Basic Questions

[crystal_blue]

Looking to the trigrams of earth- earth and mountain, thee is only one yang line in mountain, in that way earth is opposite metal which has only one yin line in lake. So I meant earth as being one of the five elements.

So did I.

And in a way you are right of course, but for me 'fulcrum around which the other Elements rotate' is more the 5 in the Lo Shu, the magical square.

The Element of Earth is sometimes attributed to said 5:

The Eight Trigrams

 

[frank_r]

The Element of Earth is sometimes attributed to said 5:

Yes, I meant the same.

 

[lightofreason]

...I asked this question because I was wondering why thunder and wind, both Wood had a connection with time, Wood is the only element in 5 phase theorie that is in balance. None of the others is. so I was curious why Chris made this connection with time.

WOOD is not balanced (but see below), EARTH is, or more so is the filtration position. WOOD is the production position, be it by the NEW (thunder) or re-production (wind).

The cycle of WOOD-FIRE-EARTH-METAL-WATER covers the Western focus on production-distribution-filtration-exchange-consumption. Five phase controls is through accupuncture, Western control is of the flow of capital through interest rate regulation. SAME patterns, different cultures, same brains.

Furthermore, the fact is there is not FIVE, there is FOUR but the distribution position is itself distributed into external distribution (FIRE) and internal distribution aka consumption(WATER).

Thus we have:

Production : wind/thunder
Distribution : water/fire
Filtration : earth/mountain
Exchange : lake/heaven

The re-production nature of wind reflects cultivation and so refinement (wind and thunder are, in IC+, BINDING trigrams and cover issues of sharing time with another/others. Thus reproduction reflects cultivation and use (e.g. hex 50). Production covers 'new' ideas/works that are 'ready to go'.

When ordered in the binary pattern, the ordering reflects the amount of energy utilised in the five-phase expressions - filtration is the most conserving (earth/mountain), exhange is the most expending (lake/heaven). Wind/Thunder DO sit in the middle of the binary sequence and so can be considered as 'balancing' if you like but the dynamics of such put wind/thunder as the beginnings, be they of new productions or re-productions.

Then come the controls covering, for example, the filtration of EARTH controlling what we put into our mouths (WATER/water - emotion is associated with issues of rejection)

What is identified is the emergence of the theory of five-phase from self-referencing, as is the western theory of economic dynamics - both cover 'value', be it as life force or as capital - and so when mapped to the I Ching bring out the duality in interpretations, as objects or as processes (nouns or verbs where nominalisation/de-nominalisation allows for translation of one into the other).

Chris.

 

[frank_r]

Furthermore, the fact is there is not FIVE, there is FOUR but the distribution position is itself distributed into external distribution (FIRE) and internal distribution aka consumption(WATER).

Thus we have:

Production : wind/thunder
Distribution : water/fire
Filtration : earth/mountain
Exchange : lake/heaven
.

Chris then I had another question for you, when you go to four and take the distribution position itself as FIRE(external distribution) and WATER(internal distribution- consumption). Can you can see this as a sort of Earthly movement?

In acupuncture there is the so called Great movement, that's the movement in the Fu Shi sequence from trigram Water to trigram Fire. It's the fist movement of life under the influence of the planet Saturn known as the planet associated with earth( In Chinese cosmology). It's known as the the earthly movement. The beginning of life. The first impuls of life, coming from the planet that's the most far away.

This movement between WATER and FIRE is taken to the King wen sequence. and is the deepest axis between our Heart and Kidneys. That connects us with this beginning.

Is this maybe the reason why the WATER - FIRE axis excists in both sequences?

 

[Sparhawk]

Hmmm, that's Western thinking; in Chinese philosophy there is no need for such a contradiction - it can be both, depending on circumstances.



I think that definitions create contradictions, as definitions can never be 100% complete. And why should there be a difference between concrete things and abstract constructs?

Harmen.

Exactly! My POV is very close to what Harmen says. I believe the application of what's learned studying the Yi, be it interpreting lines, whole hexagrams or dissecting them in trigrams, should be purely contextual. There should not be "hard wired and/or mechanical" interpretations based on any given system. Only then, with an open and intuitive mind can we select the imagery and system that more closely applies to the context of the question.

BTW, Lindsay, I had to chuckle at your "does anybody use trigrams?". That was loaded, man!

L

 

[lightofreason]

...
Is this maybe the reason why the WATER - FIRE axis excists in both sequences?

This all comes from the ONE method used to derive order from noise - the CONTAINMENT of noise will elicit spontaneous order through self-referencing. It does not matter what scale one is operating on, the patterns are universals of POTENTIALS where context then customises and so allows for different labels and ordering of the universals.

The self-referencing in the brain is done by oscillations across the differentiate/integrate dichotomy aka difference/sameness, objects/relationships, nouns/verbs, structure/process.

The START of the self-referencing is, from a linguistics perspective, a gerund and that gerund breaks down into the noun expression and verb expression.

When we map out the dimension that comes from self-referencing differentiate/integrate we find qualities that are reflected in the I Ching trigrams/hexagrams. The SAME qualities are reflected in the categories of five-phase. The SAME qualities are reflected in the categories of Western socioeconomic categories with the same methods of management - the 'needle' of accupuncture or the 'needle' of interest rate control.

The ORDER of trigrams derived from self-referencing is about STRUCTURE and as such the order of five-phase categories is by energy expenditure, from most conserving (earth trigram) to most expending (heaven trigram).

Out of this structure (call it the Fu Hsi ordering) comes the process form (associated with King Wen) where we move the trigrams around to give us WOOD-FIRE-EARTH-METAL-WATER. In the trigram order of the king wen compass, only mountain is 'out of place' by being placed at the end - but this could be a symbolism for 'transcendence' - mountain is associated with the notion of a gatekeeper and its filtration aspect brings out the notion of a guardian focused on quality control as what is allowed to 'pass through' the 'gate'!

So - the roots of all of these metaphors is in our brains and its oscillations that can create universals then used in local context to represent both structure and process.
(all of this covered in the IDM work:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/introIDM.html )

Note that the traditonal sequence is NOT associated with the king wen compass, but the binary sequence is associated with the Fu hsi compass - implication? order the hexagrams in the king wen compass format:

thunder,wind,fire,earth,lake,metal,water,mountain as base trigrams in eight octets with the top trigrams in each reflecting the above sequence - e.g first order is:

thunder-thunder
thunder-wind
thunder-fire
thunder-earth
thunder-lake
thunder-heaven
thunder-water
thunder-mountain

Chris.

 

[lightofreason]

... There should not be "hard wired and/or mechanical" interpretations based on any given system

But there are - sourced in the neurology but as GENERIC forms (blend, bond, bound, bind - sense of whole, static relationships, parts, dynamic relationships). All else follows in that each of us as singular consciousness contributes a unique perspective to those 'hard coded' categories.

We cannot escape the 'box' of our senses and their generic categories of wholes/parts, differentiating/integrating. But you can add unique aspects of that 'box' when linked to some unique perspective from your position in the universe.

Chris.

 

[Sparhawk]

But there are - sourced in the neurology but as GENERIC forms (blend, bond, bound, bind - sense of whole, static relationships, parts, dynamic relationships). All else follows in that each of us as singular consciousness contributes a unique perspective to those 'hard coded' categories.

Well, I guess if the argument is to be minimalist and go down to the biological and neurological level, then it may be "hardwired". I, however, am of the belief that a brain/mind is more than the sum of its parts and thus it is free to choose paths and, right or wrong, discern interpretive ways in and/or out of any given situation; perhaps not independently of its biological roots but above its mechanical workings.

Hey!, I never get tired of smiling every time you bring the "4 B's" into play. It sounds so S&M'ish... Weird images pop-up in my mind every time...

L

 

[lightofreason]

Well, I guess if the argument is to be minimalist and go down to the biological and neurological level, then it may be "hardwired". I, however, am of the belief that a brain/mind is more than the sum of its parts and thus it is free to choose paths and, right or wrong, discern interpretive ways in and/or out of any given situation; perhaps not independently of its biological roots but above its mechanical workings.

one perspective is that there are no parts - what you see is an aspect of the whole, a face a mask, of it in response to the context. That would 'fit' wth the XOR work and gets into the concept of the Monad (Leibniz "Monadology")

OTOH the 'sum of its parts' can be shown to be exceeded when self-referencing is applied in that complexity/chaos allows for emergence... which is what the self-referencing of the IC does - thus it is not the sum of yin/yang in that recurse that and all of the hexagrams appear/'emerge'. The issue then is what is the whole we are dealing with where the number of parts is bottomless due to the self-referencing and so can generate the sense of 'whole is more than parts'.

In our brains we find the converse in that metonymy allows for a part to be interpreted as if the whole!.. but if there are no parts then this is right, sort of, in that what is interpreted is a facade of the whole that IS the whole for the context that elicited the facade (face of the whole). Thus a hexagram is interpreted as if the whole for some context and each context makes the whole put/make on a different face.

This face perspective allows for XOR in that each hexagram is like a facial muscle and all contribute to varying degrees in the expression of the one face (and so we can identify all of these contributions using XOR)

Chris.