Clarity,
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London.
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Do you still cling to the most ancient text and just dismiss later innovations
The reason why could be, that magic formulas never are written as users manuals to ordinary people?
hi FrankDivination work is not explained publicly it is simply presented and therefore it is up to each of us to find the explanation of why the hexagrams are numbered as they are and why the trigrams are arranged as they are in the Later Heaven from other sources than just the traditional texts.
The Shuogua section 1-3 text is to me the original explanation of the trigram arrangement, but I use other ancient sources to highlight the meaning of the trigrams. My preferred source is the Ogdoad
hi FrankDoes the ancient Egyptian set of 4 pairs help explain the Later Heaven arrangement specifically?
The eight forces of the Ogdoad were equal. The eight trigrams were maybe originally too regarded as equal? This would explain the first part of Michael Erlewines wondering "The Mother and Father trigrams are not only off the angles, but not even opposite one another". The eight forces of the Ogdoad were paired in four complementary pairs of a froghead (male) and a snakehead (female). This would explain the second part of his wondering, because the trigrams were maybe originally primary regarded as four complementary pairs, opposite to one another or not?
hi FrankThis then leaves only the question of how are these pairs tied to one another.
Not quite, FrankThe Later Heaven remains a cycle just as much as the Earlier Heaven. The difference is only that the Earlier Heaven is based around the trigrams of 3 Yin and 3 Yang as primary. The Later Heaven, as we both agree, takes all 8 as equals.
Maybe? It's hard to say which one is most important of two, that even the scholars can't explainThis would also indicate that in the new system, it is the Hexagrams in their KWS that are most important and the details of the trigrams with their lines and numbers only secondary.
This organic mathematical sequence would relate more to the flowing, subconscious, instinctive world of automatic breathing, blood pumping, digesting, and upright balancing, rather than the rigid, conscious, analytical world of politics and laws. It would cut through all culture to the biochemical foundations underlying our existence - the planetary and Solar debris from which we have been made - it's Elementary chemical compositions and behaviours, and it's intelligent structural relationships that have brought about all Life.
Frank,
Use "cited material," instead of "proper material," if that makes you feel more comfortable and is a better use of the English from where you see it.
Other than that, thank you for making my case so clear to Erime and others.
Remember ... Michael Erlewine only asked the later questionAbout this former and later question.
Remember ... Michael Erlewine only asked the later question
Sorry, I was busy observing the sparhawk answer, that the Former Heaven and Lo-Shu is relatedObserve, then, how I answered it!
I don't really care about what supporting scholastic evidence there is for such a process, because, like 1+1=2, the process is the same for who ever chooses to do it; today, or 5000 years ago.
Chinese astronomy differed from that of the Western world in two important respects: (a) it was polar and equatorial rather than planetary and ecliptic, (b) it was an activity of the bureaucratic state rather than of priests or independent scholars. Both features had advantages and disadvantages; the first led to the mechanization of celestial models long before the West, but deferred recognition of equinoctial precession till later. The second ensured remarkable sets of celestial observations antedating most of those recorded elsewhere, but discouraged causal speculation, especially in the absence of Euclidean deductive geometry. In cosmology, China developed three doctrines: (a) the Kai Thien universe, a domical geocentrism not unlike early Babylonian ideas, (b) the Hun Thien universe, essentially the recognition of the primary celestial spherical coordinates, and (c) the Hsuian Yeh system, which accepted the Hun Thien as methodo- logically necessary but viewed the heavenly bodies as lights of unknown nature floating in infinite empty space. Instrumentation developed early, armillary rings being in use by the end of the - 2nd century and the complete armillary sphere by the end of the + 1st.
Astronomy in Ancient and Medieval China
Author(s): J. Needham
Source: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and
Physical Sciences, Vol. 276, No. 1257, The Place of Astronomy in the Ancient World (May 2,
1974), pp. 67-82
Well it's a pretty big coincidence (i.e. on worthy of serious consideration) that the same process leads to the Early and Later Heaven arrangements, differing only by a single rotation in the opposite direction. It's like a brightness knob on an old computer monitor - twist it one way and the screen goes white, and twist it another way and the screen goes black. The King Wen Sequence is like the monitor flashing according to some pulse of nature. Coincidence, or not,what i am putting across here appears highly likely to have been within the grasp of the ancient Chinese.If your claim was something like "I think I found a coincidence that fits within the KWS model" then the discussion would be of another tenor.
You say this as if it is a fact, and yet you can not truly know this... ever!at the time of the inception of the trigram circles, they had no conceptual knowledge of planetary distances.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).