Would someone please help me solve this conundrum? ...

On the one hand, to state the obvious: Every line statement in the Zhouyi apparently begins with a reference to either 6 or 9 in the given place; e.g. "Nine at the beginning", etc. So evidently a line statement does not apply unless indeed 6 or 9 occurs in the given place, i.e. it is a changing line.

On the other hand, in some prominent methods of interpreting the oracle (including that of Zhu Xi), when there are 5 or 4 (or in some cases 3) changing lines, the main prognostication is a line statement that corresponds to an unchanging line, usually taken in the relating hexagram.

So the question is, How does one justify taking text explicitly reserved for a changing line and nevertheless applying it to an unchanging line?

Perhaps related to this, I've noticed that various Yijing translations differ with respect to whether 6/9 is in fact mentioned in each line statement. E.g., instead of "Nine at the beginning" (Wilhelm-Baynes) or "1. In the first NINE" (Legge), some have merely "1." (Richter) or "First yang" (Huang), etc.

So a related question is, Are there authentic ancient versions of the Zhouyi that do not explicitly mention 6/9 in the line statements?

1st 6, 9 2nd, etc. is very old. At least Han Dynasty old and is in the Mawangdui text. Before that may have been different. I've seen 24.1 written Fu zhi Kun (the line that changes 24 to 2)
Zhuxi, while contributing much, also just made lots of stuff up, including his method of reading multiple lines (and including the yarrow stalk method that's used today).
I would suggest ignoring the unchanging lines as far as divination goes.
But in terms of understanding what the overall hexagrams mean, each line represents an important angle on the core meaning, so studying the meanings should put these together. One of the sillier mistakes readers commonly make is to forget which hexagram they are in when reading a line.

Yes Bradford, fully agree. Myanon, the most important stage is a full understanding of the core meaning and then apply any moving lines to that meaning, carefully. If the moving lines appear to produce a contradiction look at the different aspects of the situation - is someone else coming at this from a completely different angle, could the change described in the first moving line create an opening for a contradictory response indicated by another moving line. Look at the line-resultants (the resulting hexagram produced by each INDIVIDUAL moving line) and see how they fit-in with your interpretation of the moving lines.

If you don't receive any moving lines then look at the core meaning and try to see it as the LATENT POTENTIAL in the situation. The energy within any particular aspect of the situation has not yet reached a level where it will manifest as a significant change but the core meaning tells you which field you're sitting in.

To remember, a good quotation of the Zhuxi method to selecting which meaning has to be considered depending on the number of changing lines can be found in this post of bradford.

I have also found a very nice overview in the philological terrific translation with commentaries of Dennis Schilling on page 919 - I can only hope that this gigantic work will be translated into English one day.

After having discovered the Zhuxi method I tried it out some times and would say, no, it doesn't really fit for me. My experience with answers with many changing lines is that the meaning of the lines in the main hexagram will happen, and additionally: one line after the other in a time sequence. So my answer to the post would be: only directly changing lines of the main hexagram matter in the outside world.

One example

March of this year I asked as I do from time to time which was my Tao with a certain person I am interested into more than this person is it into me .

The answer was 53 with four changing lines (53.2.4.5.6>32); I have asked the sage directly using the RTC-Method if I should consider as told by Zhuxi 32.1 (ruling) and 32.3 and the answer was a weak yes ("Yes, but..").
I then asked if I should consider also the four changing lines of 53 and also here the answer was a weak yes.
Interesting indeed that in the incredible hall of mirrors of I Ching meanings there is a soft correlation between 32.1 and .4 and 53.4 and .5.

But nevertheless, while the events unfolded itself in the following six weeks all what I experienced was clearly described by the single meanings of the changing lines of 53. The events followed in the time the sequence of the single lines.

To be sure about this I validated the correlation of every event to a changing line by asking the sage directly with the RTC-Method for a confirmation and can confirm from my part that the 6 and the 9s of the main hexagram had the strongest meaning to me.
Finally (53.5) we met in a weekend seminar in a foreign city and sitting at the same table (I did nothing for it, it just happened) had a nice discussion which was followed up the next days by some e-mails (53.6).

On the other hand, when I asked with the RTC-Method if there was a need of "inner activities" for 53 and it's changing lines I received a weak no ("No, but.").
When I did the same question for 32 main sentence and 32.1 i received a strong yes as an answer, which was very helpful because the wrong idea to eliminate was the idea that I had a right to own luck with this person now. And as everybody might understand, pretending a good result because of a good I Ching answer is a no go egocentric feeling which calls a 51 event

(PS.
The RTC-Method is described by Carol Anthony and Hanna Moog in their book; they develop a very Taoist cosmogony where "inner" activities are more important than "outer"doing; it sure has a ring of truth about it because when I ask for advice using the RTC-Method the answers of the sage about "inner" activities are very consistent, but often the sage gives also hints for "outer" doing and events)

ricciao said:

I have also found a very nice overview in the philological terrific translation with commentaries of I have also found a very nice overview in the philological terrific translation with commentaries of Dennis Schilling on page 919 - I can only hope that this gigantic work will be translated into English one day. on page 919 - I can only hope that this gigantic work will be translated into English one day.

Click to expand...

Well, Harmen said, "Don't forget about the Germans!" Please tell us more about Dennis Schilling. What have you found valuable in his gigantic work? (Don't Germans always write gigantic works? Seems to be a national compulsion.) Personally I consider brevity to be the soul of wit, but I have been reproved for a supposedly curt brevity. Have you had the opportunity to study under Dennis Schilling?

Pitifully I am neither sinologist nor philologist, I am only a passionate amateur, I earn my money as IT specialist, so I can describe what impresses me only at a superficial level.

Schillings work consists of 250 pages of very independent translation, 550 pages of extremely exhaustive commentary where he gives the impression to master the complete (mostly Chinese) commentary history, followed by 45 pages of glossary and 39 pages of bibliography.

For example, the sign I am just reading, 26 "The breeding (upbringing?) of the big (big domestic animals)" he quotes in his commentary of the hexagram itself Lu Deming, Wen Yiduo, R. Wilhelm, Kong Yingda, Yu Fan, Jing Fang; for sinologists might be interesting his discussion of the different sign variants (bambus text from Chu, stone text, Mawangdui). Then he comments upon most every single expression of the main sentence and the single lines.
In my amatorial eyes a philological Heracles work.

PS.
I feel very uncomfortable with national categorizations. Especially when looking at history and the fruits of national thinking 100 years ago...
Yes, also Heinrich Heine makes jokes about the german professor who will explain you the world, but as I am born and grown up in Italy and studied and am living in Germany, having British (uncle and cousins in Alesbury) and Swiss parents - some of them living in Brasil - I prefer a fresh cosmopolitan attitude. Because the things are much too complicated for such simple folkloristic categorizations.
For example one of the main British philosophical schools is heavily inspired by an Austrian thinker (Wittgenstein); one of the main western, christian poems (Dante The Divine Comedy) is strongly inspired by Islamic traditions (Dante's teacher, Brunetto Latini, lived many years at the court of Alfonso X of Castile).
I prefer to categorize by Chinese horoscope

ricciao said:

I feel very uncomfortable with national categorizations. Especially when looking at history and the fruits of national thinking 100 years ago...

Click to expand...

Sorry, but having encountered many a big German book and having read a few, I expect it of them.

bradford said:

Zhuxi, while contributing much, also just made lots of stuff up, including his method of reading multiple lines (and including the yarrow stalk method that's used today).
I would suggest ignoring the unchanging lines as far as divination goes.

Click to expand...

peter2610 said:

the most important stage is a full understanding of the core meaning and then apply any moving lines to that meaning, carefully.

Click to expand...

Here's something unorthodox ...

Suppose a casting results in, say, 976666, so the first and second hexagrams are 110000 (䷒) and 011111 (䷫), because the old yang and old yin lines change to young yin and young yang, respectively. Since all of the old lines become young, shouldn't all of the young lines become old (of course remaining yang or yin, as the case may be)? Like this:

<>
7 (young yang) --> 9 (old yang) → 8 (young yin) --> 6 (old yin) → 7 (young yang)

In the drawing, the solid arrows are standard, and I don't know whether anyone does the dashed-arrows; however, this would explain how Zhuxi's method of interpretation could remain consistent with the line-statement prefixes that always explicitly mention either 6 or 9, even in the second (relating) hexagram.

Applied to the above example of 976666, Zhuxi's method (and its modern variants) say to prognosticate using only the 2nd line in the second hexagram (the line resulting from the one that was unchanging in the first hexagram); however, that line-statement says explicitly "Nine in the 2nd place ...". So these methods are inconsistent unless the second hexagram does indeed have a 9 in the 2nd place -- which would seem to be the case only if something like the above principle is at work to put one there (e.g., according to 976666 -> 897777).

As I said, this is totally unorthodox as far as I know, and I'm just curious about how Zhuxi's method might be justified. (If we apply the above principle to the first hexagram to get the second one, we'll naturally have to ask whether/how it applies also to the second hexagram, which now may have some changing lines. If we do this, and so on for the successive hexagrams, the result is a cyclic sequence that returns to the original hexagram after four transformations. I have no idea whether this has any sort of meaningful interpretation.)

---

EDIT: It occurs to me to wonder about the "cycling" phenomenon just mentioned. The line-types (6789) have various relative frequencies (probabilities) in various casting methods; e.g., 1:3:3:1 (3 coins), 1:5:7:3 (modern yarrow), and even 1:1:1:1 in some methods. What if, instead of 6→7→9→8→6→... (as above), we consider each type having a "duration" that reflects its relative frequency? Then the above cycle structure corresponds to relative frequencies for 6789 in the respective proportions 1:1:1:1, and corresponding to 1:3:3:1 and 1:5:7:3 we would have the different cycle structures 6→7→7→7→9→8→8→8→6→... (3 coins) and 6→7→7→7→7→7→9→9→9→8→8→8→8→8→8→8→6→... (modern yarrow).

Then, starting with any hexagram that may be cast, any "1:1:1:1 method" produces a cycle of 4 hexagrams, any "1:3:3:1 method" produces a cycle of 8 hexagrams, and any "1:5:7:3 method" produces a cycle of 16 hexagrams. For the above example:

1:1:1:1 methods
-------------------
976666
897777
689999
768888
976666
...

1:3:3:1 methods
-------------------
976666
877777
877777
897777
689999
788888
788888
768888
976666
...

1:5:7:3 methods
-------------------
976666
977777
977777
877777
877777
897777
899999
899999
889999
888888
788888
788888
788888
788888
788888
668888
976666
...

In methods other than the 1:1:1:1 type, there is some freedom of choice when starting the hexagram cycle, as to exactly "how old" the initial lines may be. For the examples, I took them to all be "as young as possible".

This is all just speculation, and as before, I have no idea whether it leads to anything meaningful.

myanon0001 said:

So the question is, How does one justify taking text explicitly reserved for a changing line and nevertheless applying it to an unchanging line?]

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I think this is answered by the following, which I just found in Legge's translation (2nd ed., footnote on pp.58-59, emphases are mine):

As the lines must be either whole or divided, technically called strong and weak, yang and yin, this distinction is indicated by the application to them of the numbers nine and six. All whole lines are nine, all divided lines, six.

Two explanations have been proposed of this application of these numbers. The Khien trigram, it is said, contains 3 strokes (☰) and the Khwan 6 (☷). But the yang contains the yin in itself, and its representative number will be 3 + 6 = 9, while the yin, not containing the yang, will only have its own number or 6. This explanation, entirely arbitrary, is now deservedly abandoned. The other is based on the use of the 'four Hsiang,' or emblematic figures (<> the great or old yang, <> the young yang, <> the old yin, and <> the young yin). To these are assigned (by what process is unimportant for our present purpose) the numbers 9, 8, 7, 6. They were 'the old yang,' represented by 9, and 'the old yin' represented by 6, that, in the manipulation of the stalks to form new diagrams, determined the changes of figure; and so 9 and 6 came to be used as the names of a yang line and a yin line respectively. This explanation is now universally acquiesced in. The nomenclature of first nine, nine two, &c., or first six, six two, &c., however, is merely a jargon; and I have preferred to use, instead of it, in the translation, in order to describe the lines, the names 'undivided' and 'divided'.

Click to expand...

So, my original question was based on a misunderstanding. According to Legge, the correct understanding is that the 6 or 9 that appears at the beginning of a line statement merely indicates whether the line is yin or yang, respectively, and does not indicate that it is "changing" as opposed to "unchanging". So the presence of 6 or 9 in these statements does not, after all, contradict Zhuxi's method when it uses an unchanging line statement as the main prognostication.

(PS: In my original posting, I mistakenly said that Legge was among those translators who do mention the 6 or 9 in each line statement, but unfortunately I was looking at an online version that had evidently altered Legge's translation.)