These first few lines are the general aphoristic returns for the week. They are raw and uninterpreted; there to use how you’d like. (The specific readings follow.)

  • Simplify through renewed innocence.
  • Be receptive and open. 
  • Look for mutualities of attraction.


“M.T.” asks — Lately I’ve been having frequent feelings of fragmentation and disconnection. To me it seems like these feelings are tied to my own perspective rather than to my circumstances. I have been struggling to digest information and connect the different spheres of my life. I feel a desire to reach more of a synthesis, to look past the seeming differences and to connect my intellectual activities and interests with my everyday life. I am part of several communities, but feel unable to contribute to them from these more internal, wordy parts of myself. So my question to you is: how to find a more balanced viewpoint from which I can connect my interests in the written word with my aim to let this feed into the texture of my everyday life?


Since your query was detailed, we thought it best to list the points of concern:

  • feelings of fragmentation and disconnection
  • struggling to digest information
  • desire to connect the different spheres of life, a desire for synthesis
  • wanting to look past seeming differences
  • connect intellectual activities and interests with everyday life
  • find a more balanced viewpoint

Keeping the above in mind while considering your statement “it seems like these feelings are tied to my own perspective rather than to my circumstances” — clear return arises. Nothing and no one is unconnected; all that has come before, all that is coming and all that is around and within us, are wholly interrelated. At all times, all of us are influencing and being influenced (we are permeable and have effect).  

There is a very strong intimation to be receptive to connections. You have perhaps leaned to much on a closed loop of logic.

This is not to say that the chain of circumstance is obvious or can be specifically or consciously understood (it’s clearly all too complex). But to have a better relationship with this transcendental mutuality, one must try to become more innocent, more vulnerable — not an easy thing to do as life moves. But you must try! Try to scrub the mass of cloudy assumptions that has gathered in your head! 

Remember NONE of us are even close to being as intelligent as we think we are — this should be thought of as a freedom and a step towards balance. 


Complete Reading

This week we pulled the Sun card, reversed. When upright, the symbolism is related to nature in its most pure sense: powerful, fertile, creative radiance. Another important word (when upright) is innocence — the power of the sun, and all it manifests, is without guile — purity in the best sense. When the card is reversed (as it is here) the symbolism points to cloudiness, obstruction — too much accumulated thought and needless sophistication. If you were a boat the card would be telling you that it’s time to scrape off the barnacles and repaint the hull — there’s too much drag, too much cunning and too much needless awareness.

There was only one hexagram, #31, Influence (Wooing); there are no changes. This hexagram seems to say that if you want something, you must be open. Receptivity is key. There is an intimation to look at mutual attractions in the non-human world — for examples of how humans work. Consider the wheel of receptivity between the sun, water and plants — they are receptive and of each other — it is implied that this should be mimicked in the human spirit. “All success depends on the effect of mutual attraction.” “Attraction between affinities is a general law of nature.” From these attractions “we can learn the nature of all beings in heaven and on earth.” “Heaven and earth attract each other and thus all creatures come into being.”