Clarity,
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It could also be made to look extra mysterious by having enough order to tease and enough disorder to captivate and confound.
Who knows what it 'should' be doing?Back to the King Wen sequence: the hexagrams in the sequence are arranged in pairs of rotated of inverted hexagrams (see Wikipedia), so that makes me wonder how the sequence could also tell a historical tale (as it is assumed in some explanations). Shouldn't the sequence be either mathematically inspired or telling a historical tale? That is to say: when there is some order beyond that in pairs.
Why "either/or"? The whole history of human mythology is a mixture of both: numbers, plus a philosophy to dress up the numbers nicely. E.g. check out the 12 olympian gods, the 12 apostles, numbers in norse mythology, numbers in egyptian mythology, etc. Obviously the I Ching is unsurpassable in intricacy, like a gorgeous mathematical mandala, but still - why would a sequence be "either mathematical or historical"..? It's both, simply, why does that confuse you?Shouldn't the sequence be either mathematically inspired or telling a historical tale?
I don't understand what your goal is. What are you trying to prove?Has the sequence also been investigated with the help of modern computers?
Why "either/or"? The whole history of human mythology is a mixture of both: numbers, plus a philosophy to dress up the numbers nicely. E.g. check out the 12 olympian gods, the 12 apostles, numbers in norse mythology, numbers in egyptian mythology, etc. Obviously the I Ching is unsurpassable in intricacy, like a gorgeous mathematical mandala, but still - why would a sequence be "either mathematical or historical"..? It's both, simply, why does that confuse you?
I don't understand what your goal is. What are you trying to prove?
I don't understand what your goal is. What are you trying to prove?
I'm just exploring the I Ching. The use as an oracle seems to me to have a psychological explanation. (There are experts on the I Ching who are of the same opinion, so I don't expect more experience with the I Ching will change that. But time will tell.)
As a matter of interest which experts are you referring to ?
Once I read that Alfred Huang suggest the third hexagram to be actually counted for the first hexagram. I have a thought telling me that maybe the solution lay in the third hexagram firstly and then from there on... I can imagine King Wen starting with pure Yang, six unbroken lines, then pure Yin and thinking about which next; the last 62 hexagrams being a mix of the first two initial hexagrams. But don't ask me about where in hex. 3 the logic for that hex. to be first chosen lays.
(There are experts on the I Ching who are of the same opinion, so I don't expect more experience with the I Ching will change that. But time will tell.)
The historical development (as far as it is known) can be read in books, which a plan to do. The best way to understand the ins and outs of the mathematical aspects of the I Ching seems to me to first try for my self. Anyway: I just like thinking about riddles.
It's also possible that the King Wen sequence is basically a grand mystification suggesting more (hidden) order than there actually is. That will probably be my end position too, but first I want to see for myself.
Who knows what it 'should' be doing?
What it seems to like doing is creating mirror-patterns from an array of different centres, like a kaleidoscope, and long strings of connections like a paperchain, peppered with the occasional clue to another location, like a treasure hunt.
It's also possible that the King Wen sequence is basically a grand mystification suggesting more (hidden) order than there actually is. That will probably be my end position too, but first I want to see for myself.
Sorry, I keep assuming everyone is familiar with web directories etc. That's the directory with the images in. So to use one of those images here, you need to paste the directory...
The link https://www.onlineClarity.co.uk/images/gua gives "Whoops! Page Not Found". No problem, I will draw some pictures of hexagrams and trigrams of different sizes to use in the texts.
(The most fruitful work with the Sequence I have ever seen, though, was done by Scott Davis in The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context. He takes the opposite approach, and starts from the assumption that text and sequence-structure are a single entity. This is how he can look at the whole with new eyes and sees a lot of things that had been invisible to me. (I have a nasty feeling that a lot of what Trojina's attributing to me are actually his discoveries. The funny thing is that he tends to say 'these hexagrams go together but there is no structural connection' when there is actually a great big perfectly regular trigram-mirroring pattern. Odd.)
Sorry, I keep assuming everyone is familiar with web directories etc. That's the directory with the images in. So to use one of those images here, you need to paste the directory
https://www.onlineClarity.co.uk/images/gua
followed by for instance
/1.gif
into the 'from url' tab of the 'image' box. (Don't leave 'retrieve remote file and reference locally' checked. Normally of course that is only good manners, but since these are all hosted here anyway, it just creates unnecessary duplicates.)
I think the place of disconnect for me is you referring to something you've been calling the "the I Ching world view."Just as one can legitimately study paintings as physical objects ... Of course the results of such specialist studies will not be the whole story (far from it!) but neither will discouraging such specialist research be of any help in forming a more comprehensive picture.
One more time: I don't deny the usefulness of the I Ching as an oracle.
But it just happens that I am personally most interested in the historical, formal and mathematical aspects of the I Ching.
Leerling
Default King Wen sequence the Holy Grail?
Two questions about the role of the King Wen sequence of the hexagrams:
Do we really need the King Wen sequence to use the I Ching as an oracle ?
Would Taoist philosophy profit from an explanation of the King Wen sequence?
Just as one can legitimately study paintings as physical objects one can legitimately study the formal and mathematical aspects of the I Ching. Of course the results of such specialist studies will not be the whole story (far from it!) but neither will discouraging such specialist research be of any help in forming a more comprehensive picture.
Leerling, go forth and calculate! Perhaps you'll come up with something useful and beyond our expectations and assumptions!
I think the place of disconnect for me is you referring to something you've been calling the "the I Ching world view."
As with the example you gave above about painting -- as an artist, I could find a specialized study of some aspect of painting - say for example, the materials employed by Picasso - useful, but I would always tie them back to the practice of painting: how might I use these materials, are they archival, what affects could I get using them? etc. -- just as someone would want to tie an algorithm of the I Ching back to using the I Ching!
And I don't think anyone would refer to this specialized study as "Picasso's Universe," which could be the point of confusion which some people - including myself - are having.
Yes, but it hasn't been that clear, for example in your very first post on this thread you asked directly about the sequence and the use of the I Ching as oracle here
(...)
Yes of course one can legitimately study these formal and mathematical aspects of the I Ching but you did directly ask in your first post on this thread about the need to use the sequence when using I Ching as oracle. Also in other threads, as Fredda said, you have referred to such things as 'I Ching world view' so it's not always been terribly clear (to me) that you only wish to discuss certain aspects.
But yes go forth and do what you gotta do
We should thank Leerling for stimulating some interesting discussion!
Here are some more questions/ideas:
-Why is there an order to the hexagrams?
-Why are there pairs? What purpose do they serve? Are they used in the divination process? Is it possible that one of the hexagrams in a pair is the "lead" of the pair and the other one subordinate?
-What textual relationship is there with the graphic (line/trigram/hexagram)? (This is part of what Scott Davis explores.)
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).