Why 'Hexagram 58'?
Open/Expression: Dui
interact, interpenetrate, an open surface, open a passage or way; opportunity; express yourself, persuade, cheer, urge on; delight, pleasure, joy, excitement; responsive, free; gather, exchange, barter, trade; speech and words; the mists that rise from water.
Stephen Karcher,
Total I Ching
'Communicating Joy, creating success.
Harvest in constancy.'
Hexagram 58 is Dui: all the riches that come from a joyful, open exchange. Jack Balkin says of this hexagram: 'joy emerges naturally from freely communicating and sharing experiences with others'; Wu Jing Nuan describes it as 'a nexus of fertility and joy'.
This seems the best possible hexagram to represent a membership site whose value is created and constantly multiplied by its members' exchanges.
An extract from the classic Wilhelm/Baynes translation:
'The Image
Lakes resting one on the other:
The image of the Joyous.
Thus the superior man joins with his friends
For discussion and practice.
A lake evaporates upwards and thus gradually dries up; but when two lakes are joined they do not dry up so readily, for one replenishes the other. It is the same in the field of knowledge. Knowledge should be a refreshing and vitalizing force. It becomes so only through stimulating intercourse with congenial friends with whom one holds discussion and practices applications of the truths of life. In this way learning becomes many-sided and takes on a cheerful lightness, whereas there is always something ponderous and one-sided about the learning of the self-taught.'