Blog post: Medical readings

[hilary]

Medical readings

It’s only natural that we should turn to the Yijing with medical questions: we’re vulnerable, uncertain and out of our depth, facing the unknown, so of course we want to consult the oracle. Or if we encounter someone else dealing with a medical crisis who asks for a reading, of course we want to help. Only… is this wise? Would a reading actually help at all?

There’s no right answer to this question, of course. All I can do is to share my own experiences and reflections – and the reasons why I don’t do medical readings for others myself. (I’ve still attempted medical readings of my own occasionally, so that gives me some experiences to draw on for this post.)

First of all, I am not going to start writing about what the Yijing can and cannot do. That would be… unwise. And this isn’t about the Yi’s limits; it’s about ours.

Interpreting readings depends on recognition. If you’ve done readings for other people, you’ll already know that this can be hard in a way that reading for yourself is not. With your own reading, you may well recognise the answer immediately – you can tell it’s speaking to you. With someone else’s reading, you need first to understand the background to the question: the person’s situation, their habitual ways of thinking and imagining it, the choices open to them. Only then can you start to recognise what their reading is saying and how it applies.

Unless you have spent half a dozen years of your life working impossibly hard to gain a medical degree (and maybe not even then), you do not understand the background to a medical question. This means you can’t reliably recognise what the reading is saying – and you’re not qualified to interpret medical readings.

(And by ‘you’ I mean ‘we’. This is the biggest reason why I don’t offer medical readings. What I could offer is just not all that useful – see the examples that follow! – while the harm I could do by misinterpreting is immeasurable.)

This is equally true of any realm of human expertise, of course: if you can’t understand the question, you won’t get on too well with the answer. This is why we consult with experts for advice.

And… we always have done. Here’s an excerpt from the Shujing, the Book of History:

‘If you have doubts about any great matter, consult with your own heart; consult with your nobles and officers; consult with the masses of the people; consult the tortoise and milfoil. If you, the tortoise, the milfoil, the nobles and officers and the common people all consent to a course, this is what is called a great concord, and the result will be the welfare of your person and good fortune to your descendants.’

Shujing, Legge translation

What strikes me about this text is that the oracles are never considered as alternatives to consulting with other people – or with your own heart.

Or think of Hexagram 57, line 2, when it’s good fortune to consult with both diviners and historians:

‘Subtly penetrating under the bed,
Using historians and diviners of many kinds.
Good fortune, no mistake.’

Hexagram 57 line 2

An oracle is not, and never has been, a substitute for human expertise.

What can you learn from a medical reading?​

On a purely practical level… is it possible to learn factual medical information by consulting the Yi? Yes, I think it is. Is it possible to have full confidence in what you learn this way? Not so much.

An example. I asked what was causing my mother-in-law’s persistent pain after a fall – we were wondering whether she needed more medical attention – and received Hexagram 30 with line 6 changing:

​

The first thing I thought, looking at the shape of the hexagram, was that this looked like an X ray, and perhaps the moving line might show a fracture at the top of her pelvic girdle.

This turned out to be true – the fracture was in her sacrum.

And… I know this because she had an X ray. From the reading, I could only make guesses about fractures and (from the line text) referred pain. (How would you go about deciding whether a moving line represented a broken bone or bruising, for instance?)

Most medical questions are a whole lot more complex than a broken bone, of course, which makes what we can see in a reading still less useful. If you identify 48.2…

‘In the well’s depths they shoot fish.
The jug is cracked and leaking.’

Hexagram 48, line 2

….as a faulty heart valve (I’ve seen it represent that), what next? Which valve? What kind of problem? Would you recommend surgery?

Those are both examples of successful, accurate interpretation of medical readings – and yet they are really of no practical use at all, because they lack precision or certainty. Is Hexagram 22, with its trigrams showing fire under the mountain, illustrating an infection in the root of a tooth? Perhaps, but there are more reliable ways to find out.

I may be belabouring the absurdly obvious here. Still… I have seen people try to advise on cancer treatments on the basis of readings, so perhaps it needs saying.

I can imagine a doctor finding such readings useful, and being able to glean much more detailed information from them than I can – but on the whole, wouldn’t you rather know your doctor was ordering a blood test?

Issues of scale and perspective​

So far, so obvious: you might get it wrong; even if you turn out to have got it right, this is a whole lot less useful than you’d want it to be. And then there are less obvious issues.

For instance, the hexagrams don’t come with a scale: this is something we have to provide as interpreters, using our common sense and background knowledge. I wrote once before about the issue of scale and Hexagram 23 and gave some examples of the different ‘sizes’ of Stripping Away it might mean. I could have given nothing but medical examples: I’ve seen Stripping Away mean death, and minor surgery (when the querent was afraid of something more serious), and a dental extraction.

I wrote then,

Pragmatically, we usually know the scale from our question. Hexagram 23 for a new computer? You might lose your data. Hexagram 23 for a new business venture? You might lose your house – or your belief in your own competence – or both, of course.

But if you’ve just found a lump, the scale of the issue is exactly what you do not know. To find out, you need a doctor, not an oracle.

This can be further complicated by Yi’s own perspective. I’ve come to understand that something deeply kind and compassionate speaks through the Yi – and also, that this voice is not human. It’s not always, automatically, going to describe death as misfortune. Given time, I think we’re able to understand such readings, absorb their perspective; often, this is going to mean that predictive medical readings help afterwards, with hindsight.

When my beloved mother-in-law was hospitalised for what turned out to be the last time, I asked what to expect, and received Hexagram 50, the Vessel, changing at lines 3 and 4 to 4, Not Knowing. Here are the moving lines:

‘The vessel’s ears are radically changed,
Its action blocked.
Rich pheasant fat goes uneaten.
Rain on all sides lessens regrets,
In the end, good fortune.’
‘The vessel’s legs break off,
The prince’s stew is upset,
Dignity soiled.
Pitfall.’

Hexagram 50, the Vessel, lines 3 and 4

Good fortune in the end, yet also pitfall.

With hindsight, I think both lines were telling the same story, of physical breakdown and death. One shows physical collapse, and the other shows transformation and relief. Both were true.

Another example: if my friend goes to this cancer treatment centre, what will it give her? 52, Stilling, changing at line 4 to 56, Travelling.

‘Stilling your self,
No mistake.’

Hexagram 52, line 4

She died there – peacefully, I believe, and unafraid. I think that line is recognisable, with hindsight, as her way of going: a kind of stilling that’s also travelling.

With hindsight, I could understand these readings, and I was glad to have them. What would it have taken to have understood them confidently when I cast them? Not a medical degree, this time (though there were diagnostic hints in the lines of the Vessel), but perhaps a sage-like level of wisdom.

Better questions?​

So far, I’ve talked about the limits of interpretation in readings for diagnosis or prognosis in serious cases. There are better questions to ask, though, or situations where it might make more sense to enlist the oracle’s help.

If you’re choosing between doctors or treatments when medical opinion is divided, for instance, then a ‘What if I…?’ reading would be worth doing. (If, that is, opinion really is divided, and you’re not being deceived by a false equivalence between qualified experts and vampiric charlatans.)

I’ve found the oracle helpful, up to a point, for my minor ailments or decisions that are too small to bother a professional. Three examples:

I had itchy, swollen, painful spots all over the fingers of my right hand. What caused them? 28.2.6 to 33: Great Exceeding, Retreating. They were chilblains caused by ‘excessively retreating’ circulation. (I only understood that one with hindsight.)

What should I do about this painful wisdom tooth? (A question of visit the dentist or wait and see.) 23.6: Stripping Away, with its one solid line being taken away, turning a mountain trigram to earth. That wasn’t so hard to interpret; I went and had it extracted. (In practice, the tooth was its own oracle anyway…)

A rare moment of perfect clarity: I had heart palpitations, and also a big untreated cavity (probably the same one that ended up at 23.6), and I just wondered whether there might be a connection. ‘What effect does my dental health have on my overall health?’ 31.6 to 33 neatly summed up the limit of its influence and stopped me fretting:

‘Influence in your jaws, cheeks and tongue.’

Hexagram 31, line 6

​

Different questions​

So Yi is not a substitute for doctors. But then again, nor are doctors a substitute for Yi. It comes into its own answering the questions the medical profession has no tools (not to mention no time) to engage with.

How can I be reconciled with my new identity as a patient?
How can I help my friend who is ill?
What to hold in mind today as I visit her in hospital?

These are the readings that have helped (me and other people) through such times. The temptation to jump straight to ‘What’s wrong?’ and ‘What will happen?’ is still strong, sometimes overpowering, but I do know that Yi helps when I let it engage with all the uncertainty and fear directly, in the moment – where am I? how to cope? how to be with this?

 

[frosty6789]

Medical readings

It’s only natural that we should turn to the Yijing with medical questions: we’re vulnerable, uncertain and out of our depth, facing the unknown, so of course we want to consult the oracle. Or if we encounter someone else dealing with a medical crisis who asks for a reading, of course we want to help. Only… is this wise? Would a reading actually help at all?

There’s no right answer to this question, of course. All I can do is to share my own experiences and reflections – and the reasons why I don’t do medical readings for others myself. (I’ve still attempted medical readings of my own occasionally, so that gives me some experiences to draw on for this post.)

First of all, I am not going to start writing about what the Yijing can and cannot do. That would be… unwise. And this isn’t about the Yi’s limits; it’s about ours.

Interpreting readings depends on recognition. If you’ve done readings for other people, you’ll already know that this can be hard in a way that reading for yourself is not. With your own reading, you may well recognise the answer immediately – you can tell it’s speaking to you. With someone else’s reading, you need first to understand the background to the question: the person’s situation, their habitual ways of thinking and imagining it, the choices open to them. Only then can you start to recognise what their reading is saying and how it applies.

Unless you have spent half a dozen years of your life working impossibly hard to gain a medical degree (and maybe not even then), you do not understand the background to a medical question. This means you can’t reliably recognise what the reading is saying – and you’re not qualified to interpret medical readings.

(And by ‘you’ I mean ‘we’. This is the biggest reason why I don’t offer medical readings. What I could offer is just not all that useful – see the examples that follow! – while the harm I could do by misinterpreting is immeasurable.)

This is equally true of any realm of human expertise, of course: if you can’t understand the question, you won’t get on too well with the answer. This is why we consult with experts for advice.

And… we always have done. Here’s an excerpt from the Shujing, the Book of History:


What strikes me about this text is that the oracles are never considered as alternatives to consulting with other people – or with your own heart.

Or think of Hexagram 57, line 2, when it’s good fortune to consult with both diviners and historians:


An oracle is not, and never has been, a substitute for human expertise.

What can you learn from a medical reading?​

On a purely practical level… is it possible to learn factual medical information by consulting the Yi? Yes, I think it is. Is it possible to have full confidence in what you learn this way? Not so much.

An example. I asked what was causing my mother-in-law’s persistent pain after a fall – we were wondering whether she needed more medical attention – and received Hexagram 30 with line 6 changing:

View attachment 4918​

The first thing I thought, looking at the shape of the hexagram, was that this looked like an X ray, and perhaps the moving line might show a fracture at the top of her pelvic girdle.

This turned out to be true – the fracture was in her sacrum.

And… I know this because she had an X ray. From the reading, I could only make guesses about fractures and (from the line text) referred pain. (How would you go about deciding whether a moving line represented a broken bone or bruising, for instance?)

Most medical questions are a whole lot more complex than a broken bone, of course, which makes what we can see in a reading still less useful. If you identify 48.2…


….as a faulty heart valve (I’ve seen it represent that), what next? Which valve? What kind of problem? Would you recommend surgery?

Those are both examples of successful, accurate interpretation of medical readings – and yet they are really of no practical use at all, because they lack precision or certainty. Is Hexagram 22, with its trigrams showing fire under the mountain, illustrating an infection in the root of a tooth? Perhaps, but there are more reliable ways to find out.

I may be belabouring the absurdly obvious here. Still… I have seen people try to advise on cancer treatments on the basis of readings, so perhaps it needs saying.

I can imagine a doctor finding such readings useful, and being able to glean much more detailed information from them than I can – but on the whole, wouldn’t you rather know your doctor was ordering a blood test?

Issues of scale and perspective​

So far, so obvious: you might get it wrong; even if you turn out to have got it right, this is a whole lot less useful than you’d want it to be. And then there are less obvious issues.

For instance, the hexagrams don’t come with a scale: this is something we have to provide as interpreters, using our common sense and background knowledge. I wrote once before about the issue of scale and Hexagram 23 and gave some examples of the different ‘sizes’ of Stripping Away it might mean. I could have given nothing but medical examples: I’ve seen Stripping Away mean death, and minor surgery (when the querent was afraid of something more serious), and a dental extraction.

I wrote then,


But if you’ve just found a lump, the scale of the issue is exactly what you do not know. To find out, you need a doctor, not an oracle.

This can be further complicated by Yi’s own perspective. I’ve come to understand that something deeply kind and compassionate speaks through the Yi – and also, that this voice is not human. It’s not always, automatically, going to describe death as misfortune. Given time, I think we’re able to understand such readings, absorb their perspective; often, this is going to mean that predictive medical readings help afterwards, with hindsight.

When my beloved mother-in-law was hospitalised for what turned out to be the last time, I asked what to expect, and received Hexagram 50, the Vessel, changing at lines 3 and 4 to 4, Not Knowing. Here are the moving lines:


Good fortune in the end, yet also pitfall.

With hindsight, I think both lines were telling the same story, of physical breakdown and death. One shows physical collapse, and the other shows transformation and relief. Both were true.

Another example: if my friend goes to this cancer treatment centre, what will it give her? 52, Stilling, changing at line 4 to 56, Travelling.


She died there – peacefully, I believe, and unafraid. I think that line is recognisable, with hindsight, as her way of going: a kind of stilling that’s also travelling.

With hindsight, I could understand these readings, and I was glad to have them. What would it have taken to have understood them confidently when I cast them? Not a medical degree, this time (though there were diagnostic hints in the lines of the Vessel), but perhaps a sage-like level of wisdom.

Better questions?​

So far, I’ve talked about the limits of interpretation in readings for diagnosis or prognosis in serious cases. There are better questions to ask, though, or situations where it might make more sense to enlist the oracle’s help.

If you’re choosing between doctors or treatments when medical opinion is divided, for instance, then a ‘What if I…?’ reading would be worth doing. (If, that is, opinion really is divided, and you’re not being deceived by a false equivalence between qualified experts and vampiric charlatans.)

I’ve found the oracle helpful, up to a point, for my minor ailments or decisions that are too small to bother a professional. Three examples:

I had itchy, swollen, painful spots all over the fingers of my right hand. What caused them? 28.2.6 to 33: Great Exceeding, Retreating. They were chilblains caused by ‘excessively retreating’ circulation. (I only understood that one with hindsight.)

What should I do about this painful wisdom tooth? (A question of visit the dentist or wait and see.) 23.6: Stripping Away, with its one solid line being taken away, turning a mountain trigram to earth. That wasn’t so hard to interpret; I went and had it extracted. (In practice, the tooth was its own oracle anyway…)

A rare moment of perfect clarity: I had heart palpitations, and also a big untreated cavity (probably the same one that ended up at 23.6), and I just wondered whether there might be a connection. ‘What effect does my dental health have on my overall health?’ 31.6 to 33 neatly summed up the limit of its influence and stopped me fretting:

​

Different questions​

So Yi is not a substitute for doctors. But then again, nor are doctors a substitute for Yi. It comes into its own answering the questions the medical profession has no tools (not to mention no time) to engage with.

How can I be reconciled with my new identity as a patient?
How can I help my friend who is ill?
What to hold in mind today as I visit her in hospital?

These are the readings that have helped (me and other people) through such times. The temptation to jump straight to ‘What’s wrong?’ and ‘What will happen?’ is still strong, sometimes overpowering, but I do know that Yi helps when I let it engage with all the uncertainty and fear directly, in the moment – where am I? how to cope? how to be with this?

Haven't been able to read the whole post, there is an enormous amount of material. But as someone that has read the Chinese Medical Classics, in an attempt to understand more of the fundamentals of life I suppose, I have to point out that there is an enormous difference in Western and Eastern Medical thinking, and the results from a blood test would make no sense to a Chine Medical Practitioner, that it would to anyone looking at it from the Yi's perspective.
Theoretically, if the Yi is able to provide answers, then it should be possible to do Medical readings, but I suspect that, as I found out for myself, and had to then subsequently question my interpretations, that Medical matters are not subject to interpretation, you have a pain, or you don't, you are ill and need a specific remedy, and I felt for myself, that my inability to be accurate was the Yi's way of telling me that my understanding of the Yi was not adequate.
As the Medical Classics require a knowledge of YinYang, as the basics for all understanding, and as the lines of a Hexagram are so obviously symbols of the dynamics of Yin Yang, I spent many years learning everything I could about YinYang, and lo and behold my Medical readings improved dramatically, for myself anyway.
The fact that I/we cannot do accurate Medical readings for others, and perhaps from that evidence, cannot do accurate reading for others about anything.
A bI bit off topic of the original, but I couldn't find a posting about that subject. perhaps someone with an understanding of how to do a new subject would be kind enough to copy the last part to begin a new thread so that we could all discuss it. As there seems to be a considerable amount of mentions of doing reading for others, when the evidence from Medical readings suggests that to not be possible, if we are considering accuracy important.

 

[frosty6789]

Medical readings

It’s only natural that we should turn to the Yijing with medical questions: we’re vulnerable, uncertain and out of our depth, facing the unknown, so of course we want to consult the oracle. Or if we encounter someone else dealing with a medical crisis who asks for a reading, of course we want to help. Only… is this wise? Would a reading actually help at all?

There’s no right answer to this question, of course. All I can do is to share my own experiences and reflections – and the reasons why I don’t do medical readings for others myself. (I’ve still attempted medical readings of my own occasionally, so that gives me some experiences to draw on for this post.)

First of all, I am not going to start writing about what the Yijing can and cannot do. That would be… unwise. And this isn’t about the Yi’s limits; it’s about ours.

Interpreting readings depends on recognition. If you’ve done readings for other people, you’ll already know that this can be hard in a way that reading for yourself is not. With your own reading, you may well recognise the answer immediately – you can tell it’s speaking to you. With someone else’s reading, you need first to understand the background to the question: the person’s situation, their habitual ways of thinking and imagining it, the choices open to them. Only then can you start to recognise what their reading is saying and how it applies.

Unless you have spent half a dozen years of your life working impossibly hard to gain a medical degree (and maybe not even then), you do not understand the background to a medical question. This means you can’t reliably recognise what the reading is saying – and you’re not qualified to interpret medical readings.

(And by ‘you’ I mean ‘we’. This is the biggest reason why I don’t offer medical readings. What I could offer is just not all that useful – see the examples that follow! – while the harm I could do by misinterpreting is immeasurable.)

This is equally true of any realm of human expertise, of course: if you can’t understand the question, you won’t get on too well with the answer. This is why we consult with experts for advice.

And… we always have done. Here’s an excerpt from the Shujing, the Book of History:


What strikes me about this text is that the oracles are never considered as alternatives to consulting with other people – or with your own heart.

Or think of Hexagram 57, line 2, when it’s good fortune to consult with both diviners and historians:


An oracle is not, and never has been, a substitute for human expertise.

What can you learn from a medical reading?​

On a purely practical level… is it possible to learn factual medical information by consulting the Yi? Yes, I think it is. Is it possible to have full confidence in what you learn this way? Not so much.

An example. I asked what was causing my mother-in-law’s persistent pain after a fall – we were wondering whether she needed more medical attention – and received Hexagram 30 with line 6 changing:

View attachment 4918​

The first thing I thought, looking at the shape of the hexagram, was that this looked like an X ray, and perhaps the moving line might show a fracture at the top of her pelvic girdle.

This turned out to be true – the fracture was in her sacrum.

And… I know this because she had an X ray. From the reading, I could only make guesses about fractures and (from the line text) referred pain. (How would you go about deciding whether a moving line represented a broken bone or bruising, for instance?)

Most medical questions are a whole lot more complex than a broken bone, of course, which makes what we can see in a reading still less useful. If you identify 48.2…


….as a faulty heart valve (I’ve seen it represent that), what next? Which valve? What kind of problem? Would you recommend surgery?

Those are both examples of successful, accurate interpretation of medical readings – and yet they are really of no practical use at all, because they lack precision or certainty. Is Hexagram 22, with its trigrams showing fire under the mountain, illustrating an infection in the root of a tooth? Perhaps, but there are more reliable ways to find out.

I may be belabouring the absurdly obvious here. Still… I have seen people try to advise on cancer treatments on the basis of readings, so perhaps it needs saying.

I can imagine a doctor finding such readings useful, and being able to glean much more detailed information from them than I can – but on the whole, wouldn’t you rather know your doctor was ordering a blood test?

Issues of scale and perspective​

So far, so obvious: you might get it wrong; even if you turn out to have got it right, this is a whole lot less useful than you’d want it to be. And then there are less obvious issues.

For instance, the hexagrams don’t come with a scale: this is something we have to provide as interpreters, using our common sense and background knowledge. I wrote once before about the issue of scale and Hexagram 23 and gave some examples of the different ‘sizes’ of Stripping Away it might mean. I could have given nothing but medical examples: I’ve seen Stripping Away mean death, and minor surgery (when the querent was afraid of something more serious), and a dental extraction.

I wrote then,


But if you’ve just found a lump, the scale of the issue is exactly what you do not know. To find out, you need a doctor, not an oracle.

This can be further complicated by Yi’s own perspective. I’ve come to understand that something deeply kind and compassionate speaks through the Yi – and also, that this voice is not human. It’s not always, automatically, going to describe death as misfortune. Given time, I think we’re able to understand such readings, absorb their perspective; often, this is going to mean that predictive medical readings help afterwards, with hindsight.

When my beloved mother-in-law was hospitalised for what turned out to be the last time, I asked what to expect, and received Hexagram 50, the Vessel, changing at lines 3 and 4 to 4, Not Knowing. Here are the moving lines:


Good fortune in the end, yet also pitfall.

With hindsight, I think both lines were telling the same story, of physical breakdown and death. One shows physical collapse, and the other shows transformation and relief. Both were true.

Another example: if my friend goes to this cancer treatment centre, what will it give her? 52, Stilling, changing at line 4 to 56, Travelling.


She died there – peacefully, I believe, and unafraid. I think that line is recognisable, with hindsight, as her way of going: a kind of stilling that’s also travelling.

With hindsight, I could understand these readings, and I was glad to have them. What would it have taken to have understood them confidently when I cast them? Not a medical degree, this time (though there were diagnostic hints in the lines of the Vessel), but perhaps a sage-like level of wisdom.

Better questions?​

So far, I’ve talked about the limits of interpretation in readings for diagnosis or prognosis in serious cases. There are better questions to ask, though, or situations where it might make more sense to enlist the oracle’s help.

If you’re choosing between doctors or treatments when medical opinion is divided, for instance, then a ‘What if I…?’ reading would be worth doing. (If, that is, opinion really is divided, and you’re not being deceived by a false equivalence between qualified experts and vampiric charlatans.)

I’ve found the oracle helpful, up to a point, for my minor ailments or decisions that are too small to bother a professional. Three examples:

I had itchy, swollen, painful spots all over the fingers of my right hand. What caused them? 28.2.6 to 33: Great Exceeding, Retreating. They were chilblains caused by ‘excessively retreating’ circulation. (I only understood that one with hindsight.)

What should I do about this painful wisdom tooth? (A question of visit the dentist or wait and see.) 23.6: Stripping Away, with its one solid line being taken away, turning a mountain trigram to earth. That wasn’t so hard to interpret; I went and had it extracted. (In practice, the tooth was its own oracle anyway…)

A rare moment of perfect clarity: I had heart palpitations, and also a big untreated cavity (probably the same one that ended up at 23.6), and I just wondered whether there might be a connection. ‘What effect does my dental health have on my overall health?’ 31.6 to 33 neatly summed up the limit of its influence and stopped me fretting:

​

Different questions​

So Yi is not a substitute for doctors. But then again, nor are doctors a substitute for Yi. It comes into its own answering the questions the medical profession has no tools (not to mention no time) to engage with.

How can I be reconciled with my new identity as a patient?
How can I help my friend who is ill?
What to hold in mind today as I visit her in hospital?

These are the readings that have helped (me and other people) through such times. The temptation to jump straight to ‘What’s wrong?’ and ‘What will happen?’ is still strong, sometimes overpowering, but I do know that Yi helps when I let it engage with all the uncertainty and fear directly, in the moment – where am I? how to cope? how to be with this?

Should have read more I think. Just seen the reference to Hexagram 30, with 6th moving. That makes perfect sense. Firstly Hexagram 30 refers to "fire", that can only come from the Lower area, and having seen it so many times, for reasons I have never quite understood, the lines, when it is physical location, appear the opposite way up, so that the first line is more likely to be the upper, and the 6th more likely to be the lower. A single reading I think is unlikely to reveal much and needs more specific questions that were asked in the example here, and all the Yi could do was to confirm the location, which was I presume already known.
The upside down nature of hexagram to body would appear to make the images that have developed over the centuries perhaps less reliable than we would like.

 

[Liselle]

References to feet are in line ones and head references in line sixes, though. Do you have any shareable examples of the upside-down-ness?

 

[hilary]

...Theoretically, if the Yi is able to provide answers, then it should be possible to do Medical readings, but I suspect that, as I found out for myself, and had to then subsequently question my interpretations, that Medical matters are not subject to interpretation, you have a pain, or you don't, you are ill and need a specific remedy, and I felt for myself, that my inability to be accurate was the Yi's way of telling me that my understanding of the Yi was not adequate.

Or it could be that your understanding of Yi was fine, but your understanding of medicine was not adequate?

The fact that I/we cannot do accurate Medical readings for others, and perhaps from that evidence, cannot do accurate reading for others about anything.

That doesn't follow.

Perhaps it's as simple as asking whether you can make any statement that's both accurate and useful (see the post for more on that distinction!) about the topic at hand. With most subjects, you should be able to understand the question if you apply yourself for a while, and then come up with something useful. But if you'd need to apply yourself for a few years before you could say anything sensible... adding an oracle to the mix is not magically going to change that, I think.

A bI bit off topic of the original, but I couldn't find a posting about that subject. perhaps someone with an understanding of how to do a new subject would be kind enough to copy the last part to begin a new thread so that we could all discuss it. As there seems to be a considerable amount of mentions of doing reading for others, when the evidence from Medical readings suggests that to not be possible, if we are considering accuracy important.

Start your own thread! Blue 'Post new thread' button, top right on the Exploring Divination index page - or click here:

https://onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/index.php?forums/exploring-divination.3/post-thread

 

[frosty6789]

Or it could be that your understanding of Yi was fine, but your understanding of medicine was not adequate?

That doesn't follow.

Perhaps it's as simple as asking whether you can make any statement that's both accurate and useful (see the post for more on that distinction!) about the topic at hand. With most subjects, you should be able to understand the question if you apply yourself for a while, and then come up with something useful. But if you'd need to apply yourself for a few years before you could say anything sensible... adding an oracle to the mix is not magically going to change that, I think.

Start your own thread! Blue 'Post new thread' button, top right on the Exploring Divination index page - or click here:

https://onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/index.php?forums/exploring-divination.3/post-thread

Thanks for the info on how to start a thread.
The whole point about Medicine is that it provides a definitive measure of whether we are accurate in our interpretations. Even with limited understanding of Medicine we should be able to get the areas, the functions, the seriousness. That what I found to be not possible from a reading. But after I read the Chinese Medical Classics, and realised that everything in Medicine, and everything else, was down to an understanding of YinYang, and then learnt everything that I could about that were the reading more accurate. Hardly surprising given that the Yi itself is all about YinYang.
What I then found was that while the readings, which worked for Chinese Medicine, but did not seem to work very well for Western Medicine, were decently accurate for myself and those that I knew well, readings that I did for others, or which others asked me to interpret, because of my Medical understanding, never seemed to be accurate in anything other than the most rudimentary sense.
I would have to say that understanding of the question is significantly more simple, as one could do that in a general sense, but understanding and interpretation of a Medical reading requires accuracy and not just a general gist of things.
Because of those experiences about Medical accuracy, which was not possible to interpret, you either had an Iron deficiency, or an excess of Zinc, and such like, or you didn't. Such things were easily tested with inexpensive tests. And while I and others, found that we could get a degree of accuracy for those measurable things, for ourselves, we could not do it for each other with any degree of accuracy.
Those testable things, didnt require any knowledge of any sort of Medicine. I suppose there would be many other such testable things that could also be used to evaluate the accuracy of ones readings, that wouldn't rely on matters knowledge or of interpretation as much.
Because I discovered that the basis of Chinese Medicine, YinYang, was the same as the basis of the Yi, that made Medical readings a good way of evaluating if my readings of the Yi, in every other scenario, were to be considered accurate or not.
I think the point I am trying to get across is that it is very easy to interpret different reading in whatever way that we want and we need some sort of measure to know if our readings are accurate or not.
Medical Readings would seem to be a simple way to do that.

The fact that I/we cannot do accurate Medical readings for others, and perhaps from that evidence, cannot do accurate reading for others about anything.

"That doesn't follow".

I don't follow why it doesnt follow. If we are doing a reading about something testable for ourselves and it is generally accurate, but the same types of testable readings for others are not in the least accurate, it would seem to follow that perhaps it is not possible to do accurate readings for others.
The logic would seem to be that without a degree of accuracy there wouldn't seem to be much point in doing readings, for ourselves, and even less for others if we couldn't be sure of the accuracy.

 

[hilary]

I think my point is that 'accuracy' means different things for different kinds of reading. An accurate reading about a mineral deficiency is qualitatively different from an accurate reading of how best to manage a difficult conversation with your parents.

Many topics for divination are not testable - and if the topic is testable in other ways, as with a blood test for a mineral deficiency, then I see no point in doing a reading. It might or might not be accurate, but it won't be in the least useful.

 

[frosty6789]

References to feet are in line ones and head references in line sixes, though. Do you have any shareable examples of the upside-down-ness?

I understand that would be a common perception. But where does that come from.
The example that Hilary gave would be one example. The Sacrum being at the bottom of the body but the moving line at the top.
Isnt't the Yi full of such opposites? We use solid lines to represent Yang and broken lines to represent Yin. But the Yin is solid compared to the empty of the Yang. Earth/Blood/Yin- Sky/Vapour/Yang.
The symbols are completely the opposite of what the Yin and Yang are.
I do from that perspective struggle to understand how anyone can suggest that the Hexagrams themselves form an image, when it is the exact opposite that we see in the image.
Does it mean that the commentaries, and even the contents of the Hexagrams themselves may not be reliable.
While I can see how a single line, and pairs of lines can be understood in terms if YinYang, the images they form don't represent the reality.
So when a Hexagram suggest the handle of something, can't remember numbers, that cannot be correct as the symbol is not a solid but an emptiness, the absence of a handle moreover.
I cant find any reason why a reading has to begin at the bottom, it is a reference to the "first" line, and in instances involving mental and psychological that would seem to begin with the head.

As this all relates to YinYang perhaps as Hilary said I should start a new thread on that of YinYang and have more time to present all the opposites for everyone to digest.

 

[hilary]

OK, there is some confusion here I hope I can help to clear up.

I understand that would be a common perception. But where does that come from.

From the words of the text. If you look through for references to parts of the body, this is a constant.

The example that Hilary gave would be one example. The Sacrum being at the bottom of the body but the moving line at the top.

Yes, but in this instance I wasn't suggesting the hexagram represented the whole body. The trigram li looked to me like the pelvic girdle.

This, if you like, is an example of interpreting the hexagram without the text. It begins with a purely subjective impression of what the hexagram looks like. More on this in my latest blog post. You will there that interpretation from hexagram shapes alone is tremendously malleable - the very opposite of fixed answers.

Isnt't the Yi full of such opposites? We use solid lines to represent Yang and broken lines to represent Yin. But the Yin is solid compared to the empty of the Yang. Earth/Blood/Yin- Sky/Vapour/Yang.
The symbols are completely the opposite of what the Yin and Yang are.

No, they really aren't. Try thinking in terms of ways of moving instead of objects. Sun, moon and stars move constantly, following their courses, and nothing can interrupt them. Yang moves and acts. Earth can be broken open by ploughs, rivers, seeds, footprints... it can be shaped, broken, interrupted, hollowed out. Yin is acted on.

It's also worth noting that the concepts of yin and yang developed after the Yijing. Not everything from those later developments is necessarily going to fit with the oracle.

I do from that perspective struggle to understand how anyone can suggest that the Hexagrams themselves form an image, when it is the exact opposite that we see in the image.

Have a look through my most recent blog post for more on how that works!

I cant find any reason why a reading has to begin at the bottom, it is a reference to the "first" line, and in instances involving mental and psychological that would seem to begin with the head.

When you cast a hexagram, you start at the bottom. Hexagrams are like trees, or buildings: they grow from the ground up. And yes, if your reading is about psychological issues, then the whole hexagram will address what you asked about, not just the top line! There are 'ground level' and 'upper storey' layers to the mind, after all.

 

[frosty6789]

I think my point is that 'accuracy' means different things for different kinds of reading. An accurate reading about a mineral deficiency is qualitatively different from an accurate reading of how best to manage a difficult conversation with your parents.

Many topics for divination are not testable - and if the topic is testable in other ways, as with a blood test for a mineral deficiency, then I see no point in doing a reading. It might or might not be accurate, but it won't be in the least useful.

I think that would be the point that I am trying to get across. Given the variations on translations, variations on casting methods, variations in interpretations, the potential to find whatever we want to find becomes enormous. But if we first examine those variations, with a hard testable set of facts, do we not then have confidence that at least we know that our translation, our casting methods, and our interpretations are correct.
That would of course be incredibly useful, as it would be translatable into readings we do with other matters.
I think also that it reduces, if not even eliminates some of the questionable interpretations about what the text means, as the testable results would reveal what the text actually meant.
I agree that in the sense of just getting information why would you need to do it twice. But I dont thinl that is the point of the thrust of mt discussion, which is about learning, learning about the Yi, and learning about ourselves.
I dont think given the nature of the Yi, and its ancient history, with its many versions and seeming contradictions that anyone can be overly confident in a particular position about the Yi.
The testing against hard fact does at least restore some confidence, or reveals that the translations we are using, the casting methods we are using, and/or the interpretations we are making are not as accurate as one would like.
That was certainly what I find about myself, and continue to learn.
For example someone said that the bottom line represented the feet and the top line the head. I found that is occasionally true, but often not, and depending on the question, which has to be very precise for medical matters, where accuracy is essential, the representation of the body can be completely reversed.
I have even wondered, given the facts, if the convention of placing the first line at the bottom, may be wrong, in some instances. depending on the type of question. How that would work in practice I have no idea, but it may be a possibility.
To elaborate. A single line has 4 possibilities. Those 4 possibilities, the Yin, the Yang, the moving Yin and the moving Yang are representations of the initial dynamic of YinYang. In TCM, to take deficiency and excess as but one polarity, there can be real excess, or deficiency of Yin, or Yang, giving 4 basics conditions.
As far as the Yi is concerned we then proceed, as normal with the construction of the Hexagram, because of the principle that gives the reasons why we have 6, and not 5, 7 or 10 lines.
But there is another rather important principle of TCM that divides many things into 3. In that degree the first two lines together form the lower aspect of the 3 division, the middle pair of lines the middle division, and the top 2 lines the upper division. And that seems to be consistently accurate as long as we ask the question of the Yi in those terms of 3 divisions.
I do hope that clarifies.

 

[frosty6789]

Can the Hexagrams actually be treated as images when the symbolism of solid and broken is completely reversed to the actual meaning. That would not seem to be possible.
I appreciate that Trigrams have become the convention, but where did that come from. it doesn't accord with the principles of YinYang so that would seem to make it difficult to use Trigrams as images, even if images were possible from the whole Hexagram.
I cannot myself see, even if the symbolism was correct, how Li would represent a Pelvic girdle, what would the solid, and broken lines be representing?
Yin is acted on, by Yang, but Yang is just as much acted on by Yin. If that were not the case there could be no harmony and balance and no treatment in TCM.

I see that the history tells us that the school of YinYang developed after the school of the Yi, but YinYang exists in reality, not just in school.
One might liken it to the discovery of various elements, Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide have existed on the earth for millenia, but the knowledge, the school, came much later. That which exists is independent of any knowledge and any school. Do we actually know for a fact that there was not a school of Yin Yang that existed before that of the Yi. History is a fickle beast that only gives us a very limited view of the past, and in China when almost all the books were burnt we cannot have much confidence that the history tells us all we need to know to be able to say that one was before another. Only that all that survived says that, which is rather different.
Building are man made so I don't see how can be analogous to anything natural.

One cannot dispute that the convention for casting a Hexagram begins at the bottom, but I don't see why the convention of casting has to limit the Hexagram reading to being the same as only a physical object or even to being related to such physical objects as trees. Trees anyway grow down as much as up, and in the first parts of germination, grow exclusivley down, and the final plant or tree has just as much below as it does above, so from that analogy shouldn't we begin the casting and the reading from the middle.

I am not aware of any "ground level" or "upper storey" layers to the mind in Psychology. Which filed are you quoting from?

I don't know how to find your recent blog post, where would I find that please?

 

[Trojina]

You need to check post 11 it appears to be a quote and yet I think your own writing is inserted in that quote and so it is very muddled. The post is just all quote and so you need to edit it to make it functional

Have you learned to make your own thread yet, it could prove useful as you wish to head off on your own tangent. Here are the instructions again

Start your own thread! Blue 'Post new thread' button, top right on the Exploring Divination index page - or click here:
https://onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/index.php?forums/exploring-divination.3/post-thread

This Blog is not about TCM and you have pretty much missed the whole point of the blog and turned it to your agenda so if you want to go on and on about TCM why not make a fresh thread for it, possibly in Open Space.

This is 'Exploring Divination' and so I don't think TCM comes under 'divination' though aspects of it might.

 

[frosty6789]

You need to check post 11 it appears to be a quote and yet I think your own writing is inserted in that quote and so it is very muddled. The post is just all quote and so you need to edit it to make it functional

Have you learned to make your own thread yet, it could prove useful as you wish to head off on your own tangent. Here are the instructions again




This Blog is not about TCM and you have pretty much missed the whole point of the blog and turned it to your agenda so if you want to go on and on about TCM why not make a fresh thread for it, possibly in Open Space.

This is 'Exploring Divination' and so I don't think TCM comes under 'divination' though aspects of it might.

My apologies for not knowing how to use the site properly yet. I am sure I will learn as time goes by.
I do appreciate that is it about Exploring Divination. I thought the thrust of the thread was "medical readings", and that surely has to consider TCM, given that the roots are the same, whereas the root of western medicine have completely different roots than the Yi.
It is the aspects I am referencing, in the most generalised way ,that very much do impact on the Yi, unless we are throwing all considerations of accuracy out of the window.
Perhaps I was not clear in my writings, Sorry.
What I am attempting to convey is that as both Yi and TCM are built on the same roots, that of YinYang that the understanding of one improves the other, and that as medical matters, or indeed any matters that can be verified.
Sorry that you take it as my "agenda". I have no agenda and I am only trying to have a discussion on the topic of medical readings. I have no wish or interest in discussing TCM with anyone here, but the context of how it relates to the Yi, which I dont think I have exceeded, is the content of the thread and that is all I have tried to reference, by sticking to the most basic aspects of YinYang, which are set out in the Medical Classics to be essential to understanding Medicine, set out in the basics of Hexagrams 1 and 2, as well as the constructions of the lines and the hexagrams themselves, and share the same Roots.
It could even be argued that as Chinese Medicine is not a constructed theory, but only discovered what already existed, that it precedes the Yi, and the Yi has followed the innate principles of the Medicine, which follows the innate principles of YinYang.
And Medicine in general, or any other measure that can be tested, provides a really fine way for every user of the Yi to test the accuracy of their methods, be that the translations, of which there is great diversity, the casting methods, which dramatically affect the resultant reading, and the interpretations of those readings, given that we are struggling to understand so much of the content, or there wouldnt exist such splendid forums such as OnlineClarity.
I am trying to stick to the thread subjects.

 

[frosty6789]

You need to check post 11 it appears to be a quote and yet I think your own writing is inserted in that quote and so it is very muddled. The post is just all quote and so you need to edit it to make it functional

Have you learned to make your own thread yet, it could prove useful as you wish to head off on your own tangent. Here are the instructions again




This Blog is not about TCM and you have pretty much missed the whole point of the blog and turned it to your agenda so if you want to go on and on about TCM why not make a fresh thread for it, possibly in Open Space.

This is 'Exploring Divination' and so I don't think TCM comes under 'divination' though aspects of it might.

I am afraid that I didnt post #11. I assumed that had come from Hilary, why my moniker is there I have no idea, I am as confused by that as you are, but I certainly didn't read it before then, I certainly didn't copy it from anywhere, and have no idea how it appeared as a post from me.
Do you have access as Moderator to track down the mistake.

 

[hilary]

I've deleted post #11.