Years ago, I wrote that Hexagram 11 seems like the hexagram of love – “not so much love in its various expressions in human relationships, but as a pure, overwhelming cosmic force for creation.”
I think it’s also love as power. Certainly I’ve rarely seen it mean a peaceful experience for people who receive the hexagram. The king ascends Mount Tai – the name of the hexagram is also the name of the sacred mountain – to make offerings to the spirits so that their power will flow through into people’s lives. The power is essential for life, but not necessarily easy for it.
‘Flow.
Small goes, great comes.
Good fortune, creating success.’
Hexagram 11, the OracleAs often as not, the ‘small’ things that are swept away by the force of the current actually seem quite substantial to us – a job, a roof over our heads, that kind of thing. The great comes, and it puts all these daily concerns firmly into proportion.
I generally call this hexagram Flow, not least because this makes clear that it’s the opposite of its paired hexagram, 12, Blocked. A clear flow of communication as opposed to its total obstruction; creative power pouring through the earth rather than estranged (in 11, the heaven trigram is on the inside and rises to join earth); the chance for all potentials to be expressed.
And also, calling it ‘Flow’ fits with the way people often experience it as overwhelming change. Not necessarily sudden or shocking change, but something huge and ineluctable. Great forces are flowing freely. The Way is wide open. All things have become possible; nothing can stand in the way.
Mount Tai is used in proverbial expressions in modern Chinese to convey something eminent and massive – the sheer unmissable scale of it. Tai by itself means something auspicious, prosperous, without cares – maybe something that is simply so great as to be unassailable.
To translate this Greatness or Massiveness or Flow into an experience of peace requires great skill. The Sequence says so: the skill to tread the tiger’s tail, together with Tai, means tranquility. The Image agrees – and this comes out very clearly in RJ Lynn’s translation of Wang Bi’s version:
“Heaven and Earth perfectly interact”: this constitutes the image of Peace. In the same way, the ruler, by his tailoring, fulfills the Dao of Heaven and Earth and assists Heaven and Earth to stay on the right course; in so doing, he assists the people on all sides.
Wang Bi’s commentary:
What is called Tai refers to the time when things go smoothly on a grand scale. When what is above and what is below achieve interaction on such a grand scale, things lose their proper place and time. This is why the ruler helps things along by his tailoring, and “in so doing, assists the people on all sides.”
And Richard Lynn’s footnote to this:
At a time of such fructification, nature is, in effect, out of control, and it requires a true sovereign to bring order to things. Kong Yingda explained Wang’s statement as: “When things lose their proper place and time, then winter is warm, and summer is cold; autumn begets things, and spring puts them to death. ” …This view is based on a belief in the resonance between human rule and the course of nature.
So there’s a sense that things are going smoothly on such a grand scale that they actually no longer go smoothly. It’s as if there’s too much creative force for the usual order to sustain it; it needs real work.
What’s translated here as ‘assisting on all sides’ is literally ‘left and right’: the characters show left and right hands. These are the same hands that flank the river in the name of the hexagram:
(Thank you, LiSe!)
There’s greatness, communion with greatness, and what flows from there – and there are also the hands present to assist and hold things together.
There is no one universal meaning for Hexagram 11 or any of the other hexagrams. Maybe the way you defined it here is how you would prefer Hexagram 11 to mean if you ever created your own set of hexagram meanings. And those hexagram meanings would be flawlessly valid as long as you used that particular set of hexagram meanings and none other.
But, if for some reason you wanted to experiment with the set of hexagram definitions provided by Hua-Ching Ni in his The Book of Changes, for example, the only way to correctly understand your divinations using that source would be to refer only to Ni’s set of meanings. To the extent that you tried to superimpose your personal set of hexagram meanings onto his, you would misintepret your divinations.
For the most part, tarot card diviners seem to have no problem understanding this concept. They realize that different authors are going to assign different meanings to the same cards, and tarot card readers understand that they have to decide on a specific set of card meanings they want their cards to have before they begin shuffling and dealing their deck for a divination.
I Ching diviners, on the other hand, seem to be uniformly clueless about this. Most of them tend to think if someone uses book X to do an I Ching divination, other people can help that person decipher the meaning of the reading by consulting books Y and Z. Totally, totally wrong. Regardless of the oracle being used, the set of meanings assigned to the cards or dice throws or coin throws or cowrie shell throws or whatever applies only to that one set of assigned meanings, and none other.
This is the way all oracles work throughout the world, and the I Ching is not exempt from this universal principle of divination.
It does sometimes appear that Yi is ‘taking into consideration’ which translation someone’s using, and it certainly responds to personal asociations with hexagrams.
But the difference between the Yijing and the tarot is that the Yijing’s a book. True, if you go back far enough, there are some variations before the text was ‘standardised’, but Wang Bi (226-249 AD) and Hua Ching Ni are both writing about the same text.
Consequently whereas someone who creates a new tarot pack is free to start afresh to a large extent (as I understand it, anyway), someone who creates a new Yijing translation or commentary is mostly just adding to the sum of knowledge about that strange old Chinese book.
[Wow! incidentally. That post left me speechless — a good thing as I’m sure Hilary will recognise [sheepish grin]. I wasn’t going to comment, but Jim Nammack raised an interesting and important point.]
The purpose behind Tarot and I Ching seem subtly different. Where the Tarot focuses on our personal situation and how esoteric forces affect that, the I Ching focuses on the “wisdom of the ancestors” and how our circumstances can further the ancestors’ influence. Although many of the Tarot books I’ve read talk of attitudes like “respectful play”, there is more personal autonomy and less obedience. The I Ching reflects the Confucian/Taoist dichotomy of obedience being the training ground for the much deeper autonomy of Zen’s “Big Mind”. The Tarot Fool is the querent on life’s journey, the Yijing junzi is a leader-in-training, learning how to govern wisely.
If these differences are real (and not merely the projection of my imagination) then it would be reasonable to expect Jim Nammack’s points to be valid for all divination systems like the Tarot that answer the questions of “Small Mind” (in Zen terms). But it would also suggest that, as a wise ruler is concerned with the good of the people before his own welfare, the I Ching would be subtly but distinctly different.
In my opinion, the best evidence for this difference of aim and application is their comparative ease of understanding. The tarot.com forums have thriving discussions on Tarot topics, but very few posts on the I Ching. This is not caused by the site favouring the Tarot: the texts from both readings are equally accessible and the owners are well motivated to foster an alternative clientèle. The problem is that where accessible texts work well with the Tarot, they simply don’t work so well with the I Ching. This is why the “pick a tradition and stick with it” approach works well for Tarot diviners. I Ching diviners, on the other hand, are working with material that is considerably more abstruse: there is no simple mapping between a textual interpretation and a querent’s situation. There can never be one, as the I Ching is not primarily concerned with any querent’s situation but with the furtherance of wisdom in the human community.
I don’t think for one moment the I Ching is a empty page you can project any meaning you want on to (though granted alot of people here do just that ) The only way what Jim describes could be valid were if the divination ‘tool’ were just an empty mirror, the Yi isn’t. Nor is interpretation of the Yi in anyway reliant on what books one uses. Some people interpret just through considering the trigrams. Anyone who isn’t an infant diviner will not be religiously adhering to any paticular commentary in any one book. Alot of people build up their own personal book of commentary through their experiences and combine those understandings with those of others for reference.
I think the Tarot is a an empty mirror…there is no spirit residing in it..so its not comparable to the I Ching
Mr. Clue-full, please speak for yourself and use a shorter stick to whip other diviners. 😀
Luis Andrade’s last blog post..48.1 > 5, A matter of working with what’s available…
Just to add a little twist here, Jim is totally right and totally wrong at the same time. It isn’t the text or the commentary in the I Ching books that give the reading. It isn’t the pictures on the tarot cards. While the text and the pictures are infinitely meaningful, they are also totally useless. For no matter what book you get your material from, ultimately it is the intuition of the reader that scores the highest points. And good readers on this site and others, while reading different books, and seeing different meanings for the hexagrams, still often come to the same conclusion ultimately, and usually a right one. Those who do not come to the same conclusion are often looking at a different aspect of the situation, and usually their perspective and commentary is not contradictory.
That being said, however, for those who are dependent on books, and to a certain extent we usually are, would be best served to choose a particular book or commentary to put on our table as we do the reading to serve as a particular guiding post. And it is very hard to be intuitive when reading for ourselves. The oracle is always right. Our interpretation of it is rarely completely right. Usually only a small portion of the whole answer comes to our conscious mind. The more we meditate, the more we get in touch with our inner, deeper selves, the more we know ourselves, the closer our readings will come to accuracy.
Gene
Gene: If you are using the Tibetan dice divination system, called Mo, and you roll your Tibetan die twice and get Pa Na: The Golden Lotus, it doesn’t make any difference how intuitive you are, the meaning of The Golden Lotus is going to be precisely as it says in the traditional texts. However, one is free to come up with a completely different set of dice meanings for the Mo system, and when you roll your die twice, the meaning for that dice throw is going to be word-for-word what you previously decided you wanted it to be. It is only when you apply the meaning of the dice throw to the situation asked about that intuition comes into play.
Similarly, if you are using the Ifa divination system of West Africa to do a divination, and you throw your divination chain down on a table top, the odu that comes up will be determined by the coconut pieces on the divination chain, and intuition will not come into play. The precise meaning of any of the 256 odu will be determined by the traditonal texts, not by intuition. In the case of Ifa, diviners usually memorize all 256 odu, a task that one begins when one is quite young. Regardless, the meaning of each of the 256 odu is precisely the same regardless of who the diviner is. Intuition is not involved. It is only when you try to apply the meaning of the selected odu to one’s divinatory question that intuition comes into play. As with the Mo dice system, one is also free to come up with one’s own 256 odu meanings, and I have done that. When I slap down my divination chain, the indicated odu is determined by the coconut pieces, not by intuition. And when using an Ifa system comprised of my own odu definitions, the meaning of any particular odu is still word-for-word what my assigned odu meaning is. Intuition plays no part in this. It is only when applying the meaning of the selected odu to one’s divinatory question that intuition comes into play.
These principles apply in equal measure and magnitude to all other forms of divining. The only thing that makes the I Ching any different from any other oracle is its archetecture. But as an oracle, the I Ching functions according to the same universal principles as all other oracles. It could not be otherwise.
Hilary: Regardless of whether the answers available to an oracle are written in a book, pamphlet, brochure, or are memorized, and regardless of how ancient, similar, different, or modern those answers are, whatever set of Hexagram and moving line meanings you decide to use, those and none other are going to be the frame of reference in use by the Universe when you do your coin toss.
This is the way it works with all other oracles on earth, and this is the way it works with the I Ching.
Indeed. But there are a few hundred different translations and interpretive variations on a single I Ching text.
Does this make the response not at all reliant on what book you have in mind, as Trojan suggests? Not quite, I think, but it makes it a whole lot less reliant. Person A can look up their reading in one dodgy interpretation and report that it made no sense; person B who has access to better sources can look at the same reading and explain to person A’s satisfaction what it means.
Jim
I understand what you are saying. Nevertheless…
Gene
Hilary: The Universe does not care whether the translation you are using is dodgy or whatever. If you are using book X to do an I Ching divination, then the hexagram and moving line meanings of book Y will have no application whatsoever.
The Universe does not care if the I Ching reference book you are using is very close in meaning to King Wen’s I Ching or not. Whenever you use any reference source as your set of meanings for doing a divination, the Universe will answer you as acccurately and as helpfully as is possible through the information units available in that specific reference.
So, theoretically, it would be entirely possible for an experienced diviner to create an I Ching set of hexagram and moving line meanings that differed markedly from the traditional meanings, but which were superior to the traditional meanings in the sense that the divinations with the new set of meanings tended to provide answers that were easier to understand and which seemed to do better at getting to the heart of whatever one’s divinatory questions were about. Whenever you used that new version of the I Ching, again, the Universe would use whatever hexagram and moving line meanings were available to that system to answer your questions as accurately and as helpfully as possible.
When it comes to divining, the Universe does not play favorites. The way that divining works is that the Universe will provide the diviner with the best possible answers using whatever set of definitions are available to the diviner through the oracle being used at that point in time.
Hello, I totally agree with you and I actually would like to outline something that just happened to me and was as shocking on one side and pretty obvious on the other, I hope I will be able to explain myself properly.
Here we go with what happens: I was asking to the iching, and I always talk to him like he were my own divinity, my supreme source of truth, “the formula to pursue, nurture and improve my love life with my own beloved one”.
I than started to cast the coins until, at the last line, one of the coin disappeared. It didn’t really disappear but get stuck like glued on my hand. The cast was than: 777888, the beautiful ttai, the hex number 11.
Instinctively I scrolled my hand making the stacked coin falling down on the table and giving as last line one unchanging and unbroken and totally revolving the hexagram that became now hex 43.
What I always think consulting the iching is that somehow it responds to precise although humanly unreadable law where caos and chance and matematic’s as well as magic converge to the same final point a’s well they areally born from the same source of universal wisdom. Truth is not an opinion, it can be different considered from an imperceptible distant point of view but and that means that when it is asked about it or we wonder about something, its form adapts to our point of view, to our understandings capacity, to our tools, books or whatever can be considered and become a messenger to us.
On this cast for example, I feel pretty convinced that the act of shaking the hand to scroll down the last coin has been the clear message of how a formula of perfect union can suddenly become nothing the destruction of what was before the most caring and beautiful realm.
What a load of incomprehension… Like interpreting the Yijing, or other divination systems for that matter, works on a conscious level alone… And you still call “I Ching diviners…uniformly clueless”? In my book, uniformly clueless is to usurp an image set, that has been in the Chinese domain for thousands of years, and Westernize it with your own, pulled-by-the-hair, meaning. Unless, of course, you keep some of the traditional meaning–which you would have to study, somehow, somewhere–and then make it your own. So…, there’s always a source to dip your neurons in, isn’t it? Isn’t that what’s called an “interpretation”? No, wait, you did try to do that before. I remember your approach to the Yijing now and I believe I was one of the few that didn’t criticize you for it (hmmm, perhaps I did, can’t remember all the details but remember the name and deed now). Did you just happen to find a set of hexagrams by the beach, alongside with the driftwood, and thought it would be a great idea to invent the “Jim Nammack Oracle” with it?
Let’s see, as of my last count (continuously outdated), I have 121 different translations and/or interpretations of the Yijing in my library. Hmm, what does that tells me: “That those are what you point at, that is, every reader will see what they will.” However, that doesn’t invalidate the uniformity of the base the reader/querent should be aware of.
That brings me to another point: There is the undeniable fact that there is a “classic and accepted Chinese text attached to the hexagrams” that hasn’t changed much in over two thousand years. It doesn’t matter if you translate said Chinese text, interpretively or literally, to Swahili or Maori or in fill-in-the-blank-language: the Chinese text will remain the same. So, it isn’t like every Johnny-come-lately that publishes a Yijing book is doing so in a contextual void; they are doing it, perhaps with your exception, within the context and the study of those traditions. That they might differ amongst themselves, little or profoundly, speaks to fact that individuals do and will process information “individually.”
The argument that ‘book x’ will give you a different answer from ‘book y’ is fallacious and doesn’t hold water at the time of interpreting a divination.
Luis Andrade’s last blog post..48.1 > 5, A matter of working with what’s available…
Hilary:
Here is an example of what I mean. I opened my Wilhelm translation to a random page, and blindly placed my finger at a random place on the page. The moving line I placed my finger on was moving line six of Hexagram 2. Wilhem’s explanation for, “Dragons fight in the meadow” is, “There ensues a battle with the light-giving primal power coming from without to oppose the darkness, in which both elements suffer harm.”
Then I got out Karcher’s How to Use the I Ching, and I looked up moving line six of hexagram two: “Sky power and earth power are fighting, exhausting themselves in needless struggle. Yield, give way, restore peace. Strip away your ideas of power.”
Then I checked the same moving line with The Book of Changes by Hua-Ching Ni: “Competitive energies bring destruction. Cooperative energies bring harmony, thus integration results when two harmonizing energies unite.”
The devil lies in the details.
1. The Wilhelm version says that there is a conflict of some kind in which both parties lose to some extent.
2. The Karcher version also refers to a battle or conflict of some kind, but says that the battle is exhausing for both sides. Karcher, unlike Wilhelm, does not say that both sides suffer harm or have to retreat somewhat. Karcher says that the struggle is “needless,” whereas Wilhelm does not address that issue at all. Then Karcher offers the guidance that the diviner should strip away his or her ideas of power. Wilhelm offers no such guidance at all. The Wilhelm version leaves open the possibility that the power struggle is important and should be resumed at some point. After all, with Wilhelm, the struggle is between the powers of light and darkness. Not so with Karcher.
3. Along comes Ni. Ni’s rendering, in my opinion, is probably the best advice for most people when this particular moving line comes up, but regardless of that, what Ni has to say here is quite a bit different from what Wilhelm and Karcher have to say. Wilhem, unlike Ni, does not say that a cooperative effort would be best. Wilhelm merely says that both sides lose to some extent. Period. And in Ni’s version it is not obvious, as it is with Wilhelm’s version, that loss occurs on both sides.
If I should add a fourth translation or rendering of this moving line, there would be additional differences of meaning. And the same with a fifth translation, and so on.
In many cases, when actually doing a divination, these differences of interpretation might be negligible, and have no bearing on the overall meaning of the reading. In many other cases, however, these differences of interpretation might make all the difference in the world.
But all that aside, the bottom line is this: When it comes to oracles, or versions of oracles, the Universe does not play favorites. This means that if you are using the Ni version to do an I Ching divination, then it is only the Ni version that the Universe will be using to answer your question. By the same token, if you are using the Wilhelm version to do a divination, then it is only the meanings and definitions found in that version that the Universe will be using to answer your question. Similarly, if you are doing a divination with Karcher’s book, you will only add confusion and error by trying to superimpose Wilhelm or Ni onto it, for the Universe will be using only the Karcher definitions.
H2.6
Wilhelm: “Dragons fight in the meadow.
Their blood is black and yellow.”
Legge: “Dragons fighting in the wild. Their blood is purple and yellow”
Karcher: Dragons grapple in the countryside. Their blood flows down, indigo and yellow”
Hua Ching-ni: “Dragons fight in the wilderness. Their blood blends together.”
Richard John Lynn (translating Wang Bi): “Dragons fight in the fields, their blood black and yellow”
Wu Jing-Nuan: “Dragons warring in the wilderness. Their blood is black and yellow”
Chung Wu: “Dragons are fighting in the wild; their blood is bluish yellow.”
I could go on but you get where I’m going with this, I hope… In my opinion, real students of the Yijing don’t hang their hats on the peg of a translator’s interpretation or commentary but on the text of the lines, translated or not.
Luis Andrade’s last blog post..48.1 > 5, A matter of working with what’s available…
Luis: Regardless of the reference book used for doing a divination, all commentary included in the printed text carries the same weight and has the same application as the word-for-word translation included in that text. It is all of equal importance to the Universe, and so all of it carries equal relevance in a divination. The Universe does not play favorites.
That’s a bizarre idea. Of course, you could set out to consult the Stephen Karcher, or do a Wilhelm reading, and give the translator’s comments the same status as the I Ching, if (for some very strange reason) you wanted to. But if you set out to consult the I Ching, then that’s what you consult. You then have the option of seeing what Karcher or Wilhelm or anyone else thinks it means.
The I Ching is whatever and however anyone wants to define the various hexagrams and moving lines as being. No one has a corner on it. King Wen did not have a corner on it. Karcher does not have a corner on it. Wilhelm did not have a corner on it. I do not have a corner on it.
I am just trying to explain how oracles work, and all oracles work this way, and have for all eternity.
It makes zero difference what you write down as being the definition of a hexagram, tarot card, dice thow, Ifa odu, or whatever. Whatever you write down is going to be the frame of reference in use by the Universe when you do a divination using that set of definitions. Whatever you write down is going to be the “correct” meaning each and every time it comes up in a divination.
Whether this seems bizarre to you or not is not a measure of the correctness of its application.
King Wen did not have some special status bestowed on him by any cosmic Force that enabled him and only him to create some hexagram and moving line meanings. Anyone can do it, and once having done it, that oracle will work just as well as any other. Perhaps even better. There is nothing sacred or holy or precious or superior about any of the hexagram or moving line meanings ascribed to King Wen’s authorship.
The I Ching is an oracle, not a religion, and the same principles that apply to oracles in general also apply to the I Ching.
I think you must have the idea that people always sit with a book open when they divine with the Yi and then look up the commentary in the book they are using. I’ve got loads of I Ching books and though i know by heart most of the commentaries i still disregard them mostly if the text itself makes sense. Like yesterday i threw 21.2..something about ‘biting through the flesh to the nose’ and no commentary would be in anyway relevant to my interpretaion because it was graphic representation of the matter, no commentary needed…like a line of poetry, i might read what 100 critics say about it yet still be able to apply it uniquely to my situation.
So Jim I think you underestimate the intelligence both of the diviner and the Universe….infact I’m not sure how you are so sure of what the Universe can and cannot do…sounds like you think you know just how the universe works which makes you er cleverer than the universe…hmmmm
Trojan: If you have your own conceptual understanding of the hexagrams and moving lines, and that conceptual understanding is cerebral rather than written down, the universal principles of divining would be precisely the same.
I have not said one word about what I think about the intelligence of anyone, here or elsewhere.
As for my understanding of oracles, I have done many divinations about how to divine, what divining is all about, and so forth. I was also an ardently practicing Buddhist for twenty-seven years, and I found that the basic concepts of Buddhism have the same application for divining as they do for other aspects of daily living.
Anyway, the basic concept I am trying to get across is not very esoteric at all. In Buddhist terms, the energy source that makes oracles work in the first place is called our amala-consciousness. This is the precise same thing as our inherent Buddha nature. Whatever oracle we use, or whatever version of an oracle we use, the divinations we get are emanations of our universal amala-consciousness. Whenever we do a divination with anything, or with any version of anything, the divinatory answer comes from our amala-consciousness.
But, if someone wants to think that King Wen was god, and his original hexagram and moving line meanings constitute holy writ, and that we will break out in boils if we use anything different, that is fine with me. It’s just not my cup of tea personally. Okay?
I believe Hilary was being polite with her “bizarre” adjective on your thoughts…
For some reason you are having a fight with poor good old King Wen when the man, most likely, had nothing to do with the text of the Yijing in a direct way… Alas, the discussion is about the classic known as the “Yijing” and you are trying, for some reason of your own, to deconstruct that fact and level all others divination systems with the Yijing. I mean, you are comparing apples and oranges and, although they are both fruits in their usefulness as divination technologies, their “divinatory flavors” are very different.
This isn’t about dogma or ritual. It is though, acknowledging that, as a divinatory system, the Yijing is perhaps the oldest system with a written history. And don’t bother arguing with me about the alleged oral antiquity of many other divination systems, like the Ifa, or who knows what example you are going to come up with. I’m talking about a continuous, uninterrupted exegesis, for some 3000 years. As such, it has an established basic text as the Zhouyi and a classical version with the addenda we know as the Yijing. It doesn’t matter who wrote or compiled it. What does matter is what we have received and what we study. I have chosen to study “it,” the same way others pick the Tarot, or some others have a culturally traditional system like the Ifa. When you try to be a Jack-of-all-trades in divination (as with any other subject in life), you’ll end up, inexorably, as Master-of-None.
If you want to discuss how oracles “work” you don’t start the discussion saying that “I Ching diviners are uniformly clueless.” Not only because it is arrogant and wrong, but also because it puts in evidence your own ignorance.
Luis Andrade’s last blog post..48.1 > 5, A matter of working with what’s available…
Luis: It makes not one particle of difference how old an oracle is or when it was created. An oracle is an oracle. Different oracles are structurally different, but they operate on the same universal principles. As far as age is concerned, Ifa diviners claim that system to be 8,000 years old. I don’t know how old it is, but as an oracle it operates precisely the same as the I Ching or any other oracle. It is structurally different, as it uses 256 odu, not 64, and it does not have the equivalent of moving lines.
Regardless of whether or not an oracle has a historically established text, one can always create new text for that particular oracle structure. While that might not meet with your personal approval, it does not violate any cosmic principles.
Just think of what would happen if we used your principle of not changing other kinds of things because they have been “historically established.” Living in caves is certainly historically established. But aren’t you happy that at some point in time people started experimenting with other ways of sheltering themselves?
It’s the same way with oracles. We have the choice of leaving them the way we found them, or we can experiment with different ways of improving them.
You prefer the hands-off approach, and I prefer the experimental approach. It is totally acceptable to me that we have different approaches to divining, and I wish it was acceptable to you too.
I participate as a diviner in several psychic fairs and expos and Celtic festivals and so forth every year, and I get to know a lot of other diviners that way. Based on that experience, I think I can say with some accuracy that other diviners, as a general rule, do not at all share with you the do-not-touch taboo you and some others have adopted concerning the I Ching.
I agree with you that I should have started this discussion more diplomatically.
I’m remembering vividly why I don’t want to get into this with you again… 😉
Summing up (anyway)…
Zhou Yi = Changes of Zhou, compiled by the Zhou people (tradition says there were other oracles of Change from previous dynasties)
Yi Jing / I Ching = Change Classic, the Zhouyi + 10 Wings canonised as one of the Confucian Classics.
Naturally, anyone with sufficient dedication can create a new oracle that’s referenced through the same hexagrams; you could give it your own name, just as the Zhou did. (‘Changes of James’?)
But to clarify, just in case anyone who’s new to all this reads this far down the page, this is not what Karcher, Wilhelm or Hua Ching Ni have done. They just translated the old one.
JIm, I haven’t negated your right to experiment all you want. Who’s going to stop you? I do experiment too, but within certain parameters and boundaries; not losing sight of what the underlying subject is. My point is–other than taking an exception at being called “clueless”–that if you are going to throw out the window the historicity of the different oracles out there, on the basis that since “you know” how they operate, those menial details like history are superfluous and unimportant, when you come out the other side of that tunnel, please don’t call the product of your experimentation by their old names because they are not a reflection of their old selves and will only resemble what’s in your knowing mind.
Luis Andrade’s last blog post..48.1 > 5, A matter of working with what’s available…
27 years as a Buddhist eh. You must have been one of the annoying ones. Now you’ve seen through everything and understand nothing.
You can divine from smoke, from the movements of insects, from overheard snatches of conversation. None of this, however, equips you to know what is so special about the empty city, or why the hunter would be wise not to pursue the deer into the interior of the forest, or how to get out of a pit when there is no way to get out that can be seen.
We cannot help that people are fools, despite 27 years on a cushion, a lot of piecemeal knowledge about many systems, but little piercing insight into anything but one’s own personal dogmas (and even that, I dare say, is unsatisfying if you look at it squarely yourself. The ‘learning of the self-taught’, what a traitor it is to the person who fancies they are advanced.)
Luis: Do you think we should all still be driving Model T Fords? The whole idea of progress is to be able to try to break loose from pre-existing confinements. Would you say that owning and driving a more recent model Ford would be completely throwing out the historicity of automobiles?
Let us assume for the sake of argument that owning and driving a 2009 Ford is in fact throwing out the historicity of automobiles. Question: So what? Where is the loss in that? And, what is gained by insisting on driving a Model T and nothing else? If someone insists on driving only a Model T, isn’t that completely throwing out the greater effectiveness of modern automobiles?
As for me, I don’t care what you drive. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why it bothers you so much what I drive.
I do a lot of divining for other people, and I get paid good money for my services. I can tell you with total sincerity that I do not give a fig about whether or not an oracle or oracle version is traditional or historically accurate, or whatever. My only concern lies in being able to give people the best readings possible. If I need to revise and improve a traditional oracle to do that, then I will do it in a heartbeat.
You obviously have a different set of priorities, and I do not protest those priorities even remotely. You enjoy using the I Ching in the traditional way, and that is great. I see nothing at all wrong in that.
At one time I created for myself a nifty set of playing card meanings, but I still referred to that system as cartomancy.
For a long time I worked on the best possible set of tarot card meanings I could come up with for the Rider tarot. And I called the readings I did with that system, tarot card readings.
I created for myself a completely new set of meanings for the Ifa oracle, and when I did divinations for people using that oracle, I referred to it as the Ifa oracle. The people I did the readings for did not care what I called it. They just wanted good readings, and that is what I gave them.
And if I wanted to create from scratch a new and improved set of hexagram and moving line meanings, I would call the divinations I did with that system the I Ching. By the way, there are medical I Chings available in Japan and China whose hexagram and moving line meanings differ in all respects from traditional meanings. But as far as I know, the Japanese and Chinese have no qualms about calling those systems the I Ching.
The standard names of oracles is determined by their architecture or structure, not by how you fill in the blanks.
But, if you don’t like that way of determining how an oracle should be identified, that is good too. I have no argument with you either way.
Hilary: To me, it just seems to come down to personal preferences. I call all versions of playing card oracles one name, cartomancy. I call all versions of tarot card oracles one name, tarot card oracles. I call all the medical versions of the I Ching I have seen one name, the I Ching. If I or anyone else wanted to create a new set of hexagram and moving line meanings, I would identify that structure with one name, the I Ching.
So, if someone wants to argue that nontraditional versions of the I Ching should not be called the I Ching, I have no problems with that. That is not going to change how I call it, but everyone has a right to call it what they want, and it does not upset me in the least if someone has thoughts about it that differ from my own.
That’s good – as your first post here did sound upset that I would so firmly base thoughts on the meaning of 11 on its trigrams and Chinese text.
Jim, I already know/have the 23rd Century, Star Trek version of the Yijing. It was written by Chris Lofting. He had, and still does, a similar argument as yours with so called “purists” at being stuck in a 10 BCE mentality. Only difference: he can bury you in detailed explanations of why things are what they are with the Yijing, but, never completely departing from the background of the classic. As for Ford T vs Modern Cars, well, yes. However, I read somewhere (can’t remember where) that the fuel efficiency of those “primal” cars were almost as good as what you’d get on modern hybrids. Silly comparison, IMO, as you are not living in a bubble and devoid of historical context.
I don’t have an argument with what you choose to drive, Jim. I do have an issue, a big peeve at that, with people belittling others for their choice of rides. When you start calling others “clueless” because you believe, and I stress that last word, to have found some cosmic key to oracles, you are being disrespectful. More than likely, I wouldn’t have jumped in the comments if I hadn’t read that. I couldn’t care less what you do in your studies.
I’m well aware of the existence of such medical versions and where they come from. However, it appears you haven’t scratched their surface. They are related to the Yijing because they don’t depart from the historical and exegetical context of it.
Luis Andrade’s last blog post..48.1 > 5, A matter of working with what’s available…
Hilary: I just reread my first post in this string, and I honestly see nothing there to account for why you thought I was upset. In reality, I was not.
As you know, I have gotten in these “discussions” with certain I Ching types before, and the reaction was exactly the same as you see in these posts here. They hold onto traditional texts as though they were holy writ, and respond to other points of view with vitriol and name-calling.
And without meaning to be insulting at all, I will say that I think the way they keep their eyes clamped shut is indeed a way of keeping themselves clueless.
This will be my last post in this string, and I will not be reading any additional posts by others. This discussion seems to be no longer a discussion, and so this is where I part company.
I didn’t need to be a diviner to know that that was exactly how the conversation would end. It is usually people that notice how others “keep their eyes clamped shut” that are themselves vacuum sealed inside their own version of the truth.
Cordially,
“One of the I Ching types”
Luis Andrade’s last blog post..48.1 > 5, A matter of working with what’s available…
I’m late in jumping in here. I read the whole thread – very interesting discussion. If I were to put my two coins in here to comment that would take another book, or a pamphlet anyway. And Hilary says she isn’t going to read or comment any more so that’s just as well. I just want to say I think this discussion would make a useful free eBook to download for people who might benefit from the discussion’s ideas and different views if Ye Old Yi.
Adele’s last blog post..Hexagram Eight – Six in the Last Place
Hilary, this is a great discussion.
It’s my personal belief that the I Ching’s answers hardly have anything to do with our personal preferences and belief systems at all. Every hexagram is made up of solid and broken lines, 0 or 1, yin or yang, the most basic representation of the universe. In other words, the hexagrams and the lines in the I Ching actually represent the archetypal images of our collective psyche which are at a far deeper level than our personal interpretations of things. That’s what I believe makes the oracle has its enduring significance.
Anyway, just my cents..
It’s always so refreshing seeing two people judging themselves according to an artificial, external, and impossible standard. Hell of a show!
Thank you gentlemen! 🤗