or suspended from a hook.
The lesson of the hexagram is that the nourishing of men of talent and virtue intimates great progress and success. The K'ang-hsi editors point out that the distinction between hexagram number forty-eight, The Well, and this one is the difference between the nourishment of the people in general and the specific nourishing of worthy men. They add that the reality of sacrifice is nourishing in this regard.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: You are the Sacrificial Vessel.
The Superior Man holds to the principles of the Work to attain transcendence.
The usual name for this hexagram is The Cauldron -- specifically, a type of food-containing vessel which was used in ancient China for religious sacrifices. I prefer Blofeld’s title of the Sacrificial Vessel as more evocative of the ideas presented in the figure.
When the forty-ninth hexagram of Transformation is turned upside down, it becomes the fiftieth hexagram of the Sacrificial Vessel, thus giving us some valuable insights into the nuances of meaning in each of the figures. The combined ideas of transformation and a cauldron used for sacrifices remind us of the alchemical vessel or retort which "cooked" its contents and transformed them into a higher state of matter -- turned lead into gold in the popular conception. Of course, the true esoteric purpose of the alchemist was psychological, not physical.
The vessel of the alchemists, like the circle of the psyche and the mandala, must be closed if the transformation process is to proceed satisfactorily. For the alchemists, the process took place in the material substances collected in the retort. For us, this is a symbol representing a similar process taking place within the psyche. Thus it is said that a wall must be securely built about the psyche before the reconciliation of the opposites can take place within it, and before the new center of the individual can be created. ... For if anything is lost the process is nullified and the final product will be incomplete, imperfect. So long, for instance, as the individual continues to project his deficiencies, or his values, upon circumstances or upon another, he does not have an impervious vessel ... Thus the contents essentially involved in the transformation are seen to be the irrational, instinctual, not yet human factors of the psyche, the nonego. The human and civilized factors, those subject to the will, make up the wall of the vessel. M.E. Harding -- Psychic Energy
Now an ancient Chinese cauldron used to contain food intended for religious sacrifices is not the same thing as a hermetically sealed alchemical retort made to withstand extreme pressures, but symbolically they are identical images. The ego sacrifices its autonomy for the good of the Work in the same way that the alchemist devotes his entire life to the transformation of base metal into gold -- i.e., to transform his psyche by following the extreme discipline of the Work. Thomas Cleary’s Taoist I-Ching explicitly tells us that this is the meaning intended here:
The work of refinement is the means by which to sublimate earthly energy and stabilize celestial energy, causing the raw to ripen and the old to be renewed, whereby it is possible to illumine the mind and to solidify life. Therefore the cauldron is basically good and it has a developmental path. The basis is the potential of everlasting life of goodness; the cooking of the great medicine in the cauldron is the firing of this living potential to make it incorruptible and permanent. But in this path there is process and procedure; even the slightest deviation and the gold elixir will not form. Therefore people must first thoroughly investigate the true principle. Liu I-ming
SUGGESTIONS FOR MEDITATION
In his commentary Legge mentions that the Chinese see an analogy between this figure and hexagram number forty-eight, The Well. Compare the two figures, noting the similarities between the first, third, fifth and sixth lines. The component trigrams of the Sacrificial Vessel appear in reverse sequence in hexagram number thirty-seven, Family. What other similarities are there in the two figures? How is the idea of a family analogous to the idea of a sacrificial vessel?
Line 1
Legge: The first line, magnetic, shows the cauldron overthrown and its feet turned up. But there will be advantage in getting rid of what was bad in it. Or it shows us the concubine whose position is improved by means of her son. There will be no error.
Wilhelm/Baynes: A cauldron with legs upturned. Furthers removal of stagnating stuff. One takes a concubine for the sake of her son. No blame.
Blofeld: To rid it of decaying remnants of meat, the vessel is turned upside down. [Some actions, though highly improper in themselves, may be properly performed if circumstances so require; a merely ritualistic conception of right and wrong is not desirable.] It is not shameful to take a concubine for the sake of bearing sons. [This is added as an example, immediately acceptable to a traditionally minded Chinese of something improper in itself which becomes proper when the motive is acceptable.]
Liu: A cauldron overturned by its legs -- it is beneficial to clean out the stagnating matter. One takes a concubine to get a son. No blame.
Ritsema/Karcher:The Vessel: toppling the foot. Harvesting: issuing-forth-from obstruction. Acquiring a concubine, using one's sonhood. Without fault.
Shaughnessy: The cauldron's upturned legs; beneficial to expel the bad; getting a consort together with her son; there is no trouble.
Cleary (1): When the cauldron overturns on its base, it is beneficial to eject what is wrong. Getting a concubine, because of her child she is not faulted.
Wu: The cauldron tips over and conveniently spills its stale food, like a man taking a secondary wife because of her son. There will be no error.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: The cauldron is emptied -- this is not incorrect. There will be advantage in getting rid of what was bad so that the subject of the line will thereby follow the more noble subject of line four. Wilhelm/Baynes: This is still not wrong. To follow the man of worth. Blofeld: There is nothing improper about up-ending a sacrificial vessel to rid it of decaying matter. Such actions are necessary in the pursuit of what is noble. Ritsema/Karcher: Not-yet rebelling indeed. Using adhering-to valuing indeed. Cleary (2): That is not bad. To go along with what is valuable. Wu: There is nothing to worry about. The outlook is after prominence.
Legge: Line one is magnetic, and little can be expected from her, but she has a proper correlate in the dynamic fourth line. The overthrow of the cauldron, causing its feet to be turned upward towards the fourth place empties it of what was bad in it. This is deemed fortunate, because it thereby hastens the cooperation between the two lines. A similar idea is that a concubine is less honorable than a wife --like the overthrown cauldron. But if she has a son, while the wife has none, he will be his father's heir, and the concubine-mother will share in the honor of his position.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: At the outset, the evil is being discarded. This opens up opportunities for renewal, no matter how lowly a position the man may temporarily occupy.
Wing: To attain a goal that is worthy in itself, you may need to use means that are considered unorthodox. If this goal has been a long-term objective, you may have to begin again, using entirely new methods. This is not a mistake. You can succeed no matter how inexperienced you are.
Editor: An alchemical vessel is a metaphor for the psyche undergoing the transformation of the Work. To rid the vessel of what is "bad" (Wilhelm calls it "stagnating stuff") is to rid oneself of limiting beliefs, negative emotions or whatever harmful element may be suggested by the matter at hand. After years of work, the testing process becomes increasingly refined -- one goes through long periods of stress with perfect equanimity, and begins to take pride in one's strength of will. At about that point, something will happen to evoke an emotional response, and one becomes suddenly aware that the refining process is not complete until all of the scum comes to the top and is eliminated from the psyche. The symbolism of the concubine suggests a rather humble or simple emotional component, union with which produces a new and promising synthesis.
When this part of the work has been accomplished it is as if the individual had built a psychic container, and this must be done to the very best of his ability, or it may go to pieces when the strains and stresses of the transformation process begin. For there will still remain certain things, and these usually the very darkest, that will come to light when he explores the unconscious ... These blackest shadows, that the alchemists called the state of nigredo, will probably prove to be connected with the unadapted emotions representing the nonpersonal part of the psyche, and it is most painful to realize that they actually exist within oneself. M.E. Harding -- Psychic Energy
A. After ridding oneself of limiting beliefs, a conscious connection with basic principles brings forth new and valuable insights.
B. Expel dross and embrace simplicity.
C. The simplest, least complicated solution is the best one.
D. An image of dealing with unconscious material -- confronting one's hidden issues.
Line 4
Legge: The fourth line, dynamic, shows the sacrificial vessel with its feet broken, and its contents, designed for the ruler's use, overturned and spilled. Its subject will be made to blush for shame. There will be evil.
Wilhelm/Baynes: The legs of the cauldron are broken. The prince's meal is spilled and his person soiled. Misfortune.
Blofeld: The legs of the Ting snap. The prince's food is overturned and his person soiled -- misfortune! [Through gross carelessness an opportunity to advance our interests is not only lost but transformed into an occasion of trouble.]
Liu: The legs of the cauldron are split. The duke's meal is spilled and his face turns red. Misfortune.
Ritsema/Karcher: The Vessel: a severed stand. Overthrowing a princely stew. Its form soiled. Pitfall.
Shaughnessy: The cauldron's broken leg: Overturns the duke's stew; his punishment is execution-in-chamber; inauspicious.
Cleary (1): The cauldron’s legs are broken, spilling the food received for service. The physical being is enriched, but there is misfortune.
Cleary (2): The cauldron breaks its legs, spilling your food; your face drips. This is unfortunate.
Wu: The cauldron’s legs are broken. The duke’s feast is spilled over, resulting in capital punishment. Foreboding.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: How can he be trusted? Wilhelm/Baynes: How can one still trust him? Blofeld: The prince's meal is overturned -- how is it possible to continue enjoying his confidence? Ritsema/Karcher: Wherefore trustworthy thus indeed? Cleary (2): Now that you have spilled your food, what happened to your confidence? Wu: How can there be trust?
The Master said:"Virtue small and office high; wisdom small and plans great; strength small and burden heavy: where such conditions exist, it is seldom that they do not end in evil. As it is said in the I Ching, `The tripod's feet are overthrown, and the ruler's food is overturned. The body of him who is thus indicated is wet with shame: there will be evil.'"
Legge: Line four is the minister charged with difficult duties. Although dynamic, he is in a magnetic position with a magnetic correlate in line one. Weak in himself, and without an able helper, he has failed to do his proper work, and cannot be trusted again.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The man fails to discharge his responsibilities because of personal inadequacies. Great plans supported by limited knowledge, heavy loads by meager strength, high office by weak character -- these result in shame and disaster.
Wing: You do not have the capability to achieve the goals you have in mind. You have not been realistic about your position. You are lacking in either energy, commitment, information, or assistance. Going forth with your plans will invite disaster.
Editor: The image suggests misfortune brought about by inexperience, incompetence, lack of capacity, divided loyalties, willful disobedience, or plain ignorance. In my experience, the line does not necessarily always imply blame: sometimes, with the best will in the world, one just isn't capable of coping with superior forces in a situation. If this is the only changing line, the new hexagram becomes #18, Work on What has been Spoiled, implying that you should clean up the mess you’ve just made.
If you have assumed a character above your strength, you have both acted in this matter in an unbecoming way, and you have neglected that which you might have fulfilled. Epictetus
A. A failure is portended. Only you can determine if blame is involved.
Line 6
Legge: The sixth line, dynamic, shows the cauldron with rings of jade. There will be great good fortune, and all action taken will be in every way advantageous.
Wilhelm/Baynes: The cauldron has rings of jade. Great good fortune. Nothing that would not act to further.
Blofeld: The Ting has jade handles -- great good fortune! [A further improvement on the progress indicated in the preceding note.]
Liu: The cauldron has carrying rings of jade. Great good fortune. Benefit in everything.
Ritsema/Karcher: The Vessel: jade rings. The great significant. Without not Harvesting.
Shaughnessy: The cauldron's jade bar; greatly auspicious; there is nothing not beneficial.
Cleary (1): The cauldron has a jade handle. This is very auspicious, entirely beneficial.
Cleary (2): The jade handle of the cauldron is very auspicious, beneficial to all.
Wu: The cauldron’s carrying pole is decorated with jade. There will be great fortune and nothing disadvantageous.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: The rings of jade are at the very top -- the dynamic and magnetic meet in their due proportions. Wilhelm/Baynes: The jade rings in the highest place show the firm and the yielding complementing each other properly. Blofeld: The first part of the passage is indicated by this top line-- a firm line which meets the yielding fifth harmoniously. Ritsema/Karcher: Solid and supple articulating indeed. Cleary (2): The jade handle is above. Hard and soft join. Wu: The strong and the weak are balanced.
Legge: Line six is dynamic, but his strength is tempered by being in a magnetic place. It is this which makes the handle to be of jade, which, though very hard has a peculiar and rich softness all its own. The auspice of the line is excellent. The Great Minister (line six) performs for the ruler (line five) by helping his government and nourishing the worthy. This is the part that the handle does for the cauldron.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The sage imparts wise counsel to the benefit of the worthy recipient. His gentle and sincere behavior pleases the heavens, which dispense good fortune to all.
Wing: There exists a general atmosphere of clarity and greatness. All circumstances are favorable. The inner self has reached a highly developed stage. Everyone will benefit.
Editor: The top line of a hexagram often represents the sage or holy man. Here the wisdom of the sage is offered to the ruler. Psychologically, the ego is receptive to instruction from its higher Self. The Confucian commentary alludes to the proper union of dynamic and magnetic forces -- this is the Holy Marriage of the Perennial Philosophy. The image suggests the Chinese concept of Li, the character for which combines the ideas of heaven's ordinances with that of a receptive vessel.
The term Li signifies one of the most important concepts in Confucian ethics. [The character] is made up of two elements, one representing influence coming down from heaven, and the other ... representing a sacrificial vessel ... Li came to include all the customary regulations and acknowledged practices which govern social relationships. D.H. Smith --Confucius
A. One is receptive to the highest influence.
B. An image of the harmonious union of thought and feeling.
11 Peace
Other titles: Peace, The Symbol of Successfulness, Prospering, Pervading, Greatness, Tranquility, Prosperity, Conjunction, Major Synthesis, Hieros Gamos, Holy Marriage, "Yang supporting yin and going to meet each other. Good prospects for a marriage or partnership." -- D.F. Hook
Judgment
Legge: Harmony shows the inferior departed and the great arrived. There will be good fortune with progress and success.
Wilhelm/Baynes:Peace. The small departs, the great approaches. Good fortune. Success.
Blofeld: Peace. The mean decline; the great and good approach -- good fortune and success! [In the following hexagram (Divorcement), where the trigrams symbolize heaven and earth in what would appear to be their normal positions, that arrangement is held to be disastrous; whereas here, where they seem to be upside down, everything is propitious. This may be because heaven above earth is held to imply that the two are existing separately without the intercourse which is the root of all growth; whereas here their intercourse is so absolute that heaven is actually supporting earth.]
Liu: Peace. The small is departing, the great is arriving. Good fortune. Success.
Ritsema/Karcher: Pervading . The small going, the great coming. significance Growing. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of prospering and expanding. It emphasizes that continually spreading this prosperity through communicating is the adequate way to handle it...]
Shaughnessy: Greatness: the little go and the great come; auspicious; receipt.
Cleary (1): The small goes, the great comes. This is auspicious and developmental.
Cleary (2):Tranquility … Getting through auspiciously.
Wu:Prosperity shows that the small stays outside and the great stays inside. It will be auspicious and pervasive.
The Image
Legge: The intercourse of heaven and earth -- the image of Harmony.The wise ruler models his laws upon the principles of heaven and earth, and enforces them for the people's benefit.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Heaven and earth unite: the image of Peace. Thus the ruler divides and completes the course of heaven and earth; he furthers and regulates the gifts of heaven and earth, and so aids the people.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes heaven and earth in communion. [The component trigrams illustrate the kind of close intercourse just alluded to. This is surely the only way of depicting it under the circumstances, for any mingling of their component lines would produce quite different trigrams having no reference to heaven and earth.] It is as though a mighty ruler, by careful regulation of affairs, has brought to fruition the way of heaven and earth. In harmony with the sequence of their motions, he gives help to people on every hand.
Liu: Heaven and earth are unified, symbolizing Peace. The ruler reforms and completes the way of heaven and earth; He observes the appropriate methods of heaven and earth to direct the people.
Ritsema/Karcher: Heaven and Earth mingling. Pervading. The crown-prince uses property to accomplish Heaven and Earth's tao. The crown-prince uses bracing to mutualize Heaven and Earth's propriety. The crown-prince uses the left to right the commoners.
Cleary (1): When heaven and earth commune, there is tranquility. Thus does the ruler administer the way of heaven and earth and assist the proper balance of heaven and earth, thereby helping the people.
Cleary (2): … So as to influence the people.
Wu:Prosperity results from the interaction of heaven and earth. The king uses the wealth of the nation to achieve the ways of heaven and earth and to support their designs, so as to bring the sentiments of the people to the center.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: Harmony shows the union of heaven and earth, and all things consequently united -- high and low, superior and inferior are all in accord. The lower trigram is made up of dynamic lines, and the upper of magnetic lines: strength is within, devotion is without; the superior man is inside and increasing, the inferior man is outside and decreasing.
Legge: The Judgment refers to the structure of the hexagram, with the three dynamic lines below, and the three magnetic lines above. The former are "the great," active and vigorous; the latter are "the inferior," passive and yielding. In many editions of theI Chingbeneath the hexagram of Harmonythere appears hexagram number fifty-four,Propriety, which becomes Harmonyif the third and fourth lines exchange places. A situation in which the motive forces are represented by three dynamic, and the opposing by three magnetic lines, must be progressive and successful.Harmonyis called the hexagram of the first month of the natural spring, when for six months the forces of growth are in ascendance.
Canon McClatchie translates: "The Image means that heaven and earth have now conjugal intercourse with each other, and the upper and lower classes unite together."
Ch'eng-tzu says on the Image that a ruler should frame his laws to operate like the seasons, so that the people exist within the structure of a natural rather than an arbitrary order.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: Harmony depicts the waning of egotistical illusions and the waxing of true potential.
The Superior Man allows his inner virtue to rule the psyche.
Without changing lines, Harmony suggests a fruitful union of opposites and consequent state of balance in the matter at hand.
Wilhelm translates the opening phrase of the Confucian commentary as: "Heaven and earth unite." Blofeld renders it: "The celestial and terrestrial forces have intercourse and all things are in communion with one another." Legge has already called attention to McClatchie's version of: "Heaven and earth have now conjugal intercourse with each other."
This image is one of the most universal symbols produced by the human psyche: the sexual union of Spirit and Matter (heaven and earth). This is the hieros gamos or holy marriage of alchemy, the union of Shiva and Shakti in Hinduism, the conjoined male and female deities in tantric Buddhism, the syzygies of Gnosticism and the union of heaven and earth in the Kabbalah.
The notions of the couple and the sacred marriage held a very important place in ancient Chinese religious thinking. Every sacred power was twofold, male and female; but since only one half of the sacred couple was generally enclosed in any one sanctuary, the ritual was directed at reconstituting the whole... The complete being is male and female; since most men neglect or repress their feminine nature, they are out of balance; their male aggressiveness comes to the fore, and their whole vitality suffers. There can be no true Holiness without a prior revitalization of femininity. M. Kaltenmark --Lao Tzu and Taoism
Psychologically, the condition pictured by this hexagram is a metaphor for a high state of integration within the psyche. Here it is described in alchemical and Jungian terminology:
The hermetic vessel is oneself. In it the many pieces of psychic stuff scattered throughout one's world must be collected and fused into one, so making a new creation. In it must occur the union of the opposites called by the alchemists the coniunctio or marriage... (This union), in psychological terms corresponds to man with his feminine soul, the anima, or to a woman with her masculine counterpart, the animus -- the union in each case constituting the inner marriage, the hieros gamos by which the individual must become whole. M.E. Harding --Psychic Energy
To receive this hexagram does not necessarily mean that one has attained such a high integration, but it might indicate a step in that direction. The ultimate hieros gamos only occurs after all of the scattered and mismatched forces within the psyche have been brought together in correct alignment -- in I Ching terms, when all of the lines are in their proper places with proper correlates as imaged in hexagram number 63, Completion. Until this final union there are innumerable "lesser" conjunctions which must first take place -- a fact recognized in tantric yoga:
The final goal of the tantricist is to reunite the two contrary principles -- Shiva and Shakti -- in his own body. When Shakti, who sleeps, in the shape of a serpent, at the base of his body, is awoken by certain yogic techniques, she moves through a medial channel by way of the chakras up to the top of the skull, where Shiva dwells, and unites with him. The union of the divine pair within his own body transforms the yogin into a kind of "androgyne." But it must be stressed that "androgynization" is only one aspect of a total process, that of the reunion of the opposites. Actually, Tantric literature speaks of a great number of "opposing pairs" that have to be reunited. Mircea Eliade -- Myths, Rites, Symbols
The establishment of the " Kingdom of Heaven on Earth" is yet another metaphor for this process of psychic unification. Here is the Kabbalistic version:
It is by the establishment of the celestial on the terrestrial, or of heaven upon earth, that the house of the King (humanity) will become united and the King will rejoice thereat, for then the two kingdoms will become one and then the new and living way will become opened to those who make themselves susceptible and receptive of the Higher and Diviner life... When these two worlds become united and blended together they are symbolized by the union of the male and female, the one being the complement of the other. The Zohar
SUGGESTIONS FOR MEDITATION
Legge points out that many editions of the I Chingassociate hexagram number fifty-four,Propriety, with this figure. What do the changing third and fourth lines ofPropriety imply about the role of the ego in the Work? The traditional name forPropriety is "The Marrying Maiden" -- how does that relate to the concept of the holy marriage in Harmony? Compare the Judgments and Images of the two hexagrams and the role of the superior man in each. Note also the lesson implied when lines two and five in Harmony unite to make hexagram number sixty-three, Completion.