2 Earth - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel November 15, 2025
Judgment
Earth is the origin of prosperity. It has the virtues and purity of the Mare.
The Sage goes forth; first he is lost, then he finds a Master.
In the South-West, one finds a Friend. In the North-East one loses a Friend. Stay calm.
Lines
1
Walking on thin ice, reaching solid ground.
2
What’s straight is great. Ignorance is bliss.
3
Staying true to oneself, one may serve the king without fanfare, but with effect.
4
It’s in the bag.
5
Yellow clothing is lucky.
6
Dragons wage war in the wilds, their blood is black and yellow.
Qabalah
Malkuth. The lowest point on the Tree of Life. The World. The 4 Tens.
Earth is the second hexagram and the opposite of Heaven. It is made of six broken lines, creating a picture of a ploughed field. The ideogram is Earth, represented by a cross with a base, and a bolt of lightning. This has a very clear mirror in the Western symbol of the World - the cross within a circle - and even more directly in the Globus Cruciger, in which lightning strikes the Earth. Lightning in this context meant to “extend” or “expand”, thus this is the image of an expansive field.
Here is the soil in which Heaven sows its seeds. It is purely receptive, complementary to Heaven’s creativity. If Heaven was the phallus, Earth is the Vulva. Together, they produce the whole of the Universe. The coupling is textual, as Earth has the “virtue of the Mare”. Heaven was given to Kether and the Aces, and so Earth is given to Malkuth and the 10s, particularly the 10 of Cups and 10 of Disks, wherein the downward elements have reached their happy ends, the Earth is a satisfied and fruitful hexagram.
When we look to the lines, we are given profound images of fertility and receptivity.
1 and 2. When solid ground is reached, life need only to grow. The path of life is “straight” from this distant perspective; something is born, grows up, and then returns to the ground from which it came. The Ignorance of life is ideal: a flower does not think about which way it should grow, a wolf does not question why it must hunt. As Liber AL states, ‘If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.’
3. Staying true to oneself is staying true to one's nature. Each living thing, from a blade of grass to a man, serves God - not to seek reward and fame, but to do the Will. The Earth is, by its very nature Humble, and willingly follows Heaven.
4. The “Bag” here is the Womb, having received the seed of Heaven, it need only contain it and wait.
5. Yellow is the colour of the Yarrow flower, the stalks of which were used to cast the I Ching. As such, this is the colour of Nature.
6. The Birth is a profoundly Nietzschean image, let us look to his Birth of Tragedy:
" We are really for a brief moment primordial being itself, feeling its raging desire for existence and joy in existence; the struggle, the pain, the destruction of phenomena now appear necessary to us, in view of the excess of countless forms of existence which force and push one another into life, in view of the exuberant fertility of the universal will."
This hexagram calls to mind Psalm 139:
13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
