12 No (Evil) - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel January 24, 2026
Judgment
In a den of thieves, even a Sage won’t thrive. The High has gone, the Low is here.
Lines
1
Pull up the tares and the wheat goes with it.
2
Accept help. It’s good for little people and bad for the great.
3
Accept shame.
4
Accept commandments. Be with your people.
5
Evil is resting. He’s gone! He’s gone! Tied up in the roots of the tree.
6
Evil is fallen. Evil is past, good is here.
Qabalah
“Kether is in Malkuth”
The Ten of Wands and the Ten of Swords
In this Hexagram we are given the image of the Fall itself. The Paradise of our previous Hexagram has returned to the “natural state” where Heaven is firmly above, and Earth is firmly below. The ideogram is the word for “No” and meant “Evil” in the past. A perfect balance to the affirmative “Good” of the previous hexagram;. the image of a thing falling. The text tells us what to do in this fallen state.
The Judgment directly quotes Christ in Matthew 21:13 “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. The Holy place has been desecrated, the Divine has left it.
1. The first line is identical to 11’s first line. Previously, one could not uproot weeds without endangering Paradise, here the warning holds. We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Even when times are bad, goodness grows.
2. When we are in a bad state, it is good to receive help. This is not the case for those in power. Think of the banks who were bailed out in 2008 while the people suffered.
3. We must accept our condition if we are to improve it. As they often say in 12 step programs “The first step is admitting you have a problem.”
4. When Moses found chaos in his people, he was drawn up to Mount Sinai by God and given the Ten Commandments to bring order to them. In the chaotic fallen state, we need rules and morals to improve our condition.
5. Just as Odin binds Loki in the roots of the World Tree, in Revelation 20 an Angel binds the Devil in chains:
1 And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. 2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
6. As the 11th hexagram ends with a negative fall beginning, this hexagram ends with a “positive fall”: the Fall of Satan., We can place this in a relative temporal sense (for just as in the I Ching, celestial Biblical events are cyclical, not linear) to Luke 10:18:
And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.
Satan falls because Christ gives a power greater than the devil’s to his followers.
Qabalistically, we see the divine in the material world, but it suffers. The tarot cards for this hexagram are the Ten of Wands and Swords, Oppression and Ruin. The high struggling in the low.
Even in a fallen state, we can understand our time and make the best of it, readying ourselves to improve the world around us. No matter how bad a time feels, we can know with certainty that it will pass, and ready ourselves for the next time.
