One can suffice others when one gives them everything they need. taoscopy.com
The Wanderer56
Embrace the journey. Stay adaptable and attentive. Balance independence with humility. Success comes from accepting change and being resourceful.
↓ Line 1
Focus on what is important and avoid distractions to prevent misfortune.
↓ Line 4
Temporary security is achieved, but there is still unease and potential for conflict.
↓ Line 5
Success through skill and precision leads to recognition and advancement.
↓ The Family37
Focus on nurturing harmony in your community or family. Cultivate stability and mutual support by fostering open communication and shared values.
56 The Wanderer
Other titles: The Wanderer, The Symbol of the Traveler, The Exile, Sojourning, The Newcomer, To Lodge, To Travel, Traveling, The Stranger, Strangers, The Traveling Stranger, The Outsider, The Alien, The Gnostic, The Tarot Fool, Wandering, Homeless, Uncommitted, On Your Own, "Can refer to being out of one's element." -- D.F. Hook
Judgment
Legge: Transition means that small attainments are possible. If the traveling stranger is firm and correct, there will be good fortune.
Wilhelm/Baynes:The Wanderer. Success through smallness. Perseverance brings good fortune to the wanderer.
Blofeld:The Traveler -- success in small matters. Persistence with regard to traveling brings good fortune.
Liu: The Exile. Small success. To continue leads to good fortune.
Ritsema/Karcher:Sojourning, the small: Growing. Sojourning, Trial: significant. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of wandering journeys and living in exile. It emphasizes that mingling with others as a stranger whose identity comes from a distant center is the adequate way to handle it...]
Shaughnessy:Traveling. Small receipt. Traveling; determination is auspicious.
Cleary (1): Travel is developmental when small; if travel is correct, it leads to good fortune.
Cleary (2): Travel has a little success. Travel is auspicious if correct.
Wu:Traveling indicates small pervasion. Perseverance will bring auspiciousness.
The Image
Legge: A fire on the mountain -- the image of Transition. The superior man exerts cautious wisdom in his punishments, and does not permit prolonged litigation.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Fire on the mountain: the image of The Wanderer. Thus the superior man is clear-minded and cautious in imposing penalties, and protracts no lawsuits.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes fire upon a mountain. The Superior Man employs wise caution in administering punishments and does not suffer the cases brought before him to be delayed.
Liu: Fire over the mountain symbolizes the Exile. The superior man is careful and clever in imposing punishments, and does not delay the cases brought.
Ritsema/Karcher: Above mountain possessing fire. Sojourning. A chun tzu uses brightening consideration to avail-of punishing and-also not to detain litigating.
Cleary (1): There is fire atop a mountain, transient. Thus superior people apply punishments with understanding and prudence, and do not keep people imprisoned.
Cleary (2): Fire on a mountain – traveling. Etc.
Wu: There is fire on the mountain; this is Traveling. Thus the jun zi exercises the utmost deliberations in exacting punishments such that prisoners will not be detained without cause.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge:Transition indicates that there may be some small attainment and progress -- the magnetic line occupies the central place in the upper trigram, and is obedient to the dynamic lines above and below it. We also have the attributes of Keeping Still connected with Intelligence in the lower and upper trigrams. Hence it is said that there may be some small attainment and progress. If the traveling stranger is firm and correct as he ought to be, there will be good fortune. Great is the time and great is the right course to be taken under these circumstances!
Legge: The written Chinese character for this hexagram denotes people traveling abroad, and is often translated as Strangers. The figure addresses itself to traveling strangers, and tells them how they ought to comport themselves through the cultivation of humility and firm correctness. By means of these they would escape harm, and make progress. The status of traveling stranger is seen as too low to expect great things of them.
It is assumed that the wanderer is in the position of the fifth line. The ideas of humility, docility, calmness and intelligence are derived from the attributes of the component trigrams. These are all characteristics which are proper to a stranger, and are likely to lead to advancement and attainment of his desires. Concerning the Image, K'ung Ying-ta comments: "A fire on a mountain lays hold of the grass, and runs with it over the whole space, not stopping anywhere long, and soon disappearing -- such is the emblem of the traveler."
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: During a Transition, keep your willpower great and your expectations small.
The Superior Man sees clearly and does not embroil himself in complexity. He is clear-minded and cautious in judging the truth of the situation, maintaining detachment from the social milieu.
Wilhelm's translation of the title of this hexagram is The Wanderer. A wanderer is one who has no home, or who is between one home and another. This reminds us of the gnostic notion of the "Alien": the incarnate soul exiled to wander in the space-time dimension (i.e., this world).
The alien is that which stems from elsewhere and does not belong here ... The stranger who does not know the ways of the foreign land wanders about lost; if he learns its ways too well, he forgets that he is a stranger and gets lost in a different sense by succumbing to the lure of the alien world and becoming estranged to his own origin ... The recollection of his own alienness, the recognition of his place of exile for what it is, is the first step back; the awakened homesickness is the beginning of the return. Hans Jonas -- The Gnostic Religion
In the broadest interpretation then, the message in the Judgment: "If the traveling stranger is firm and correct, there will be good fortune" can refer to not becoming entangled in the affairs of this world in which we wander -- an idea emphasized in the first line. Ritsema/Karcher state it explicitly -- defining our challenge as "mingling with others as a stranger whose identity comes from a distant center." This is good general advice for anyone seriously engaged in the Work, since the "distant center" ("God," or the Self) represents the essence we incarnated to serve.
We are strangers in this world, and the body is the tomb of the soul, and yet we must not seek to escape by self- murder; for we are the chattels of God who is our herdsman, and without his command we have no right to make our escape. Pythagorean ethic
In more specific situations, the hexagram symbolizes a transitional phase. Lines two, three and four all depict "Inns" or temporary resting places (commonly experienced in dreams as images of hotels or motels). The symbolism is identical: the psyche is reflecting an interim situation during a state of Transition.
By definition, a transition is fluid and not yet fixed. Depending upon the choices made, one can go in different directions. In terms of consciousness, it is obvious that the transition can be from a lower state of awareness to a higher one, or vice-versa. Because a transition is an opportunity for deliberate choice-making, the Confucian commentary concludes with: "Great is the time and great is the right course to be taken under these circumstances!"
Lines one, three and six depict very negative situations involving ignorant, arrogant choices. We think of the ego blindly pushing the river of its desires, unable to see the unfortunate consequences it thereby engenders. Line two suggests a solid resting place during our journey, while line four depicts a tenuous, though not necessarily incorrect, similar situation. The fifth line counsels a kind of sacrifice to the ruler (the Self) which results in an eventual reward. The message is to let the Self guide you through a Transition.
SUGGESTIONS FOR MEDITATION
Hexagram number fifty-six is the reverse of hexagram number fifty-five. Compare the role of the superior man in the Image of each figure. How are they the same? How are they different? What are the differences and similarities of the component trigrams of each hexagram, and how do they affect their respective meanings?
Notes, August 15, 2009: A new paraphrase of the Judgment and Image:
The Gnostic Alien. Small attainments are possible if the Alien keeps a clear head and maintains his self-discipline. The initiated Adept is intelligent, discreet, and displays vigilant wisdom: he maintains and protects his gnosis via cautious reserve in worldly disputes, eschewing needless contention. [He can do this because he knows that this is an illusory reality: a set-up, a trap, a Loosh factory created by the Demiurge.] A chun tzu uses brightening consideration to avail-of punishing and-also not to detain litigating. [In other words “do the work in the place in which you find yourself” quickly, and efficiently, with as few entanglements as possible under the circumstances. Shun new karma. Implicit is that this experience is preparation for the bodhisattva vow.]
Line 1
Legge: The first line, magnetic, shows the stranger mean and meanly occupied. It is thus that she brings on herself further calamity.
Wilhelm/Baynes: If the wanderer busies himself with trivial things, he draws down misfortune upon himself.
Blofeld: Trifling with unimportant matters, the traveler draws upon himself calamity.
Liu: If the exile dallies with petty matters, he will draw disaster on himself.
Shaughnessy: Traveling so trivially; this is the fire that he has taken.
Cleary (1): Restless in travel, this is the misfortune you get.
Cleary (2): Petty fussing on a journey brings misfortune.
Wu: The traveler complains about trivial things and he is poorly received.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: Her aim has become of the lowest character, and calamity will ensue. Wilhelm/Baynes: Thereby his will is spent, and this is a misfortune. Blofeld: The calamity attendant upon having no will of our own. Ritsema/Karcher: Purpose exhausted, calamity indeed. Cleary (2): The misfortune of frustration. Wu: His small-mindedness causes poor reception.
Legge: Line one is magnetic in a dynamic place at the bottom of the hexagram, thus the unfavorable auspice. The meanness of the first line doesn't arise from the nature of her occupation, but from her mind and aim being emptied of all that is good and ennobling.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: At the outset, the newcomer in a lowly position is occupying himself with disgraceful machinations. His aspirations invite troubles.
Wing: Do not assume a demeaning role in the general situation. Do not pay attention to trivial matters. This is not a way to gain entry into a group or situation. Maintain a dignified attitude about yourself. Through self-abasement you will only invite ridicule.
Editor: Legge's "Mean" is rendered by the other translators as: "trivial,""unimportant," and "petty." The Confucian commentaries are translated as a failure of willpower which brings about disaster. Implied is loss of purpose and hence of being unclear or ignorant of the situation at hand.
All men, from birth onward, live more by sensation than by thought, forced as they are by necessity to give heed to sense impressions. Some stay in the sensate their whole life long. For them, sense is the beginning and end of everything. Good and evil are the pleasures of sense and the pains of sense; it is enough to chase the one and flee the other. Those of them who philosophize say that therein wisdom lies. Like big earthy birds are they, prevented by their bulk from rising off the ground even though they have wings. Plotinus --The Enneads
A. Don't waste your energy on unimportant matters.
B. "Trivial pursuit."
Line 4
Legge: The fourth line, dynamic, shows the traveler in a resting place, having also the means of livelihood and the axe, but still saying: "I am not at ease in my mind."
Wilhelm/Baynes: The wanderer rests in a shelter. He obtains his property and an ax. My heart is not glad.
Blofeld: The traveler reaches a place where he obtains the money needed for his expenses, yet laments that there is no joy in his heart. [Were we to travel or continue to travel now, though material difficulties would not arise, we should not experience any happiness.]
Liu: The exile finds rest in a sanctuary. He regains his valuables. He is not happy in his heart.
Ritsema/Karcher: Sojourning, tending-towards abiding. Acquiring one's own emblem-ax. My heart not keen.
Shaughnessy: In traveling, staying put, he gets his goods and ax; my heart is not happy.
Cleary (1): Traveling in the right place, one obtains resources and tools, but one’s heart is not happy.
Wu: The traveler rests in his lodge. He has the amenities, but he is not at ease.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: Although in a resting place, he has not got his proper position. Even with a livelihood and an axe his mind is not at ease. Wilhelm/Baynes: He has not yet obtained his place. He is not yet glad at heart. Blofeld: His wandering to that place is indicated by the unsuitable position of this line; his obtaining money for expenses brings him no joy. Ritsema/Karcher: Not-yet acquiring the situation indeed. The heart not-yet keen indeed. Cleary (2): One has not gotten a position. One’s heart is not yet happy. Wu: His position is improper. He is still not at ease.
Legge: Line four is dynamic, but in a magnetic place. Hence, although he is without a lodging-house, he does have a shelter which is not very secure. He can use the axe for defense, but is still uneasy in his mind. The K'ang-hsi editors observe that the mention of the axe makes us think of caution as a quality desirable in a wanderer.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: Although the inferior man finds a resting place and a means of livelihood, his aspirations are greater than his capabilities. He remains ill at ease, a stranger in a strange environment.
Wing: Though you are on your way toward the attainment of your goals, you are constantly aware that you have not arrived. This state of mind leaves you feeling uneasy -- knowing you must move on, and yet anxious to protect and hold intact that which you have already accomplished.
Editor: Here the wanderer is "camping out," so to speak -- occupying a temporary position during a transition. The axe, analogous to the sword (or any metallic cutting instrument), can symbolize mental discrimination. (Cf. The suit of swords in the Tarot.) The image is of one who has the power to comprehend his situation and the resources to advance to a new position, yet is still in a very tenuous and ill-defined state of being. The issue could go either way.
This realization is extremely important from a practical standpoint, for it implies that only constant attention to the unconscious, an inner devoted tribute, is sufficient to enlist its cooperation. The unconscious realms cannot be analyzed away, cannot be defeated in battle, but, at best, by conscious confrontation, can be taken into account within the limits of one's individual capacity. E.C. Whitmont --The Symbolic Quest
A. A synthesis is only tentative -- gains are vulnerable to loss.
B. Consolidate and defend your position. You have all you need, but could lose it.
C. An incomplete idea or concept needs nourishment and careful discrimination to make it secure.
Line 5
Legge: The fifth line, magnetic, shows its subject shooting a pheasant. She will lose her arrow, but in the end she will obtain praise and a high charge.
Wilhelm/Baynes: He shoots a pheasant. It drops with the first arrow. In the end this brings both praise and office.
Blofeld: While pheasant shooting, he loses an arrow. In the end he wins praise and attains to office. [After suffering a small loss, we shall receive considerable benefits from those above us.]
Liu: He shoots a pheasant, losing one arrow. In the end he gains honor and position.
Shaughnessy: Shooting the pheasant, one arrow is gone; in the winter he is thereby presented a command.
Cleary (1): Shooting a pheasant, one arrow is lost; eventually one is entitled, because of good repute.
Cleary (2): ... Ultimately one is lauded and given a mandate.
Wu: He shoots a pheasant, but loses an arrow. Eventually he receives a conferment of praise.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: She has reached a high place. Wilhelm/Baynes: In the end he rises through praise and office. Blofeld: Both of these are bestowed from above. Ritsema/ Karcher: Overtaking the above indeed. Cleary (2): Reaching the highest. Wu:“Eventually he receives a conferment of praise” from his superior.
Legge: Although magnetic, the fifth line is in the center of the upper trigram of Clarity and Intelligence. She is the ruler of the trigram and the dynamic fourth and sixth lines loyally defend and help her. She shoots a pheasant. When an officer was traveling abroad in ancient times, the gift of introduction at any feudal court was a pheasant. The wanderer is here praised by her friends and exalted to a place of dignity by the ruler to whom she is acceptable. Note that the idea of the fifth line being the ruler's seat is dropped here as being alien to the idea of the hexagram.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Siu: The man succeeds in his task and receives the recognition and praise of his friends. They recommend him to the prince, who accepts his services in a highly responsible position.
Wing: It may be that you must establish a place for yourself in altogether new territory. Be mindful of your approach. Modesty and generosity in the beginning will be rewarded with position and acceptance. Success is indicated.
Editor: There is some ambiguity in the various interpretations of this line. Some say that the fifth line is the seat of the ruler, though the logic of the symbolism suggests that since the ruler bestows favors on the subject of the line, he must be elsewhere. Wilhelm says that line four represents the wanderer's friends, and line six represents the high place to which she is promoted. As a bird, the pheasant is a creature of air, or mental realm, hence symbolic of an idea, concept or thought. Here the thought is given (sacrificed) to the ruler or Self. The arrow here suggests aspiration or intent: to perceive a goal or target (the pheasant) and make it one's own. However, the arrow is lost, and the quarry is given to the ruler in a gesture of fealty. In the end this results in a reward for the wanderer. All of these images suggest a kind of willing sacrifice which one may not completely understand, but which will eventually result in an ample reward.
Intellectually the Self is no more than a psychological concept, a construct that serves to express an unknowable essence which we cannot grasp as such, since by definition it transcends our powers of comprehension. It might equally well be called the "God within us." The beginnings of our whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted in this point, and all our highest and ultimate purposes seem to be striving towards it. Jung -- Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
A. Your aspiration exceeds your comprehension. Sacrifice a small reward now and receive a big one later on.
B. Sacrifice your need to understand. Have faith in the Work.
37 The Family
Other titles: Family Life, Clan, Home, Linkage, Dwelling People, The Psyche, "May indicate a situation where the family can and should help." -- D.F. Hook
Judgment
Legge: For the regulation of The Family, what is most advantageous is that the wife be firm and correct.
Wilhelm/Baynes: The Family . The perseverance of the woman furthers.
Ritsema/Karcher: Dwelling People. Harvesting: woman Trial. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of living and working with others in a common space. It emphasizes that caring for your relation with those who share this space and for the space itself is the adequate way to handle it. To be in accord with the time, you are told to: dwell with people!]
Shaughnessy: Family members: Beneficial for the maiden to determine.
Cleary (1): For people in the home it is beneficial that the woman be chaste. [In the human body, the vitality, spirit, soul, psyche, and intent all belong to yin and all take orders from the human mentality … When you refine away the human mind, the mind of tao spontaneously becomes manifest.]
Wu:The Family indicates that it is advantageous for a woman to be persevering. [This is a hexagram with its emphasis on women. Both constituent trigrams are feminine … Hence those who endeavor to be firm and correct will have advantages.]
The Image
Legge: Wind rising out of fire -- the image of The Family. The superior man speaks the truth and is consistent in his behavior.
Wilhelm/Baynes: Wind comes forth from fire: The image of The Family. Thus the superior man has substance in his words and duration in his way of life.
Blofeld: This hexagram symbolizes wind rising from fire. The Superior Man's speech is full of substance and he behaves with constancy.
Liu: The wind coming out of the fire symbolizes The Family. The speech of the superior man should have substance, and his conduct be enduring.
Ritsema/Karcher: Wind originating-from fire issuing-forth. Dwelling People. A chun tzu uses words to possess beings and-also movement to possess perseverance.
Cleary (1): Wind emerges from fire, members of a family. Thus is there factuality in the speech of superior people, consistency in their deeds.
Cleary (2): … Developed people are factual in speech, consistent in action.
Wu: Wind comes forth from fire; this is The Family. Thus the jun zi speaks with facts and acts with perseverance.
COMMENTARY
Confucius/Legge: In Family the wife is in her correct place in the lower trigram, and the husband in his correct place in the upper. That spouses occupy their correct positions shows the correct relationship between heaven and earth. The parents rule the family: let the father indeed be father, and the son son; let the elder brother be indeed elder brother, and the younger brother younger; let the husband indeed be husband, and the wife wife -- then the family will be in its correct state. Bring the family to that state, and all under heaven will be established.
Legge: The written Chinese character for Family simply means "a household," or "the members of a family." The lesson of the hexagram is the regulation of the family, effected by the cooperation of the husband and wife in their several spheres, and only needing it to become universal to secure the good order of the kingdom. The important place accorded to the wife is seen in the short sentence in the Judgment -- that she be firm and correct, and do her part well is essential for the family's proper regulation.
The wife is represented by line two and the husband is her proper correlate in line five. The relationship between heaven and earth is analogous to the relationship between husband and wife.
The second sentence of the Confucian commentary, more closely rendered, would be: "That in the family there is an authoritative ruler is a way of naming father and mother." This means that the assertion of authority in a family should be a correct balance of force and gentleness.
Anthony: The Family symbolizes correct relationships between people – the family unit, the spiritual family (the Sage and the student), and human groups generally. When these most basic relationships are correct, the world is made correct through the force of inner truth, through cultivation of the feminine component of our nature, and through persevering in a virtually menial position (from our ego’s viewpoint) so that our work can come to fruition. All this means to forgo striving and self-assertion, and to allow ourself to be led, while persevering in gentleness and devotion to our path.
NOTES AND PARAPHRASES
Judgment: For the correct regulation of the psyche, what is most important is that the ego must be firm and correct.
The Superior Man lives his allegiance to the ideals of the Work.
Applying the Hermetic Axiom: "as above, so below," the relationships within a family are analogous to the relationships within a city-state, or a kingdom, and vice- versa:
Society centuries before the time of Confucius had been organized on the basis of family. In the early days of the Chou dynasty fiefs had been allotted to the feudal lords in a system of planned colonization. These feudal lords, linked to one another and to the royal house by marriage ties, took their families, retainers, peasants, artisans and soldiers to form self-sufficient colonies based on an agricultural economy and governed from well-fortified walled cities. These large family groupings of the nobility were preserved only so long as the relationships of parents to children, brothers to brothers, and masters to servants were effectively controlled. D.H. Smith -- Confucius
If the ideal city is like a family, then the analogy also holds for an individual -- here the comparison goes directly from city to psyche:
Have we any greater evil for a city than what splits it and makes it many instead of one? Or a greater good than what binds it together and makes it one? ... Then is that city best governed which is most like a single human being? Plato -- The Republic
Psychologically interpreted, the hexagram of The Family symbolizes the psyche, and the Confucian commentary tells us that when its inner components all assume their proper roles and functions, then the Work will come into fruition. ("All under heaven will be established.") The identical idea has been stated in Gnostic thought:
Jesus said to them: "When you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in the place of an image, then shall you enter the Kingdom. The Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas
The husband is the analogue of heaven or the Self, and the wife is the analogue of earth or the ego. When the ego assumes its correct role as the magnetic servant of the Work, then inner transformations can take place. I have paraphrased the Judgment in terms of the necessity of the ego to follow the dictates of the Work, but one could alternately phrase it in terms of keeping emotional responses under control. For the wife to be "firm and correct" is to ensure that emotions, drives and appetites are not allowed to make decisions -- they are servants, not masters. This is the essence of the Work, and arguably the most reiterated idea in theI Ching.
The patient should be encouraged to use his mind, through observation and discrimination, to bring clearly into his awareness the irrational aspect of his drives and emotions, and also the possible drawbacks and harmfulness to himself and others of their uncontrolled manifestation … To act on the spur of an impulse, a drive or an intense emotion can very often produce undesirable effects which one afterwards regrets … Therefore, he should learn – by repeated experiment and effort – to “insert” between impulse and action a stage of reflection, of mental consideration of a situation, and of critical analysis of his impulse, trying to realize its origin, its source. R. Assagioli – Psychosynthesis
The thirty-seventh hexagram teaches us that the way to manage the emotions is no different than the proper management of aFamily. No wise parent can teach a child self-discipline by adopting the child's point of view: permissiveness, either with our children or our own primitive drives and passions, is a sure formula for disintegration. The Work demands that the ego hold the line on this issue -- indeed, it is the ego's only legitimate function.
We are dominated by everything with which our [ego] becomes identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we disidentify ourselves. R. Assagioli -- Psychosynthesis