My Instagram post from five days ago noted that 2024 (or more accurately, year of the Wood Dragon) corresponds with hexagram 43. Some have been describing it as a forecast or prediction. That’s not entirely accurate, so I thought I’d clarify.
It’s not so much a forecast as it is an application of I Ching theory.
You start with the four corners of the universe to anchor the mandala that is the I Ching 64 hexagrams around Earth, i.e., from the vantage point of Earth.
This would be the equinoxes and solstices; sunrise, high noon, sunset, and midnight; and the four directional guardians of Earth. These four corners correspond with the doubling of four of the eight trigrams:
- Water over Water for hexagram 29,
- Fire over Fire for hexagram 30,
- Thunder over Thunder for hexagram 50, and
- Lake over Lake for hexagram 58.
So the theory goes you take those four hexagrams out of the cycle because you need to “plot” those four points and anchor the mandala that is the I Ching cycle down so it’s Earth-centric.
Then you link the remaining 60 hexagrams to the 60 years in the lunar-solar calendar. This is the 60-year lunar solar (or sexagenary) calendar system dating back to the Zhou dynasty:
Here’s how that 60-year calendar cycle looks diagrammed in the form of a circle, or mandala:
Ooh, and like with designing mandalas, you start with four gates, four directions, four corners, so that’s exactly what we’re doing here.
You superimpose the remaining 64 hexagrams in the received King Wen’s order (skipping over hexagrams 29, 30, 51, and 58, our anchor points to the four gates) over the calendar cycle and this is what you get:
Once we do that, we see that every Year of the Wood Dragon, which happens once every 60 years, corresponds with a return back to hexagram 43 governing forces. And 2024, or more accurately February 10, 2024 through January 28, 2025, is one of those Wood Dragon years.
Thus, for instance, under this theory, hexagram 42 forces governed in 2023 (year of the Wood Rabbit), suggesting a year of new developments and significant Wind and Thunder related innovation or advancement.
Hexagram 41 forces governed 2022, a year of distress, whereby that which was stale entering the year will rot in that year, with Oracle guidance that a greater resilience is needed to successfully navigate hexagram 41 forces.
And funny enough, 2020, Metal Rat, corresponds with hexagram 39, when global movement will come to a standstill and extenuating circumstances blocking the natural path. (The zodiac sign Rat often brings with it disease and illness, so that’s interesting, too.)
And here is a quick refresher on the equinoxes and solstices:
| Northern Hemisphere | Solstices vs. Equinoxes | Astronomical Event | Yin-Yang Balance |
| Summer Solstice | Solstices represent when Earth’s axial tilt has the greatest impact on distribution of sunlight | North pole titled toward the sun at the maximum angle | Longer day
(yang dominant) |
| Winter Solstice | North pole tilted away from the sun at the maximum angle | Longer night
(yin dominant) |
|
| Spring Equinox | Equinoxes represent when Earth’s axial tilt is not more toward or away from the sun, resulting in equal lengths of day and night | Earth positioned such that neither pole is tilted toward the sun, but Earth beginning to tilt toward the sun | Balance between day and night
(yin and yang balanced) |
| Autumn Equinox | Earth positioned such that neither pole is tilted toward the sun, but Earth beginning to tilt away from the sun |
So per my view, sharing that 2024 corresponds with hexagram 43 is not divination.
It’s divination if I am personally the one using a casting method to then cast an I Ching reading with the intention that such a reading will reveal what is to come in 2024.
That’s not what I did in that post.
Rather, all I did was look up year of the Wood Dragon on that long-established reference table, then shared with the public, hey, according to this correspondence table that I totally did not create, 2024 is under the governance of hexagram 43.
I mean, it’s a forecast to the extent that you forecast the weather via meteorology. I’m saying that according to an established system of studying global processes and phenomena, Year of the Wood Dragon brings an overcast of hexagram 43 vibes. But what you make of that “weather” forecast (if you will) is up to you. Just because it’ll rain doesn’t mean you’ll get wet.
Whereas let’s say I did a divination and the divinatory result I got after following a ritualized casting method was hexagram 5 (it’s not — I arbitrarily made up that number off the top of my head just now). The intent for divination would be: according to the woo I did, the collective movement this year will be hexagram 5-ish.
Argh, I don’t know if I’m making any sense.
Okay, so. Saying year of the Wood Dragon corresponds with hexagram 43 is kind of the same as me saying the year 2024 corresponds with Key 8: Strength (or Justice, depending on which tarot you’re working with), because 2 + 0 + 2 + 4 = 8.
Was that a forecast for 2024, that it’s going to be Strength-y, or Justice-y? I dunno, maybe, I guess. But I wouldn’t call it divination.
Alternate Version of Four Hexagrams Per Gua Qi Theory + Differing Correspondence Systems
Like in Western esotericism, there are often differing and conflicting correspondence systems, and the question of which one do you use does come up. I don’t believe there are any perfectly good responses to that inquiry.
If you look up I Ching hexagram correspondences with the 60-year sexagenary cycle (which integrates the heavenly stems and earthly branches, because that’s a fixed system under the cycle), in the Chinese language, a popular correspondence system that comes up is the one you see above, where the four anchoring hexagrams representing Four Fixed Stars or Four Fixed Qi are: Hexagrams 2, 30, 51, and 58.
Instead of repeating the entire table, the above image file shows the relevant difference. You see that the skip happens for Years 1 and 2, skipping over hexagram 2 since it’s one of the four fixed points. Year 29 it aligns again to hexagram 31.
At least as it pertains to 2024, the resulting hexagram in either correspondence system is still hexagram 43 and the two systems agree until the cycle returns to year of the Wood Ox (year 2046), and then we can argue again over which hexagram rules year 2046. ;-D
And here’s another version, plotted per the Early Heaven Ba Gua’s four directional points as the four anchors:
Same concept again– you plug the hexagrams in the received order into the order of the lunar-solar calendar, skipping over hexagrams 1 (Heaven over Heaven), 2 (Earth over Earth), 29 (Water over Water), and 30 (Fire over Fire).
benebell wen 
Hey thanks for the clarification! My head is spinning 😉
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Dear Benebell, Happy New Year, working my way through I Ching: The Oracle = timely post, thank you, Ed
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Dear Ben, at the cheeky risk of being a ‘pia’, what would your divination of 2024 show us? !! I’m a stirring the cauldron! Thankyou for your amazingly detailed clarification.
May the Wood Dragon fly high and safe.
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Thanks for this! However, now I keep wondering whether it’s just different traditions existing parallel to each other, again, or whether different methods to get a hexagram are being used for different purpose.
For when I started to learn about bazi/four pillars some years ago, I observed that some bazi calculators and also qimendunjia listet a hexagram for each ganzhi. Curious as I was, I tried to understand how it worked and found out about the rather complicated calculations with gua qi and gua yun in xuankongdagua. In that system, as I understand it, it is qian, kun, li and kan being treated separately like zhen, dui, kan and li in the method you showed above. According to the xuankongdagua method it would be hexagram 38 for jia chen (year of the wood dragon). However, there is still another method which results in yet another hexagram: In your new book you gave a correspondence table for heavenly stems and earthly branches to trigrams. According to that table, jia (heavenly stem, upper trigram) equals xun and chen (earthly branch, lower trigram) also equals xun. Thus the hexagram would be 57.
Is there an agreed rule, when one would use one method and when one would use the other?
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I responded by appending a new section to the end of the blog post because the comments section won’t let me post image files. =D And I wanted to include an image file. =)
There definitely are differing correspondence assignments. Different schools of thought will espouse different correspondence tables, so if one is working under the Plum Blossom school of divination and metaphysics, you’re probably going to be working with the correspondence system that school provides you with. If you’re working under a particular school of feng shui that also integrate the I Ching and the sexagenary calendar (heavenly stems and earthly branches), they might employ a totally different correspondence system that conflicts with the former. There may be regional differences as well. Schools of thought on the subject based in Singapore or Malaysia might have a different correspondence system from Hong Kong and Taiwan, which may differ from a school of thought originating from northern China. Even if we say “Ba Zi Four Pillars of Destiny calculations,” there is an additional inquiry of “well which system/school of thought are you using.”
It’s maybe not unlike if I simply said “I’ll do an astrology reading for you” and then tell you your Mars is in Capricorn domiciled in House 11, and another astrologer says, “I’ll do an astrology reading for you” and tells you that your Mars is in Sagittarius domiciled in House 10, and neither one of us mentions that one is using Whole Signs Tropical and the latter is using Placidus Sidereal. =D
Out of Europe, we had Postel, Agrippa, and the Golden Dawn, all fairly elevated as authoritative on their subjects, coming up with correspondence systems in direct conflict with one another over the course of four centuries; can’t even fathom the number of conflicting correspondence systems out of East Asia over the course of three thousand years among the authoritative schools. =)
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Ok, I see. So, it’s basically just different schools existing parallel to one another. Thank you very much for your detailed reply! 🙂
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ps: I just figured that actually all of the sources where I could find information about that xuan kong da gua system with gua qi and gua yun are based in Singapore.
The interesting thing about it is that it doesn’t follow the received king wen order, but appears rather random at first glance. But it isn’t random. It has quite a lot to do with Jing Fang’s principles.
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Hello,
Thank you for posting this. I am trying to find the Metal Pig (Iron pig). I hope I didn’t miss it on this page 🙂
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Yes, apologies, halfway through the tables I inconsistently switched reference from Pig to Boar. =) So you’ll see on the one for Year 25 – 48, year of the Metal Boar (Pig) corresponds with hexagram 50.
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I bought the last I Ching oracle on amazon must be good stuff!
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Thanks Benebell! I’ve been looking for a simple understanding of how the 64 hexagrams relate to the 60 year sexagenary cycle for a long while and I’m glad I noticed this article finally.
It makes perfect sense that the four would be reserved for the stakes/directions/guardians and it was a real aha-moment after trying for the better part of a year to work out where they went!
Thank you, as always, for all the knowledge and work you share so freely and generously!
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I thought maybe to take out 1,2,11 and 12 because they are like the four energies of greater yin and yang and lesser yin and yang. Then plot the 64 hexagrams, then 2020,21 would be 41, 42. Covid, Alcohol and 42 stimulus checks. and 2024, dragon wood year would be 45, which the haxagram has both wood elements and earth like dragon and 46 a promotion.
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I see the 60 year cycle with the hexagrams, is there one for the annual cycle. I am curious if each month of the year corresponds to a particular hexagram, having 12 hexagram for the year. There are the four directions? Thank you. I am just beginning to read your fantastic book!
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help teach there meaning
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