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An alternative way to consult the Yi for very complex matters

pedro

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Here's a funny idea I had (I don't know if anyone has thought of this before, let me know if I can record the patent
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). Its a variation on the way to consult the Yi, that is suitable for asking very complex questions. All I can say is that I've been greatly enjoying the results so far, so perhaps it wont hurt to try.

The idea came to me when thinking: wouldn't it be good, sometimes, to be able to further open some of the lines we're given, looking at it in more detail? That led me to ways we can provide more detail, like increasing the number of states of the line from the 4-state (certainly-no, no, yes, certainly-yes) lines, to 6-state lines (most-certainly-no, certainly-no, no, yes, certainly-yes, most-certainly-yes). But that would raise the problem of drawing, lets say the third-line, usually the most problematic, in more detail. One could at that moment when casting, switch to another method, say by rolling a dice, and then proceed with the rest of the hexagram in the normal way. This would probably work, if one was focused in the usual manner, but the increased definition of the line is of little or no use in terms of interpretation.
But following this line of thought, and increasing the detail, what if we could have an independent hexagram for this line. What if we could zoom in on line three (or whatever line) and maybe realise that under the microscope it reveals itself to be a complete hexagram, with mutable lines and all. The lines of this line's inner hexagram may itself be new hexagrams, and so on ad infinitum. Thinking backwards, it could be possible to collapse any hexagram into a single 4-state line (more on this function later), like summing it up in one word.

That would take care of the interpretation of the enhanced detail, cause we can still use the Yi still for that particular line's interpretation, with the additional layer of interpretation provided by the line's context. But we're still confronted with the need to cast this inner hexagram, we can't just stop at line three during the consultation process, and instead of that line, draw a completely independent hexagram. Or can we?

Lets still say we want to see the detail of line three (it really won't matter, as we'll see shortly, we'll be getting the detail for all six lines - but no precise main hex). We can cast the first two lines, then cast the 3rd-line-hexagram's own 6 lines, and finally cast the remaining three lines from the main hexagram.

What we're doing is casting an 11th-gram (2 + 6 + 3 = 11, or start with 6 lines, take off one and replace it with another six: 6 ?1 + 6 = 11).

Note that it still is important to focus on the question while drawing all eleven lines, you don't need to think whether you're drawing the inner or outer hexagram lines, as you'll see.

So coming back to our example, our main hexagram would consist of the first two lines from the 11th-gram, then a still unspecified third line, and finally the three uppermost lines of the 11th-gram. The third line, would be an hexagram in itself.

But what if we want to inspect other lines? Well its easy to extend this thought, and if instead of the third you want to inspect the first, you take the bottom 6 lines from the 11th-gram. If you want to see the second, you take lines 2 to 7. And so on until the sixth line, which is given by the uppermost 6 lines of the 11th-gram.

Here's a table that shows the correspondence between the 11th-gram and each inner hexagram's lines:

(table looks a mess here...
here's a text version:

hexagram for line 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
hexagram for line 2: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
hexagram for line 3: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
hexagram for line 4: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
hexagram for line 5: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
hexagram for line 6: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)

So now we come to the real practical application of this. Forget the main hexagram, and just draw all the 6 inner hexagrams from the 11th-gram. It's a bit tedious, but its worth it. You'll see that all lines shift down from one to the next, a new line entering above, from the next position up the 11th-gram.

Now that we have the six individual hexagrams we have to interpret each of these hexagrams in the context of its particular line. LiSe has a superb page on the meanings and origins of the lines (http://www.anton-heyboer.org/i_ching/index.html under "structure of a hexagram"). I love particularly when she puts the three realms of heaven, man and earth, paired up from a perspective of hexagram vs trigram:

line 6 heaven heaven
line 5 heaven man
line 4 man earth
line 3 man heaven
line 2 earth man
line 1 earth earth

Notice man has earth and heaven components, and both heaven and earth have a man side. But there is no earth side of heaven, or heaven side of earth, which is so beatufully logical (like the rest of the analogies LiSe provides). Like the yin-yang symbol, black and white are mutually exclusive, and maybe man is the little dots.

But using this method we can see the complex question we made in all detail, each of the 6 hexagrams being one side of the answer, interpreted under the specific line's context meaning.

Notice that is different from casting six hexagrams. That would take 6 x 6 line draws (11 is tedious enough), but most important, by drawing 6 hexagrams, valid as it is a process, the results wouldn't be correlated, there would be nothing uniting each hexagram as a whole, while in here they are intrinsically linked, by being derived from the same 11th-gram, cast as a whole, and where successive hexagrams are part of a chain.

What strikes me as most interesting in this particular method (Yi's merit, of course, not the method's) is the fact that not only I seem to get very appropriate hexagrams, but also the shifting lines seem to be appropriate too. Like this way of chaining the hexagrams, from one long stream of lines, is a natural thing (in fact, Ive had the epiphany long time ago of "where does one hexagram end and the other begin?" Ive had interruptions during hex casting, and still works, time is relative, so if we shift our view of all hexagrams we cast -say starting a couple of line laters- we'll see another side of the answers, but one that is still valid).

In the end I think we have only one infinite succession of lines, like casting a never ending hexagram. Each new line shifts to a new hexagram, in one long chain of changes.

Well, I'll keep messing with these ideas, and let you know if I find something fun. For now, why dont you give this method a try, and let me know what you think.
have fun
happy.gif

pedro
 

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