I’m not a great fan of the word « affinity ». For one thing, it took me a long time to get an idea of what it covers and what it might actually mean. Another thing that bothers me is that it’s been used a lot in new age circles and I don’t relate to them awfully well.
When one does a reading, there are magic times when understanding of the situation at stake feels easy and we can provide lots of quality information. The question that then arises in the mind of the person inquiring is « how can we derive all this from a simple gua? »
The technique used for the reading will by itself give various types of information. Wen wang ba gua and mei hua for example provide one with energetic patterns that lend to forecasting. A structural analysis of the gua, supported or not by the commentaries, will give another insight.
This is then assisted by something else: intuition, psychic abilities and affinity. This excerpt follows my previous post where I copied some comment I wrote to some one who sought my opinion about a year ago. In my analysis, I was assuming he must be kind of junior in his organization and had taken a change in career a couple of years earlier. This proved true and prompted him to wonder whether I was psychic.
I’m not psychic but I’ve been through the yi jing for years. So I’ve had time and chances to read, experiment, forget and learn all over again a number of things. [And not just once, but a few times.] And affinity helps too. Oddly, I bumped into your message right after I had done a reading on Fb for a lady in Malaysia and at a time when I thought I should do a bit more. I normally don’t use the gua cast by people asking for my opinion but in your case, after I had a look, I felt it made sense. Again this has to do with affinity.
There are fields where my personal experience obviously helps me make sense of things so I probably have sounder intuitions than in other fields. I regard intuiton as very different from psychic powers (...). I never consult for financial matters for example, even though I’ve been using WWBG for ten years now and this is an appropriate tool for this. Only, my personal background is not geared towards financial markets and I don’t relate to them. [Lacking experience and true understanding of the subject would lead me to superficial analysis, which may be enough at times but wouldn't allow for elaborate strategies that could lead one to take important risks.]