The Mountain Collapses

[sdi]

In addition to my usual, daily geomancy readings, I've also been casting daily I Ching readings so as to gain experience with the oracle. Today, I am very frustrated with the shape of society—buying a house is an exhausting and stressful experience by design, and navigating the process with integrity is difficult (and expensive). Today's I Ching result speaks to this:

䷖

23: Peeling or Splitting. There is nothing to be gained by moving anywhere.

[...] The top trigram is Ken, the mountain, and the lower trigram is K'un, the earth. The mountain will eventually collapse since the earth is not strong enough to support it, just as the top line of the Po hexagram will disintegrate because of the weak yin lines. The world is in the grip of evil and it is a bad time for honest people. It is not wise to try to overthrow the evil ones at this time. Bide your time and let evil run its course. Use this time to plan for the future. [emphasis mine]

I thought I would post it since the situation described sounds like Western society generally these days, and the advice offered appears to me to be generally applicable.

Comments

[causticus]

Yeah sounds like to me, "everything around you has gone to crap. There's no fleeing from it; running away to some other place, country, or culture isn't going to solve the underlying problems [Plus, Western culture is near-ubiquitous, globally speaking]. Best to stick around, focus on your own life/affairs, and wait out the storm." Probably not saying that moving is the wrong thing for you to do, just that moving won't ameliorate the things bugging you at the time of this reading.

In a broader sense, it could be more general advice against the "grass is greener on the other side" mentality that so many people reliably fall prey to. Raging against "society" can be just as futile as fretting over death and taxes.

Whatever might be the most sensible meaning of this trigram as it relates your own inquiry, it sounds like the general spirit behind it can offer some very good advice for all of us here in the West.

[sdi]

For whatever it's worth, I think "moving" here is more general: it refers to any kind of activity at all. Not only is there no fleeing it, there's no fighting it, no reasoning with it, etc. The mountain is stable and settled, but has neglected its foundation, and so while nothing can move it, its days are numbered.

As for my own inquiry, it's related to how to navigate a system. Like, everyone we're dealing with is being apparently reasonable and fair, but the real estate system is such a nightmare that it's stressful nonetheless. But, of course, everything in the West is a deeply-embedded, mechanical system like that....