27 Eating - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel May 9, 2026
Judgement
Watch what you eat, and you’ll see your true mouth.
Lines
1
Abandoning your magic turtle to watch me eat.
2
Bottom feeding is opposed to what’s right. Like a mouth in the grave.
3
Troubled eating is unfortunate. You’ll be useless for 10 years.
4
A mouth going down. The Tiger looks intently… Intently… His hunger chases and chases!
5
Going against the grain is good, but you won’t make it across.
6
What comes out of your mouth is dangerous, but you’ll make it across.
Qabalah
Netzach. The Seven of Wands and the Seven of Swords.
*and the Queen of Wands and Queen of Disks
In this hexagram we are given a direct depiction of an open mouth, with the yang lines at the top and bottom representing the lips. The ideogram also depicts a mouth, thus “Eating”.
Judgement: “You are what you eat”. In the same way that our bodies are composed of what we eat, our minds are composed of ideas we take in and the people we spend time with. As the quote says, “Tell me your company, and I will tell you what you are.” Both thought and food are great pleasures.
1 The magic turtle is the origin of the I Ching, coming from the practice of carving questions into turtle shells and ox bones, putting them in an oven, and reading their fractures. This is “dropping what you’re doing”, putting aside one’s own business to listen to someone else. This is envying what others have, and avoiding our duties.
2 The wrong ideas will sicken us terribly. Consider George Harrison’s warning: “Beware of the thoughts that linger, winding up inside your head”. We can also think of Dorian Gray, who was poisoned by a book, the “word viruses” of William S. Burroughs, the fictional cursed play “The King in Yellow”, and many other memetic hazards.
3 Just as we can snack thoughtlessly and end up eating far too much, we also seek to distract ourselves with ideas. This is “doomscrolling” and internet addiction, which indeed can rob people of years of their lives.
4 When we have a good vantage point, we can make our pick of what to eat and then pursue it. Consider the hunter on a stand; they are in a desirable position, that of an apex predator, but if they only consume what is put right in front of them, they will never eat well. Blake’s Proverb of Hell puts it perfectly: The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion. Use your taste to discern what to consume.
5 It is good to set out on one’s own way, but if that path strays far enough from the set path, we will not achieve what others can.
6 Words are dangerous, as line 2 showed us. Here, we speak the wicked words, but ultimately get across. Consider James 3:
5 Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!
6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.
A ritual practice that captures the dynamic of the hexagram is Iconophagy. In ancient times, edible amulets were inscribed with spells, which were then eaten as a medicine. It was believed that the words themselves, when eaten, would magically influence the eater. This tradition existed across cultures, from Egypt, where priests would drink water which had flowed over hieroglyphs, to Greece and Rome, where paper amulets were consumed, to Jewish mysticism, where written words covered in honey would be licked clean by children learning to read, and, perhaps most notably, in Christianity, where an image or word inscribed Eucharistic wafer is eaten.
Many ancients associated thought with eating; the Bible shows us prophets literally eating books. Even our idioms for thought reveal this sympathy: chewing something over, digesting, feeding your head, food for thought.
Children often eat what they love. Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, said one of the highest compliments he ever received was in the form of a child who ate his drawing. In Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, the serial killer known as the “Tooth Fairy” is obsessed with William Blake’s painting “The Great Red Dragon”, violently obtains an original, and eats it.
Let us then remember that we are what we eat, and we must be careful to watch what we consume, lest poisonous ideas ruin ourselves.
