Yin and yang, sittin in a tree

I regularly consult my scrappy, cranky, irascible and cantankerous friend, the I Ching, but haven't posted regarding an I Ching meditation in a while. 

The most recent consultation began with the above hexagram, all of the interpretations of which are rooted in the strangely patriarchal and binary dualistic symbolic ground of the interpreters of the I Ching from China, especially via Confucianism. That is-- the broken, yin lines are viewed with suspicion-- "dark, feminine, magnetic, weak, highly productive but only within the proper placement"-- and the unbroken, yang lines are seen as powerful, dynamic, male, light and creative (although the yang lines too can be wrongly placed in the hexagram and herald problematic situations).

So the single yang line at the bottom of the other 5 yin lines is what gives rise to the various interpretations of "the return of virtue/goodness//strength/revival" etc. 

I have been dissatisfied with this binary yin/yang dualism that favors yang over yin-- every single one of the interpreters of the I Ching throughout history that I am aware of is male.  (Except the book in the link, which I have never seen). By contrast, the Tarot is interesting in this regard, as the most "favored" suit is cups and the least favored is swords. Cups in the Tarot represent water, emotion, love, fecundity, happiness and are of course easily construed as "feminine," as receptacle or vessel. Swords are almost always problematic in the Tarot and represent air, intellect, analysis and repression of emotion and of course, are phallic. 

It's always interesting to contrast I Ching readings done in the same consultation as a Tarot look. It's often been true for me that if the I Ching symbolism can be construed as mostly "positive," the Tarot is dark and stormy, and vice versa. So using the two symbolic systems together is maybe a little like consulting a male oracle and a female oracle, and letting them fight it out. 

Of course, the symbolic system of the I Ching is essentially binary, since the entire symbolic universe within it is established by the solid line and the broken line. I think this is the power of the set of symbols, this essential dualism. But the male interpreters who have a bias toward the solid lines and have written both ancient and modern texts expressing suspicion and negativity around the broken lines seem to me to only have half the picture. 

I ordered the above book, A Woman's I Ching, released 20 years ago, and we'll see how Diane Stein deals with the patriarchal imbalances that have become more and more apparent to me. It is perhaps the case that the origins of this system were much more unitary before the bland ethical black and white Confucianists got a hold of it. 

Anyway, more on the actual reading later.