The Early Heaven Oracle - Ken Taylor

[kevin]

Does anyone know this book?

http://www.earlyheaven.com/oracle/oracle.html

He seems to sugest the early heaven sequence came before the later heaven sequence... I din't think it did.

Love to hear any comments on this.

Thanks

--Kevin

 

[hilary]

Um, I don't think it did, either. (Nor does Steve Moore, which is more to the point.) And Yi is almost certainly older than any trigram arrangement. I'm afraid Mr Taylor is making it up.

Of course, he might have created a perfectly good oracle in the process.

 

[kevin]

I will never get used to the way folk can seemingly print what they like.

Thought it must have been me loosing the plot.

Yup, anything will work as an oracle if you have a mind to do that.

Should we expect confused incoming Yijing users over the next few months?!

--K

 

[hmesker]

Obviously Mr. Taylor has not read Steve's 'The Trigrams of Han' or Fran?ois Louis' article 'The Genesis of an Icon: The Taiji Diagram's Early History' in HARVARD JOURNAL OF ASIATIC STUDIES, VOL. LXIII, NO.1; June 2003. Independent of each other they came to the same conclusion: that the xiantian circle is way younger than the houtian circle (it stems from around the year 1000).

And when Taylor writes in his synopsis (see Amazon), "Using two ordinary coins, Ken Taylor takes the reader through a simple step-by-step process to discover one of thirty two basic answers or meanings to the question being asked. The interpretations given are in clear everyday language, relevant to the contemporary world, and include many practical examples and possible applications to all areas of life", it makes you wonder what on earth it has to do with the Yijing.

Funny that his publishers website does not know him.

Harmen.

 

[bradford_h]

Taylor is Channeling apparently. Some spirit from 5000 years ago, two millenia before the Yi existed. The Early Heaven sequence dates from Shao Yong (1011-1077) of the Song Dynasty. It is, however, a much better and more useful arrangement than the Hou Tian or Later Heaven sequence.

However, as to the hypothesis that the Gua antedated the Ba Gua, Steve's work and others notwithstanding, this is still only an hypothesis, and its proponents rather conveniently overlook a lot of suggestions to the contrary, rather obvious suggestions which are embedded in the text of the Zhouyi itself.

 

[kevin]

I didn't realise there was a whole site attached to this book page (I came in the side door)

http://www.earlyheaven.com/index2.html

Reading the site now... some interesting ideas...

Some feel stretched...

Some plain ???!!!

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

My research into Early Heaven didn't really blossom until had three things had happened, the first (and most crucial) was the realisation that the mysteries of the gua are encoded in binary notation.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

Channelling eh?

--Kevin

 

[bradford_h]

Ah, channeling!
I used to channel a 500,000 year old Piltdown Man. Problem was, he only had a twelve word vocabulary, and eight of those were expletives. Plus he would only come through me when I'd had way too much to drink. No commercial potential in that - even the new-agers got suspicious,

 

[kevin]

LOL

Very good indeed...

I am still reading through this site... some of these ideas seem convincing... He is a little confusing arround his Roman dates... Vague even...

Some of his work on the early heaven sequence and the Lo Shu diagram makes a lot of sense - sort of self explanatory.

I think he got a good piltdown!

Hmm...

 

[hilary]

Yes, he's had some very interesting thoughts about the Early Heaven sequence. Good that someone is working with the Chinese tradition in this way. (Though exasperating, from my post-Enlightenment Western standpoint, that he describes said tradition as if it were historical fact.)

Brad, let's start another thread in the 'discussion' area about this trigram/hexagram thing.

 

[kevin]

Yes - There are parts which make me feel uncomfortable - such as the way he asserts things; glosses things here and there.

His style does his work little justice - but I guess it sells books.

The sailor in me choked most at his very poor grasp of the compass and some fundamental, silly, errors he makes.

I shall wait for the new thread...

--Kevin

 

[hilary]

Here it is. Hoping to get Brad to elaborate on "rather obvious suggestions which are embedded in the text of the Zhouyi itself".

 

[Liselle]

Here it is.

It's here, now: https://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/fri...s/which-came-first-trigrams-or-hexagrams.168/