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Discussion of the pairs

wanderer

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I started a thread over the last several weeks, wanting a discussion about the various hexagrams (in pairs). I am writing these for personal reasons, and will continue to do so. But for one reason or another there doesnt seem to be much discussion. I do not know if other's are just not interested, or whether you find my observations not conducive to comment, or that there is simply not time to participate. I am having doubts about the usefullness of posting.

In looking at a painting one can look at many aspects. One can notice the color, paint strokes, theme, its flaws, its place in history etc. But even a child can tell you what it means to them. That is what I am interested in. I am not interested in translations, there are plenty available to all of us. I am not interested in the exact meaning of obscure references, there are many such interpretations out there. I am not looking for the geometrics underlying the work, though it is rather fascinating.

What I am looking for is the gut level meaning to each of you of the hexagrams. Some metaphor from everyday life which you relate to the hexagrams. The less sophisticated the better. At least that is what I had hoped.
 

shelley

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Dear Wanderer,

Please don't stop! Sorry I haven't expressed my appreciation. I've been copying your wonderful writings into a folder so that I can study them properly. It's just the kind of stuff I've been looking for: not only so that I can apply the accumulated wisdom of those, like you, with so much more experience than I have of using the I Ching, but so that I can learn from you how to develop my own approach to the oracle, to recognise the personal resonances in the imagery.

I haven't posted any response simply because I've not felt competent to comment - only to absorb. Hopefully, as I learn from you and the others here, I'll start to feel more confident about adding my two-penn'orth (I did manage to contribute a little on aother thread and felt very rewarded by Val's generous encouragement.)

I don't have time to take in all the details of your work at the moment but I intend to study it over time and will comment if I feel I have anything of value to contribute.

Thank you so much for sharing all this.

Love,

Shelley
 

bradford_h

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Hi Wanderer-
I too have been saving your posts in a folder. I'm getting ready to write my own commentary over the next couple of months, and thought I could examine each of your Gua in the best light if I studied them on the day I was doing that particular Gua. I shouldn't be but about a month behind you.
Please keep em coming.
b
 
C

cheiron

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Dear Wanderer

I too am reading you postings and am finding their insights very stimulating.

Time pressure and other focuses are stopping me from more than skim reading at present.

I am hoping Hilary will not archives these pair threads for a long time as I hope to come back and contribute over the next few months? I am sure I will have many questions too.

So please, please keep posting I am listening and have gained some deep pleasure from your words.

(Hilary once said to me that for every one who posts online there are man more who just come and read? )

I do believe you may have come to an inn.
happy.gif


Warm regards

--Kevin
 

joang

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Wanderer,
the same goes for me too. I have printed out and saved your pairs posts in a folder marked "Wanderer". I plan to sit down with my W/B side by side with your posts and try to understand how you made those connections, because I can't do it very well in my head. But it is a busy time now. I appreciate each and every one, and look forward to more. Thank you very much for your time and effort.

Namaste,
Joan
 

johnro

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Dear Wanderer,

I enjoy them very very much, and thank you for your excellent work,

Please keep going,

Kind regards,

Johnro
 

chrislofting

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Wanderer,

to get at the core of 'pairs' etc you need to look past the expressions to the methodology that allows the pairing to happen. EVERY hexagram is pairable with all others but it is context that determines a 'meaningful' pairing vs one derived from being forced.

The forcing is due to the fact that the hexagrams have been created on a template that uses recursion to move from the root dichotomy (yin line/ yang line) to the hexagrams/dodecagrams.

The use of recursion encodes the whole in all parts and due to the use of a dichotomy will FORCE the pairs to occur - as it forces quartets, octets, etc. (http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/btree.png, if your system does not like the file type then use http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/btree.jpg )

The template derived from recursion allows for 'seeding' the dichotomy - e.g. if we focus on the *qualities* of hexagram 01 vs 02, as in 'opposites' and insert those qualities in the dichotomy so out pops the binary sequence of the hexagrams in the form of 32 pairs.

If we seed the dichotomy with the *qualities* of hexagram 01 vs 64, as in 'individual/pure' vs 'group/mixed' then out will pop the 'traditional' sequence, all 32 pairs.

There are 4096 of these 64-hexagram sequences (or more so 32-pair sequences, but some doubled due to differences in direction of derivation, 1 to 2 or 2 to 1! ;-))

zoom-in to changing-line hexagrams, convertable to dodecagrams and 4096 moves to 16+ million (or 8 million pairs!)

For some examples of pairs derived from other sequences besides the traditional see http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/icpoints.html


(note for example Candid focused on 6-7 - this is a 'gap' relationship in that the patterns are:

1,2
3,4
5,6
7,8

There are qualitative 'gaps' between the PAIR 3,4 and the PAIR 1,2 as well as between 3,4 and 5,6. 3,4 join to form a quartet of 1,2,3,4 and it complements 5,6,7,8 in the OCTET of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 - see the meanings mapped to this in http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/cracked.html )

The use of recursion ensures interpretations as repetitions, reflections etc etc (gets into different types of grammars - context-dependent, context-free etc etc) with the whole encoded in all parts (and so recoverable from any part, just as a part reflects 'metonomy', part-for-whole so the whole I Ching reflects 'metaphor', whole-for-whole. etc. Change levels and the metaphor is the hexagram, the metonomy rooted in the parts of the hexagram and so on)

Your approach is understandable given the comments on pairs (but usually limited to the trad sequence) on this and other lists in the past but I think you may miss the depth which you are heading for! - it all gets VERY deep and goes way beyond the pairings of hexagrams in the traditional sequence - in fact the better starting place is hexagrams in the binary sequence, as in pairs of 'opposites/complements'. This is easier due to their obvious extremes in the pairs. From there one can move on to trace each hexagram paired with all of the others - to identify the context in which the pairing is best reflected etc.

you could give one thread for a hexagram with all 64 pairings (and that means to include pairing to itself in that the hexagram has a gerund nature and so dual intepretations dependent on context)

That way 07 is mapped to its 64 pairs in one thread rather than 64 possible threads just for 07! - and so limit the threads to 64 overall within each of which are comments for each pairing!

perhaps you should do what I do, produce a website! ;-)

Chris.
 
C

candid

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Hi Chris,

I focused on 6-7? My old age must be catching up with me cuz I don't recall this.
happy.gif


jfwiw, I follow discussions here about pairings and squares with only mild interest. Or maybe as a child watches a parade go by. But then I've never even taken to the nuclear trigram idea.

I do appreciate what you said about, "EVERY hexagram is pairable with all others but it is context that determines a 'meaningful' pairing vs one derived from being forced"

That's about how I see it also. There's nothing in nature which doesn't match all the rest of nature. Its all about context.

Candid
 

hilary

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Dear Wanderer - enthusiastically seconding all the above, that is up until Chris's post
wink.gif
. (Good to see you're still here, Chris!)

Of course every hexagram can be paired with every other, that's rather what we have changing lines for... But the idea here isn't so much that there are pairs of hexagrams at all as that there is one where we see two. There's a single landscape of yin and yang, that we may see as 010001 or 100010 depending on where we stand, or perhaps where we're coming from.

This is the idea that many people who'd been divining for a while had intuited - like Wanderer standing on the plateau and turning around to see hexagram 11 or hexagram 12, or LiSe with her pages on hexagrams as pairs, or a little note of mine somewhere to the effect that 35 and 36 were 'part of the same landscape', and then so were 51 and 52...

Then Stephen brought the whole thing out of the shadows and created the multi-dimensional board for our 'square games'. Which, I agree, will either mean something or nothing when they're put in context, ie divination. Thus far they seem to make sense.

Isn't it extraordinary, though, that we still have new and beautiful floats for the parade?
 
C

candid

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Hi Hilary - I don't know why I'm missing this.

There is one where we see two?

If a landscape is made from any two hexagrams, where do the fixed pairs enter in? And... why?

sitting on the curb watching... but not understanding.
 

chrislofting

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Hilary,

you wrote:

"that's rather what we have changing lines for..."

NO. this has nothing to do with changing lines, changing lines reflect the compression of 'higher dimensions' into lower - 4096 gets compressed into 64 'changing line' hexagrams. 64 gets compressed into 8 changing line trigrams etc.

The pairings derive from the methodology discussed in my previous post, reflecting how we as a species derive meaning through deriving qualities through recursion.

thus in the traditional sequence 1 goes with 2 as 1 goes with 64. 64 goes with 63 as 2 goes with 1.

In the binary sequence 1 goes with 43 as 1 goes with 2. 2 goes with 23 as 2 goes with 1.

your above prose favours expression, there is pattern behind the expression...

Lost yet? ;-)

Chris.
 

chrislofting

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Hi Candid,

yes, I think it was in fact Gene on another thread, the 7,8 thread. sorry. ;-)

As for nukes - dont touch em at the moment, other than noting the reduction to the pairs of 1,2 and 63,64. Too much of interest in going the other way! ;-)

As for context - the 'template' is a closed system. It serves as a source of 'trial maps' that we build and then 'try out' in a context. As such the roots are really generic, all 'whole, part' etc. Link those universal qualities to a unique context and out pops a lexicon to communicate that relationship.

Neurologically, our instincts/habits are encoded in the input areas of our neurons and so allow context to push us. Consciousness allows us to imagine contexts and so refine our instincts/habits before they are exposed to a 'real' context.

The advantage of going through the IC is in the ability to map out all of the possible relationships and refine them mentally and so seek-out contexts for further 'refinements' - seek out contexts that set-off the 'archetypes', the hexagrams all encoded in our species-nature and refinable through consciousness.

Chris.
 
C

candid

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Hi Chris,

I can see the frame of reference, yes. The process is recognizable. I also see it working in reverse too. Rather than seeking context, applying the reading to our own already established context. The two seem joined at the hip. Hence: synchronicity.

Candid
 

wanderer

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Chris,

There are times when I think that I being to know what you are saying and times when my eyes glaze over.

If we believe that everything in the universe is connected somehow, then every single thing must model that interconnectiveness. So if the I Ching is a model of the universe and how it works, every aspect of it must connect to every other aspect of it.

You beleve that you have found that constuct of interconnectiveness in your theories. They work for you as a model for every process. You believe that if other people understood them that they would work for them as well.

The concept is well proven. A fly landing on a steel bar, bends the bar measurably. A hand waving in the air here in Oregon, has an effect in Japan. Yet that hand has a greater effect on the coffee cup it knocks over here. Our childhood effects who we are today, and I guess if we had the proper tools we might be able to discern each element. But at some point discerning the origins and how they effect who we are is less important than who we are itself.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the next time that I read the first twelve hexagrams I will understand them somewhat differently than I have this time. My understanding of the I Ching, like myself is evolving. I do not believe that anyone really has a grasp about how that actually happens and which direction it is likely to go. There is certain mystery that makes life interesting for me.

I believe that there is just one source. The key is in accepting the source not in understanding it. I tend to believe that if part of us survives this life, we will find that what we have managed to discover and understand here will seem like baby steps in the scheme of all that is available.
 

cal val

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Wanderer...

You said:

"But at some point discerning the origins and how they effect who we are is less important than who we are itself."

"The key is in accepting the source not in understanding it."

Yup.

Love,

Val
 

cal val

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Wanderer...

I'd like to add an afterthought to the above, and that is...

The key is also in accepting who we are.

Love,

Val
 

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