So he sees his way as the way. It's weird tho. I wonder what he would think about this: I recently gave myself a reading and using yarrow it took a little more time to form the answer. The entire time I was thinking of my question, I had a hexagram in mind that seemed to fit with what I best thought the answer could be. As the hexagram was being built, I kept thinking "this can't be so", and every line didn't dissapoint, all the way to the top. I got that hex. I didn't however think about which lines would be moving or the other hexagram (which, to me, was really the part of the reading that gave me the most guidance). 2000BC.... hrrrmmm. I'd be interesting in 'traveling' there with you just to scope it out!
...
Fine then
I think his idea is an interesting one... one to take into account with all of the other ways of looking at the Yi. I was thinking about getting Karcher's Relationship Yi too. I want all of the angles I can get!
I think this question applies to the discussion
Was the Yi originally a philosophy book based on the changes of nature and the interactions of the element. A microcosm or metaphor for life?? Wasn't it originally used to understand and then later used as an oracle?
I feel like I should know this by now, but .... I shamefully do not. :bag:
No - at least, not to the best of my knowledge. It starts life as an oracle. Then people discover that this thing that works as an oracle also encompasses general principles and contains a whole working philosophy, and can be read as a 'text book' of all these principles - like yin/yang, or the elements - which were not developed until long after Yi.I think this question applies to the discussion
Was the Yi originally a philosophy book based on the changes of nature and the interactions of the element. A microcosm or metaphor for life?? Wasn't it originally used to understand and then later used as an oracle?
I feel like I should know this by now, but .... I shamefully do not. :bag:
No - at least, not to the best of my knowledge. It starts life as an oracle. Then people discover that this thing that works as an oracle also encompasses general principles and contains a whole working philosophy, and can be read as a 'text book' of all these principles - like yin/yang, or the elements - which were not developed until long after Yi.
And by the way... what is 'using as an oracle' if not 'using to understand'?
I like that. Every time I ask a question and receive my answer, I add it to my mental experience of the Yi. The possibilities are endless and the experience and connections are too. It is very fun building a personal relationship with the Yi and also sharing it.
Deep down in my bones I want to disagree. When I think about the old sages or whomever it was that originally were author/authors of the Yi, I think of them as looking around at nature and gathering understanding. Jotting down notes and talking about what they have seen. They feel the thunder and not far after Spring starts again. They mentally or textually jot the experience. that when the original ideas of the Yi were verbally passed around and formulated, they were more than likely trying to gain an understanding of what is around them, not create an oracle. But I would like to think that their original intentions were to understand nature, which, yes, would soon be followed by, and include, casting. THIS IS JUST ME THINKING OUTLOUD!! 
And who am I to know someone's intentions?... just a thought. I guess no one really knows.......
I don't know why I want to think that it was originally their intentions to understand before using, but I am starting to get it dispite my stubborn thinking. It is starting to make sense to me because of what Hilary said, and from personal experience, because I myself use the I Ching daily but do not yet understand it. ( and who actually fully understands it? ) 
I think they did know a lot about nature. They were in it day and night, everything happened right around them. It is like visiting an old Indian who tells you all kinds of wise things about nature. He knows from experience, and the experience of his elders and ancestors. He doesn't know everything though, cannot tell the future. So having an oracle would be a great addition. Where should we go hunting – South or North? Some say South, others North. So they flip a coin, head – ah, North. Or whatever else you can cast. And in the North they find lots of game. Every time the oracle is right, they add it. "When we got this line, we found game in the North". Or the opposite, "when we got this line, going North was useless".I am going to go out on a limb here and say this
.. But I would like to think that their original intentions were to understand nature, which, yes, would soon be followed by, and include, casting.
It did not turn before 5, and I did not get a taco. I was talking to the spirits and I didn't even know it This thread is not necessarily clearing up my curiousity about Lofting's book, but it is most certainly forming an amazing picture of the beginning of the Yi AND the relationship between casting and understanding. I am starting to understand better... I think I might inquire the oracle for a better understanding :bows:
Different types with similar ideas? Or same book with many copies? It must have been much different for them back then to reproduce a copy. "Bust out the chisel and go hunt some turtles! We need another copy!"
Hi, Russell:
It predates Confucius but schools and tendencies have long roots.
Confucianism intented to resignify the words and the sense of the book. But I believe that among the wings stuff there are 1) student notes, 2) much earlier remnants of oral tradition.
Some stories often fragmentary permeate the book, but the Zhouyi is not a book of history but a practical book made of many power words, folk stories and poetry, oral formulas, professional speech and many fragments of diverse nature put together at the service of an hidden sense available only to the addressed public but partially to all the people.
I believe that the trigrams belonged to prehistoric practices of divination when there was yet any book. The old pratitioners were illiterate and were maybe desdained by the scribes that edited the book.
I like all sort of mathematical sequences. Not all the learned people were philosophers, numbers were prior to script and belonged to an hidden science.
Ancient readings were maybe too simple but evolved with the sophistication of consultants. Maybe the resultant hexagram was a Han invention.
People always used to ask an ask until an acceptable result was got. Are you speaking of consults type: «it will rain? it will not rain?»
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