明夷
GUA 36 · MING2 YI
BRIGHTNESS OBSCURED
Overall Image (大象)
The light goes within to the heart of the earth
Brightness Obscured
The noble young one, accordingly, manages the multitude
using darkness, but with intelligence▼
Overall Image (大象)
The light goes within to the heart of the earth
Brightness Obscured
The noble young one, accordingly, manages the multitude
using darkness, but with intelligence
The sun disappears for the night, going elsewhere to shine and giving relief from the heat. The stove is closed up tightly and the glowing coals are banked with earth to maintain the flame through the night. All of those beings who live in the shadows can come out to play. Through civilization’s dark times and ages, wisdom, culture and hope itself might go underground. Intelligence learns of reasons it has to hide, to hold the light in trust for better days to come. Wise ones might be well-hidden, showing few outward signs, guarded in expression, even restrained in acts of good conscience and unadmired by choice. In such hands even ignorance serves the light.
Main Judgment (Brightness Obscured) (卦辞)
Warranting difficult persistence▼
Main Judgment (Brightness Obscured) (卦辞)
Warranting difficult persistence
Dust settles on cultures and civilizations when the golden ages have run their course. Life has managed to tough it out through extremely severe and dark times, and even some mass extinctions, lasting millions of years. So what are a couple of centuries of stupidity and tyrants? The sage may stand in line with the masses, dressed up so the dark one sees nothing, wearing what looks like a noose or a leash, as tractable on the surface as one of the castrated herd. When packaged wisdom is bought and sold he just jingles his coins and lets fall some drool, too bright for the dimwits to see. The tyrant will have no use for this sage’s wisdom. He will not be shown that most precious of all things to point to: an enemy with a clear agenda. Attracting attention, except by misdirection, attracts much of doubtful value. The mother bird may feign a wound, to distract predators from her young, but her first choice is staying hidden. Resistance is avoided: this becomes heat and then light. We do not need to carry the flame if we carry the know-how to get the flame started. We will not need to carry whole cultures, but it’s good to cache the brightest parts. Dark’s greatest foe is time.
Key Words (关键词)
Light, clarity, wisdom, intelligence + hidden, prevented, concealed, suppressed▼
Key Words (关键词)
Light, clarity, wisdom, intelligence + hidden, prevented, concealed, suppressed
Discreet, cloaked, dampened, camouflaged, disguised, censored; go underground Banking, long-term investment, placing assets in durable forms, burying treasure Turning down the flame, banking the coals; withdrawing one’s consent & support Covert intelligence, stealth operations, cloak & dagger scenarios, shadow warriors Self-suppression, repression, making ordinary, dumbing down shrewdly, veiling
Structure & Connections
Structure Class
No Family
This classification indicates the hexagram's role in the 12 Sovereign Cycle (Earthly Branches) or its structural family.
Astrology
note:Sol in Earth
planet:Sun
element:Earth
Tarot
card:Six of Pentacles
suit:Pentacles
Qabalah
note:Tipareth in Assiah
sphere:Tipareth
The Lines
11st • YangBrightness obscured during flight*
Dragging one’s wing
The noble young one in traveling
Goes three days without a meal
When there is somewhere to go
Those in power would gossip▼
1
1st • YangBrightness obscured during flight*
Dragging one’s wing
The noble young one in traveling
Goes three days without a meal
When there is somewhere to go
Those in power would gossip
36.1x The noble young one in traveling:
(Has) reasons not to eat
In times like these great birds are shot down for sport. Mediocrity is the lord here. The time has not come for rising above, so he droops his wing and waddles away, being unclear and unthreatening, making his tracks not worth covering. Were he to let himself eat here, he might betray the predator’s hunger and thirst. Since gossips will talk anyway, if he says anything now he might plant some well chosen rumors to send them off in a different direction. But he also has a right to stay silent if any thing said can be used against him. While he has somewhere to go, he watches his wake through the masses, adjusting his lights accordingly, to leave no impression or sign. After three days of bad posture, limp handshakes and vacant eyes, he’ll be so happy to be where he’s going, far from main streams, in from the cold, and visible.
22nd • YangBrightness obscured
And wounded in the left leg
But relying on assistance
The horse is strong enough
Promising▼
2
2nd • YangBrightness obscured
And wounded in the left leg
But relying on assistance
The horse is strong enough
Promising
36.2x Six second’s promise:
Compliantly using the givens
He is caught in a trap set for those with less power and light, and wounded in the left thigh. This is more an annoyance than fatal, and note that he’s suffered no wound to his head. He can even use the event to help turn the thing around. He now possesses a limp to assist his disguise, pain to help with his purpose and a slightly used trap as well. Unlike with your arms, you can’t always think of your left leg as the spare. And this gets him thinking about some sort of prosthesis, like that horse over there in the shadows, who needs something useful to do. Suddenly he finds himself with twice the speed and five times the strength as before, and committed now to a new Plan B with ten times the promise of A. This is a function of balance and using all that circumstance offers. The center of the middle path is closest to all the options.
33rd • YangBrightness obscured on the southern winter hunt
Capturing the others’ great leader
This is not a call for a hasty resolution▼
3
3rd • YangBrightness obscured on the southern winter hunt
Capturing the others’ great leader
This is not a call for a hasty resolution
36.3x The southern winter hunt has a purpose
After this (is fulfilled), a great gain
He takes his troops south in the winter to hunt. This is a practice with multiple uses, for training and exercise, not merely for food. But returning at night to those snares he has set, he finds the chief of his foes in the trap, hung upside down and thrashing most furiously, trying to cast some pretty black spells. Such was the good of being so stealthy. But this was no omen from heaven: only a stroke of great luck and not divine justice. Wisdom will not leap from here to exuberance: it might yet restore the darkness and mystery, instead of announcing the news. Great feuds are built up on multiple causes. The dark one still has some pretty mean allies, who might not take this news very well. Best to keep them confused and in darkness, control the light, and then pick them off one at a time. He can still use all that resolve he was saving.
44th • YangEntering through the left side of the gut
Capturing intelligence of the dark one’s heart
Before exiting through the courtyard gate▼
4
4th • YangEntering through the left side of the gut
Capturing intelligence of the dark one’s heart
Before exiting through the courtyard gate
36.4x Entering through the left side of the gut:
To capture the heart’s intentions
Learning a password or two, he sneaks into the dark one’s encampment, nearing the tent where decisions are made. He sees the tyrant in action, learning of his motives and secret designs. Exploring this dark body politic, deep in the belly of the beast, he studies the heart of the matter, watching the damned thing pumping cold blood, looking for ways to stop it from beating. This is half of the mission, but information will do him no good if he fails to carry this out. However good his intelligence is, if it doesn’t survive it is just as useless as ignorance. Between cloaks and daggers, cloaks are the greater weapons. In the same way that silence can win a debate, or an open hand do more damage than fists, the fleet, silent feet are the best weapon now. The walls protect him, their hiddenness hides him. He can walk right out the gate.
55th • YangPrince Ji held his brightness obscured*
Persistence was rewarded▼
5
5th • YangPrince Ji held his brightness obscured*
Persistence was rewarded
36.5x Prince Ji’s persistence:
A light not accepting extinction
The minister watches as his sovereign transforms, from a weak man into a monster. Related by blood to the tyrant, a slave in his own noble house, Jizi might have had no other choice but to feign an incurable madness, assuming that to end his own life was no option, wanting to keep what he believed in alive. One suspects this might be the way of most madness, whether it has or is method: its aim is to keep a life going, to keep the embers alive. Mind has become the lower priority. If sanity means being responsible, able to be held accountable, and the conscience finds only blind alleys and impasse, or a certain death in resistance, then let the illusions begin. To remain unnoticed means showing no light at all. Misery’s night may be centuries long, but light is centuries longer. A well man can drool, then stop. The madman cannot stop.
6Top • YangInstead of light, darkness
At first rising into the sky
But at last going into the earth▼
6
Top • YangInstead of light, darkness
At first rising into the sky
But at last going into the earth
36.6x At first rising into the sky:
To illuminate the four domains
* At last going into the earth:
Disregarding due order
He might have illumined all four quarters from the great heights life allowed him. Yet he would neither see light nor be light, so all that he gained was a great height to fall from. Since the earth will swallow us all, creepers and fliers alike, it is nothing more than a choice in the long run: of how extremely to spend a life, or to spend it in wisdom or waste it. While the tyrant lived, he helped to dim the future of darkness, so maybe some tyrants to come will not be allowed such long life. Why are humans so damnably slow to learn these lessons they live for? This world still invites evil to flourish. The tyrant might even be buried right next to the sage. How is this fair? His grave even flowers more beautifully, from all of the spit and the feces, while the sage’s is barren, salted by generations of tears. Fair is that we are still able to learn.
Reference in Original Text & Resources
This content is derived from Bradford Hatcher's THE BOOK OF CHANGES: Yijing, Word By Word.
Original text for Hexagram 36 begins on Page 276-284.
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