The I Ching: Well of the Sages
Paul Mountfort
Hexagram 48. The Well
You have received the forty-eighth hexagram:
The Well, also known as Drawing from the Well.
The symbol is wood below water: the image
to visualise is a bucket dipping into a well.
The Well symbolises the profound resources
that as human beings we have at our disposal.
In Taoist thought, the well is in fact a symbol
of the depths of our own universal being.
By accessing the well one may become
a source of inspiration for others, just as
animals gather around a watering hole.
But everything depends on the way one lifts the water:
the practice of drawing from the well is symbolised
by someone carefully lifting water up with a bucket.
The judgement of this hexagram is that: you should
draw deeply on your relationship to the Universal Source.
The I Ching teaches that each of us contains
the universe within in microcosm, and thus
every living being has an infinite reserve
to draw on: wisdom, inspiration, strength,
creativity, understanding, transcendence and love,
these are some of the contents of the Well.
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The 48th Hexagram, The Well, contains much of what is crystal clear and yet enigmatic in its depth about the I Ching.
One of the things that sometimes confuses enquirers is that commentaries following the basic Symbol/Image in the text have many different interpretations. From ancient times, interpreters have left their own particular stamp in their commentaries, and many have followed differing traditions, from Taoism to Confucianist.
Yet if we look at the hexagrams (the chapters, as it were, of the Book of Changes) to their essential core, the Oracle’s wisdom is presented in a simple, beautiful and elegant form. You will notice that the Symbol - sometimes also known as the Image - in the 48th Hexagram is wood below water. This is formed by the two trigrams
and
Together, their ‘interaction’ produces The Well.
There are eight trigrams in the I Ching - Heaven, Wind/Wood, Fire, Mountain, Earth, Thunder, Gorge and Lake. These are very ancient: there are ‘proto-trigram’ marking on rocks in China that date to over five thousand years ago. Combining these eight trigrams (8x8) produces the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching.
The first widespread use of the Oracle began in the Chou Dynasty (1100 - 480 BCE), and displaced the common form of divination practised in the preceding Shang Dynasty, the firing of tortoise shells to read the augury in the cracks produced. The I Ching may thus represent the world’s oldest divination text.
The apparent obscurity of the document is sometimes a barrier to new users. It is not on the surface of it a ‘picture book’ like the Tarot. Some people might feel it is harder to visualise the hexagrams and creatively rework them. But in fact the trigrams, imaginative images drawn from nature, are the basis of the Oracle and can serve as symbols of meditation as well as divination. They are really quite graphic visual forms that are charged with philosophical and practical meaning.
Take ‘The Well’, for example. Wood under Gorge translates into a simple, practical image. Gorge becomes a body of water running deep into the ground - a well. Wood becomes a wooden bucket. Together they form a straightforward but dynamic and multi-layered image: that of drawing water from a well.
In ancient China, as in other traditional societies, the well was the centre of communal life and an essential source of nourishment to the whole village. Drawing from the well can therefore symbolise the importance of performing basic, everyday tasks with care and attention. But the well is also a symbol of depth (water = the Unconscious, etc.) and of drawing on the waters of life that lie within. As such it is in fact an archetype that crosses cultural and historical boundaries and becomes universal. Remember the Norse God Odin, who draws the Runes up from Mimmir’s Well, which lies beneath the World Tree Yggdrasil, and the river Boyne from which the apprentice druid Finn MacCumhail gains his enlightenment in Irish mythology.
Further, we can see that The Well is a perfect metaphor for the I Ching itself, which has been a source of guidance and wisdom for at least three thousand years in China, and is now becoming established in the West as a classic of world literature and popular Oracle. In this context, ‘drawing on the well’ stands for the process of divination itself.
It is true, however, that there have been some teething pains in the I Ching’s establishment in our culture. Such an old text, multi-layered, and coming by way of translation from the Chinese can sometimes appear obscure.
There are different traditions of interpretation to begin with, and different commentators may visualise the basic symbols of the hexagrams (generated by the interaction of the trigrams) differently. It is like different schools of martial art arising around the same basic movements. Confucian commentators tend to stress concrete forms, rules and obligations, while Taoist thought emphasises flow and adaptability to circumstances.
As for the business of translation, it seems to have been a struggle to express many of the I Chings subtleties in the English language.
The famous translation by German missionary Richard Wilhelm was a significant advance on his 19th century predecessor, James Legge. Wilhelm’s version was translated into English by Cary Baynes (I Ching, Bollinger, 1950), and is crisp, poetic and makes no bones about the role of the document as a tool for divination. This translation inspired C.G. Jung (who wrote the foreword) in his researches into synchronicity and understanding of the Eastern psyche. It is still perhaps the most popular version, with even a shortened pocket-translation being available.
More recently there have been Oriental practitioners who have produced English language versions across the divide. Among these, Ni Hua Ching’s Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth (S.E.B.T., L.A., 1983) is a refreshingly Taoist antidote to the more Confucian approaches. Also, in 1994 the Eranos Foundation produced the first I Ching with concordance, to create an English version as close to the Chinese as possible (Element Books, Dorset, 1994).
There are also some interesting recent fictional works in which the I Ching figures: Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle is a highly recommendable example.(For the uninitiated, Dick is the author whose novel Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sleep was made into the brilliant film, Bladerunner).
As with choosing a Tarot deck, personal preference and intuition are important to arrive at the version - Confucian, Taoist, business or feminist - that suits the individual user. Far from muddying the waters, new approaches reflect on the infinite capacity of the text to be creatively reworked for the needs of the times.
Above all, the foundation of I Ching philosophy and practice is that of synchronicity, which Jung defines as ‘meaningful chance.’ The Chinese had an understanding of the cosmos, vision of history, and view of individual destiny shaped by synchronicity millennia before depth psychology and quantum physics have stumbled back onto this fundamental concept.
There is in fact a hexagram devoted to the subject of ‘meaningful chance,’ or charged, if apparently random, events.
25. Synchronicity
You have received the twenty-fifth hexagram:
Innocence, the Unexpected, or Synchronicity.
The symbol is thunder under heaven.
The image is to visualise is the expanse of the sky
pregnant with movement and potentiality.
Its action is innocent but unpredictable:
lightning will strike where lightning will.
Thunder in the sky represents the supreme power
it generates itself of its own intention
and moves freely in any direction. The force
of thunder cannot be controlled, and it is pointless
to complain when it causes disruption. Likewise
the forces of fate in the life of an individual
cannot be brought fully under conscious control
but may spontaneously form into meaningful patterns.
Events that, like lightning, strike without warning
may create initial dismay and and confusion
but they often carry an magical charge or special meaning.
With trust, one may live one’s life by them.
Approached with an attitude of wonder
synchronicity will flow in your direction.
The judgement of this hexagram is that:
you should accept and embrace the unexpected.
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Ultimately, every I Ching consultation depends on just such an instance of synchronicity, and the intuition of the user.