36 Killing the Light - The I Ching
Killing the light is difficult, one must be pure.
Lines
1
The light is killed in flight, his wings fall. On the Sages path without food for three days. There is far to go. Hosts speak ill of him.
2
The light is killed. Pierced in the left thigh. Use the help of a strong horse.
3
The light is killed while hunting in the South. Catching their Great Chief.
4
Piercing the stomach through to the heart of darkness. Go out the gate.
5
The Old Sage killed his light.
6
Not light, dark. First ascending into the Heavens, then descending into the Earth.
Qabalah
Binah to Tiphereth: The Path of Zain. The Lovers.
In this hexagram we find the sun which had guided the growth of the previous hexagram blotted out. Here we are left in darkness. This is a dangerous situation in which those around us go gentle into the dark, and in which we cannot outright rage against the dying of the light. The situation demands careful consideration.
Judgment: When in this difficult situation, reacting with anger will get you killed. One must hide their inner light to preserve themselves. This is going undercover.
1 While one seeks to evade trouble below, they are shot down and made to face it. They rush through the danger, not even stopping to eat. Though this sort of abandonment is talked about as cowardice, it may be the only hope for rebuilding in the future. Consider how at the end of a war some leadership flees to other countries to save themselves. In stories, we often associate this with villainous characters, but it is also what the surviving Jedi did in the Star Wars films.
2 While this is not an injury with risk of death, it is a great hindrance. When we are stifled in this way we must use external help. I think of the myth of the birth of Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus. It provides a sort of doubled form of the line, where the dead mother’s child is saved by the father sewing the fetal Dionysus into himself.
3 Being killed while hunting has been common from the dawn of man, but in this context we have even clearer parallels. William II (William the Red) was killed while hunting, it remains unknown whether or not his brother, the subsequent king Henry I, killed him to seize the throne. This is striking while someone is not expecting it, when they are vulnerable. We can see a modern iteration of this in Dick Cheney’s shooting of Harry Whittington.
4 Having moved through the dangers, we reach the heart of darkness: the corrupt center from which these troubles emerged, be that Satan in the center of Hell or Kurtz in the center of Cambodia as in Apocalypse Now. When we meet this figure at the heart of darkness, we can destroy them and escape.
5 The Old Sage in question is Prince Chi who, like Hamlet, feigned madness to stay alive while under a tyrant’s rule. When we hide our inner light and appear as fools, we can remain undercover and survive, eventually building enough power to overthrow the darkness around us and unveil our own light.
6 Though the darkness reached ascendance, as with all things, it fell down and itself buried in the Earth. No tyrant can rule indefinitely, no empire can last. All things pass in due time. The dark times can not go on forever.
This hexagram offers several strategies for surviving a dark time, from going into hiding, striking when the enemy is not prepared, to coup d'état or assassination, playing the fool, and just waiting for it to pass.
Let us remember that no matter how bad things get, we can preserve the good, overcome the dark, and start again.