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Difference between original and changed hexagram

bostonian

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Should I give the original and changed hexagrams different weights or meanings, or should they be considered co-equal readings. I think I read somewhere that the changed hexagram refers to events further in the future than the original.
 

Sparhawk

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Should I give the original and changed hexagrams different weights or meanings, or should they be considered co-equal readings. I think I read somewhere that the changed hexagram refers to events further in the future than the original.

Here is where most of the disagreements arise regarding Yi readings. IMO, there's NO rule other than to say the bulk of the weight of your answer lies on the original hexagram. There are even some schools of thought that do not accept the production of a second hexagram... Myself, I think of instances where an original hexagram has changing lines as instead of reading one page in a book, I'm reading several, side-by-side. It is a continuum and all part of the same thematic answer. What the story actually says in those book pages, it is up to the reader to figure out contextually with the question posed to the oracle. IMO, to think of the resultant/complementary/derived/you-name-it hexagram as ONLY pointing to a future event is a mistake (a very common one at that, mind you).
 

hilary

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What Luis said. This is another of those Very Good Questions: it's the subject of a whole week of the I Ching Class (plug...) and it's been discussed here quite a lot over the years. Here's one thread on the subject - look out especially for LiSe's posts. (And for the Sponge Bob gua, and the final post.)
 

fkegan

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In general the changed or resultant hexagram is what results after the moving lines have completely moved or changed into their opposite values, yang for yin. The original hexagram with its moving lines is the Oracle response. The relevance of the changed hexagram is a matter of various interpretations.

You seem to be asking a number of questions about various details of Oracle interpretation while the relevant issue for you seems to be something else as yet unvoiced.
 

lucia

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I like your questions - they are intelligent, clear and concise.

there are numerous ways to 'balance' the two hexes and i guess only time and practice help you to decide which one when. Sometimes some people read the second as 'future' or 'outcome' some read the second hex as context or the canvas you paint the first hex on - there are no rules as such.

The same with prediction and advice - sometimes you get both in a package deal, sometimes it is clearly advice sometimes I haven't a clue. It helps if your question is very clear. if you ask for advice take it as that, at least in the first instance.

If I ask what if.... I take my answer as an answer to that

If I ask for a picture of something I figure it is just that but sometimes there is advice or a warning implicit in the answer.

I never, for instance, ask the ching about new relationships but I am very cheeky and ask for a one off reference along the lines of what do you think of so-and-so?
I've kept a ching journal and when I look back on each "reference" they are incredibly spot on even if I didn't grasp them at the time.

And some times, as I said, I just don't get 'it' at all - I ask for advice and it says 44 unchanging - duh? como? I've not felt a 'click' with one single answer to that one over years - how the f do I do a 44 - seduce? when it's not the deal? Get lost! Meet them on my terms? Run like f***?

Of course I'm playing a bit here but you get my drift. And this is me, my way, if you lurk about here long enough you'll discover there is endless debate about these things.
So I don't mean to sound woolly and I would recommend keeping a book of your readings it is incredibly useful to look back over and re-examine in the cold light of later on.

I also feel the same way about taking readings literally or not - sometimes it is so literal it's funny, and sometimes it is so profound it is moving or it can even be opaque and like a bar of soap in the bath it just keeps slithering away.

Then in kicks this magic word "intuition" - I'm a bit cynical about that one - don't get me wrong it seems to exist but I can't help but question where intuition ends and wishful thinking or negative thinking begins (or even just plain quick thinking) - so if it isn't a sock-me-in-the-eye sensation or a gradual sense of undeniable "knowing" - I try to police the borders a little just for balance.

so my 2 pesetas hope it helps and ask away - it is refreshing to hear straight forward questions. Oh yeah and explore the site, take its pulse, find the bits that resonate with you.

Lucia
 

boyler

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Hi bostonian,

Should I give the original and changed hexagrams different weights or meanings, or should they be considered co-equal readings. I think I read somewhere that the changed hexagram refers to events further in the future than the original.

Yi (易) is the Book of Changes, and in it it is change that matters.

Received or original sixliner (yu gua 遇卦 or ben gua 本卦) depicts the situation at the moment one is consulting the oracle.

If there is no changing lines, it means situation is not going to change for some time and one reads only received sixliner.

If there is one or more changing lines, the changing lines depict a particular and significant phase in the situation in question, which is changing, and/or which is, otherwise, important for the situation in question.

The resulting or changed sixliner (zhi gua 之卦 or bian gua 變卦) depicts the outcome of the situation in question, or where the present situation leads when one or more lines change.

I have been through the Forest of Change (Yi Lin 易林) (another of fabulous books based on sixliners in the Yi xue (易學) tradition), and for the images of its divinatory poems it uses, in approximately 80% cases, of its 4096 poems (64x64 sixliners), only the resulting sixliner, therefore it seems it was taken as more important, or as you put it, it "has a greater weight".

The situation depicted in received sixliner is what is more or less known to us (depending on one's awareness of the situation).

What is unknown, and the main reason for consulting the oracle, is what will happen (when the situation changes), and since we are mostly interested in the outcome of some situation, and not so much in clarifying the situation itself, we should give more attention to resulting sixliner, as it depicts the outcome of a situation. HTH
 

lucia

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I disagree it doesn't only depict the "outcome"

quote Brad:
I'm not sure from these comments that folks know just what the
Yilin or "Forest of Changes" is or does.
When you cast a hexagram, by any method, there are 4096 possible
outcomes. That includes every hexagram with any combination of
changing lines, including no changing lines. The Yilin provides a
simple text for each and every one of these combinations, partly as
a way to relieve folks of the multiple changing line problem.
It is not intended to require its own method of arriving at a gua.
It was written during an era of great speculation, the Early Han,
and really has little to do with the Zhouyi or the Yijng text.
It really must stand alone or fall on its own merits.

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/showthread.php?p=37889

as it says on the thread, I think Lise is working on a translation of the Yilin and I'm sure there's another thread about it somewhere but I can't find it now.

but boyler please speak for yourself when you say "we" are mostly interested in knowing the outcome - not everyone uses the ching for "fortune telling" or not everyone uses it for that purpose all the time.
Having a picture of a situation is very powerful both for decision making and self-development.

quote luis [see above]
What the story actually says in those book pages, it is up to the reader to figure out contextually with the question posed to the oracle. IMO, to think of the resultant/complementary/derived/you-name-it hexagram as ONLY pointing to a future event is a mistake (a very common one at that, mind you).

At the end of the day it is experience that counts and thus my suggestion of keeping a journal of readings - see how it plays out for YOU. I find it is very interesting to sometimes spend a lazy afternoon rereading past efforts and exploring my interpretations.

Lucia
 

lienshan

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another quote Brad

It would help you understand if you stopped using the word "relating."
This is a bad translation of the word Zhi in Zhi Gua.
Better is "resulting" or "resultant" hexagram, i.e. the result of the changed lines.
In other contexts zhi is also an important particle indicating the possessive,
but here it means becoming, going towards or resulting in.
Its opposite is the Ben Gua, the root or original hexagram.
Hexagrams are described like this in the Zuo Zhuan:

Guan zhi Pi (hexagram 20.4)
Zhun zhi Bi (hexagram 3.1)
Da You zhi Qian (hexagram 14.5)
Gui Mei zhi Kui (hexagram 54.6)

zhi : http://chinese.dsturgeon.net/dictionary.pl?if=en&char=之

One of the Zuo Zhuan divination stories is very informative:

When she first went into it, she consulted the milfoil and got the second line of the diagram Gen.
The diviner said: "This is what remains when Gen becomes Sui. Sui is the symbol of getting out.
Your ladyship will soon get out of this." She replied: "No. Of this diagram it is said in the Zhou Yi,
‘Sui indicates being great, penetrating, beneficial, firmly correct, without blame.’

"what remains when Gen (hexagram 52) becomes Sui (hexagram 17)" means hexagram 52.1.3.4.5.6
zhi (go to, becomes) is here defined as "marks preceding phrase as modifier of following phrase".

The original hexagram is modifying :deadhorse: the changed hexagram according to Zuo Zhuan :bows:
 

heylise

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The Yilin is huge and complicated. I was very enthused when I started with it, but it is beyond my abilities. I still like it a lot though. Boyler is with incredible tenacity translating verse after verse. I also do one now and then, when I want to know what it says for a particular reading.

Harmen has an YiLin project, where a lot more has been translated already.

I always forget what the first and second hexagram are, in the Yilin. One is the question but without reckoning with any changing line, the other is the hexagram of that moment. There is a calendar which tells you which hexagram belongs to which time. See YILIN

It seems the first hex is the day (or rather the moon phase). Last night it has been full moon in Snake, so this moon-quarter the hexagram should be 8, Bi.

So you cast a hexagram, not reckoning with any lines. I did: for me today 42, so I read the Yilin-verse of "8 zhi 42".
Uff, didn't translate this one yet. So this is just a quick one, might be wrong here and there: "Simple dress and yellow skirt. Planting the earth with excitement. Virtue and justice grow luxuriantly, the world returns to benevolence." Nice! Can really use some of that today!

But it seems the Yilin uses a different "sequence" of hexagrams than the Yi itself. Rather like "This time (8) its 42".

Personally for the Yi I go with what the Yi itself says in such a simple way. Hexagram 2 its 7 means the second line of hex.2. Like in a picture, the woman on the MonaLisa painting, or the background, or the sky. All parts of one painting. Not asking myself what is more important, just what it tells me.
 

lienshan

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Hexagram 2 its 7 means the second line of hex.2.
The diviner said: "This is what remains when Gen becomes Sui". (hex 52 its hex 17)

Correspondingly:

What remains is the second line of hex 2, when hex 2 becomes hex 13.
What changes is the second line of hex 2, when hex 2 becomes hex 7.

Does hex 2 its hex 7 by logic mean the second line of hex 2 :confused:

Hex 2 its hex 7 does in fact mean the second changed line of hex 2 ;)

The second line of hex 2 is hex 2 its hex 13 :bows:
 
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heylise

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Hex.2 its hex.13 is what REMAINS when 2 becomes 13.
When 2 changes to 7, the second line did change.
All lines of a hexagram refer to another hexagram, 2 its 24 is 2's bottom line and 2 its 7 is 2's second line. When you say 2.2 that does not necessarily mean it is changing, neither does 2 its 7.
 

bradford

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Something to consider here - while the Ben or original Gua is where you begin,
the change may not cross the entire distance to the Zhi or Resultant Gua.
It may simply be a direction or a vector. To go Northward does not mean you
will end up at the North Pole - only that you will find yourself moving in that
direction.
 
M

meng

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Good point. vector... hm

A variable quantity that can be resolved into components
 

lienshan

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All lines of a hexagram refer to another hexagram, 2 its 24 is 2's bottom line and 2 its 7 is 2's second line. When you say 2.2 that does not necessarily mean it is changing, neither does 2 its 7.
The definition of a line dates back to the first ever recorded divination by hexagrams,
written on the Sipanmo oracle bone. A drawing is shown on page 3 here:

http://www.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/~asiamajor/pdf/2000b/ch 1 PRESS.pdf

There are three hexagrams (64-36-12) and 36 in the middle is reversed:

I:I:I: hexagram 64
:::I:I hexagram 36
I:I::: hexagram 36 reversed
III::: hexagram 12

The 5th line is what remains, when hexagram 64 becomes hexagram 36
The 5th line is what's changed, when the reversed hexagram 36 becomes hexagram 12

My reading of the bone creates a timeline: The five changes of hexagram 64 represent the changes
of the past, the 5th line of hexagram 36 represents the last change of the past, and the 5th line of
hexagram 36 reversed represents the first change in the future change into hexagram 12.

The 5th line of the King Wen hexagram pair 36/35 :bows:
 
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hilary

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About the 'different or co-equal' question...

I just read for a client who was asking a 'What if I commit to this course of action?' kind of question. The primary hexagram and line answered the question directly: "It'd be like this, very hard work."

The relating/second/resultant/zhi/other hexagram represented her 'vector', certainly. "Here's what you'd be aiming for with all that hard work." But it was also about her bigger, ongoing 'story', something that would be a theme for her whether or not she made this commitment.

I wouldn't like to say which carries 'greater weight'.

(BTW - not that this is a rule for how to interpret the second hexagram in 'what if' questions - it's just how it worked in this morning's reading.)
 

lienshan

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About the Sipanmo divination bone in details:

( I:I:I: hexagram 64 ) 787676 says lofty
( III::: hexagram 12 ) 757666 says leader

Odd numbers correspond to whole lines and Even numbers to broken lines.
The numbers 7 and 6 correspond to steady lines and the numbers 5 and 8 to changing lines.

The 5th line of both numeral-hexagrams with text is a changing line.

http://chinese.dsturgeon.net/dictionary.pl?if=en&char=七八七六七六曰隗七五七六六六曰魁

866587 ( :::I:I hexagram 36 )

The third hexagram is without text. I read it as the practical result of dividing yarrowstalks.
There are Even numbers in the even (2-4-6) lines of the hexagram.
There are Odd numbers in the odd (1-3) lines of the hexagram, but an Even number in the 5th line.

It was in my opinion not treated as "hexagram 36 its 63" in the recorded reading on the bone :bows:
 

lienshan

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Should I give the original and changed hexagrams different weights or meanings, or should they be considered co-equal readings. I think I read somewhere that the changed hexagram refers to events further in the future than the original.
There are two different answers to your question. The YES answer is the traditional point of view, today known as the "number and image school" point of view. The NO answer is the modern point of view, today known as the "meaning and pattern school" point of view. The former is treating Yi Jing as a divination manual and the latter is treating Yi Jing as ... well, I think that it's precisely formulated in the PLEASE READ sticky of the "shared readings" forum :D
 

hilary

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:D Always happy to see reference to that sticky. However... I (for one) wouldn't say that the second hexagram of a reading won't show up in the future. I just don't think its meaning can be nailed down to mere prediction. (And is 'divination' confined to predicting the future? Or could it be something more?)
 

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