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Imagery in the structure

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hmesker

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I have heard people talk about Hex. 1 looking like a ladder, but I've not heard of Hex. 2 looking like a tube. Seems reasonable however.

This reminds me of the jade bi 璧 discs and cong 琮 vessels that are found in graves from the Neolithic and later periods.

Later writings speak of the cong as symbolizing the earth, while the bi represents the heavens. The square represents the earth and a circle represents the heavens.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cong_(vessel) ; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi_(jade) )

A cong, which is actually a tube (see description on Wikipedia page):

琮-Vase_in_Shape_of_Neolithic_Jade_Cong_MET_DP148285a.jpg
 

my_key

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Literally to start.
The ground, and the sky.

Then extrapolate the meanings from there.
(the sky (clouds & constelations) never stops moving, it is untiring in perseverance. the ground supports all things, as a helper, higher and lower things...etc)

There is also the aspect of inspiration (Hex 1) and realisation (Hex 2) to consider.
 

my_key

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How would you consider that inspiration and realisation/exhalation would fit into the 4 levels of internal/inner, external/outer ways of describeing varying states of Heaven and Earth.
I've never really considered it as i've not come across this 4 states of heaven and earth concept before. It would be great to hear what you think about how they would fit?
 
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my_key

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That's interesting. Thanks.
As for Shendu - wasn't he a villain on a Jackie Chan cartoon?;)
 
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hmesker

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Wo
Yi as an hallucination - that works for me! Thanks for pointing that out.
Works great for many people who are in need of images:

 
S

svenrus

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Thanks Harmen, I'll check out these links.

This brings to mind something I just read in The Nature of the I Ching by Charles Ponce where he talks about sleep deprivation studies where they found if people got enough sleep, but that if it didn't include dreams, they exhibited symptoms of psychosis; in other words, that the imagery of dreams - and perhaps also the imagery in the Yi or even hallucinations - serve a vital function and helps keep us sane.

Which reminds me again of the importance of the Yi's imagery, and the fact that imagery has to be personal: I don't dream another's dream (and if I did, it would do me no good), just like I don't conjure up or imagine another person's imagery.

(As to Ponce's book, I am just barely into reading it, so I can't draw any conclusions about it yet.)

Best, D.


Amazon still got it: LINK
 

hilary

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Sakis Totlis kindly gave his book to Change Circle many years ago, so it can also be found in the archives there. It's alongside Tom (pocossin's) work doing exactly the same thing: looking at hexagrams and insisting 'this is a picture of X, so this hexagram is about X'. Most of the pictures they see are different. If hexagrams were ever pictures, I think the original idea may have been more like what we see in the Shuogua with trigrams, where gen is doorways but also fingers.
 
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svenrus

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"...….. looking at hexagrams and insisting 'this is a picture of X, so this hexagram is about X'. Most of the pictures they see are different……..."

Just as with clouds on the sky: A: "I see a dog" - B: "No, it's rather a....." and so on.
On the extreme: in the remote past some people were sitting around the camp fire having eaten. The bones were spread here and there. Beside wood they have by accident also used plants with hallucinogenic effects and saw in the cracks on the bones all kinds of pictures…. This could have happened but possibly it was not how the signs on the sky and the earth came to Fuxi. Anyway: Fuxi is said to have observed (looked at) contrary to thought about (observing/thinking) these Signs. Somehow the trigrams are founded on images rather than abstract thoughts. And in this way the trigrams and their combinations could be seen in a pictorial way.
 
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svenrus

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I don't know these boundaries either. But there is a difference thou in our thoughts and what we see. What we hear and what we think we can remember. What we see we can't remember in the same way; I have experienced again and again this phenomena that when I search for something in the nature, a certain kind of mushrooms to example, I can walk around for a long time not finding anyone, yet I know in my mind what I'm searching for... Then I see one mushroom and suddenly one more appear and one more and, and plenty. Our sight doesn't have memory in the same way as have our thoughts, or rather: it's more briefly...
This is kind of a difference between what we observe and what we conclude out of the observation.
The conclusion we can remember but what we observe we only remember in the conclusion; not in the sight itself.
The trigrams I think are signs lead out of observations, like our first attempts in writing were pictorial.
Freeda, still: to draw boundaries between observations and conclusions or thoughts concerning these observations I can't either. But I think there is a difference between symbolic drawings like the trigrams and the attributes attached to these…
 

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