Okay, so yesterday I was messing around with the I Ching, you know, that ancient Chinese thing. I’ve been kinda curious about it, so I thought, “Why not give it a shot?” I decided to focus on hexagram 51, which is all about shock and thunder. It’s supposed to represent, like, sudden changes and big shake-ups.
First, I grabbed three coins. I used some old quarters I had lying around. The idea is you flip them six times, and each flip creates a line for the hexagram. Heads is yang, tails is yin. Pretty simple, right?
The Coin Tosses
- First toss: Heads, heads, tails. That’s a yang line.
- Second toss: Tails, tails, tails. Yin line.
- Third toss: Heads, heads, heads. Another yang, but this one’s a “moving” line, apparently.
- Fourth toss: Tails, heads, tails. Yang again.
- Fifth toss: Heads, tails, heads. And another yang.
- Sixth toss: Tails, tails, heads. Last one’s yin.
So, I drew out the lines, bottom to top, like you’re supposed to. I ended up with two trigrams – Zhen, which is thunder, on top of another Zhen. Double thunder! That’s how I got to hexagram 51.
Then, because I had that “moving” line, I had to create a second hexagram. I changed that moving yang line to a yin line, and that gave me hexagram 55, which is Feng, or Abundance. I guess that means going from shock to abundance, maybe?
I then looked up some interpretations online, and spent the next a few time to try and understand how to apply it to my life. Some people said it indicates a big change. Some talk about it is a shake-up that clears the way for new opportunities.
Honestly, I’m still figuring it all out. It was a fun little experiment, though. It definitely made me think about how unexpected events can actually lead to good things, even if they’re scary at first. I might try this again sometime, just to see what other hexagrams I get and if I can learn anything new from them.
