Yi: US post-election transition period
Will it go peacefully between now and January 20 2025?
Another political I Ching Cast and Reading, this one concerning the upcoming post-election period between now and January 20th 2025 when the President Elect takes the oath of office and officially becomes the President of the United States. Trump is a figure around which there is always a certain amount of dynamism mixed with turbulence. It remains to be seen if a peaceful transmission will transpire especially given the current Administration had worked so hard to convict him of so many different crimes, albeit all brazenly dubious, truth be told. So the purpose of this Cast is to evaluate the likelihood of a peaceful transition period.
The main thrust of the Reading below, which takes a positive point of view, is that Hexagram #18 is quite strong, also remarkably apropos. One traditional description, not mentioned in the text below, is that it represents the five most poisonous creatures enclosed together in a large container and the one that survives is the one with the most potent venom which can be used as medicine. So there is toxicity in the mix but also healing. The traditional title in the Wilhelm edition is ‘Work on what has been spoiled’, the inference being that whatever problem is being worked on, success can be achieved.
That said, #10 ‘Treading on the Tiger’s Tail’, involves treading gently on power, symbolized by a tiger. Tigers are dangerous, they are not tame, so treading on them is a tricky business. It also involves leadership in the 3rd place which is leadership at the level of the people. Trump’s stated goal, as clearly expressed in his victory speech, is to return the country to the governance of We the People, which is another reason why I have given this Reading a positive slant.
Hexagram #4 is translated by Wilhelm as ‘Youthful Folly’ and is a generally negative hexagram, at least in terms of the traditional text. Of course all hexagrams are both positive and/or negative. Here I take the progression of Working on What has been spoiled by Treading on the Tiger’s Tail as generally positive therefore the result should be generally positive, i.e. #4 whose trigrams simply indicate flowing water at the base of a stable mountain. I take this to mean that some of the obstacles from lower down, through the 3rd line leadership, will flow rather than swirling around and around as in the Primary Hexagram #18, but core principles will remain standing, unaffected.
That said, Nuclear Hexagram #54 indicates that the inner, or underlying, dynamic of this whole situation involves inappropriate liasons. Obviously the nation is involved with great quarrels, disagreements and political turmoil. Many I Ching aficionados, when there is only one changing line, emphasize its commentary in their Reading. Here it is simple: “Wilhelm/Baynes: Setting right what has been spoiled by the father. There will be a little remorse. No great blame.” The protagonists inherit a challenge from the previous generation (or administration, or period). Correcting this will involve ‘remorse’, or resistance, hesitation, confusion, difficulty. ‘No great blame’ means one must have faith that one’s course is correct despite any difficulty rather than interpreting such obstacles as deriving from one’s own failings.
Taken altogether, I would say that the upcoming period is going to be difficult. The #4 Youthful Folly Hexagram is concerning if that indeed is the fruition of the whole dynamic. But #4 is also in the first traditional pair after the initial #1 and #2 which are somewhat primordial hexagrams, all yang or all yin. #3 is Difficult Beginnings with the sense that one is starting a large, important process; #4 has to do with Learning. Learning has a paradox: all of us fundamentally know our own nature, or in Buddhist terms we are all Buddhas already, we have just lost knowledge of this and so pretend our confusion has permanently separated us from this innate wisdom. This confusion is the Folly in #4. In the political context, perhaps we could say that all the major players actually know what the US Constitution was set up to protect and engender as well as when people sometimes fail to live up to it or actively try to work around it. We all know what is right and wrong, in other words. That is where this process is headed, therefore: back to the beginnings, the source, the spring at the foot of the mountain. The nation is headed back to its naive, essential beginnings despite being currently quite toxic.
Thus in terms of there being a peaceful transition, I would say ‘no’, not completely but pockets of resistance and obfuscation will be handled and the result will be a fresh start in January 2025. So this introduction provides in many ways a better Reading than the offered document below, but as with all my Readings, most of the text provides more or less traditional analysis, with references, from various texts, typical trigram meanings, line associations, Heaven Earth & Man and so forth. From that material, the Reader will find him or herself already forming their own opinion or inklings. Then you can read the main Image and Judgement on the front page and either agree or disagree. Where you disagree, you can contemplate what you think is a better interpretation and at that point you have your own ‘Reading’.
Enjoy.
P.S. 11/11: There is a much more negative slant that is glaringly obvious just using the broad headlines of the main hexagrams, the Primary #18 Decay and #4 Youthful Folly. Some Readers base most of their reading on the Derived, in which case #4's commentary basically states: 'you are asking the Oracle too much too often; back off!' This is interesting because as I climbed the stairs to get my text and coins to make the cast downstairs I was thinking to myself that perhaps it is time to pull back from these Current Affairs casts. There is something overly mundane and generic about the subject matter and, although am interested in such events, am not all that interested truth be told. So I suspect this might be the last of this ilk that gets published on this little blog.
As the moving-into-an-unfinished house period progresses, it looks like most of the heavy lifting around the main house will be over fairly soon after which more remote projects, like building a structure with roof and gate around our parking area, and then building a pottery oven for my wife, will unfold, but they are away from the house and now that we have a storage shed, which took an unconscionable two months to build instead of the promised two weeks, the clutter of boxes in place now since the initial move three months ago can finally be put in order and we can begin to settle in here as a true home, not just a place we recently moved all our stuff into. Adjusting to the altitude has taken time, and I suspect it is not just altitude but also something to do with the local energy, but the worst is over so it's time to get more active. And THEN, once some furniture has been built and all the construction is over and we have the place to ourselves, then I'll lean into writing more about the Layers and Levels, which is promising, much of which will surface here on the blog as regularly published chapters. At some point I'll have to pull the whole thing together to put it into book form which hopefully will end up on Amazon or some such.
All of which is a long form of saying: I suspect this is the last political Yi for some time. In the words of the old text:
Wilhelm/Baynes:
Youthful Folly has success. It is not I who seek the young fool; the young fool seeks me. At the first oracle I inform him. If he asks two or three times, it is importunity. If he importunes, I give him no information. Perseverance furthers.
So I will keep studying and consulting the Yi, but to gain insight about personal or philosophical matters, not the news, most of which is performative lies in any case, on all sides of every controversy.
11.12 Update: an interesting dynamic is unfolding relating to the Line 3 emphasis (lower than the main leadership Line 5) namely that Trump is offering up dynamic lower level appointments like the Border Czar who will be under the Department of Homeland Security versus the AG or Secretary of State about which rumours are being seeded by hostile mainstream press before Trump himself makes any announcement. Quite possibly he knows he cannot control the senior appointments very well because his prime picks won’t make it through the Uniparty/Establishment friendly Senate so he is going to work mainly from outside the Administrative State which is Trump 2.0’s stated mission to greatly reduce. So most movement and change will take place lower down, at Line 3, turning the swirling, toxically hemmed in frustrations in Hexagram #18 into something that can flow and move, no longer being trapped.
