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Former Heaven hexagrams

jjsalas

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Hello.

When I study a hexagram I always have the doubt of knowing which is its corresponding in the former heaven.

Is there any way to find out?
Does it make sense to know what the hexagram in the former heaven is?

Thanks to all
 

Trojina

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What is former heaven ?
 

Trojina

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It's the way the 8 trigrams can be arranged in cyclical order.

There's the 'sequence of earlier heaven' attributed to Fu Xi and then there is the 'sequence of later heaven' attributed to King Wen.


But that doesn't make sense of your question for me yet though I'm sure it will to someone else.



Hello.

When I study a hexagram I always have the doubt of knowing which is its corresponding in the former heaven.

Is there any way to find out?
Does it make sense to know what the hexagram in the former heaven is?

Thanks to all


If former/earlier heaven is a cyclical order of the trigrams I don't understand what you mean when you say when you look at a hexagram you don't know what the corresponding ?? is :confused:


Hopefully someone can help you.
 
S

svenrus

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"Is there any way to find out?
Does it make sense to know what the hexagram in the former heaven is?
"

Easy: it doesn't exist.
 

hilary

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As Trojina says, this idea comes from the two cyclic arrangements of trigrams. You can see them both on the Wikipedia 'bagua' page.

I expect what jjsalas is referring to is the idea that these two diagrams are like layers of reality: the Later Heaven arrangement is what's manifest, and the Earlier Heaven is what lies behind it. In the Later Heaven arrangement, fire is in the south (at the top) - but 'behind' it, in the Earlier Heaven arrangement, heaven is in the south.

If you think of the hexagram you cast as belonging to the manifest world, the Later Heaven arrangement, then it also has an 'Earlier Heaven' hexagram lying behind it.

To find that...

Look at the two bagua diagrams.
Locate the trigrams of your cast hexagram in the Later Heaven diagram
Look in the corresponding positions in the Earlier Heaven diagram and note the trigrams in those places

So for instance, if you cast hexagram 14, you look for the trigrams for heaven and fire in the Later Heaven bagua, and you find them in the northwest (bottom right) and the south (top). In the corresponding positions in the Earlier Heaven bagua you find the trigrams for mountain and heaven. So the Earlier Heaven hexagram for 14 is mountain inside, heaven outside: Hexagram 33, Retreat.

Diana ffarington-Hook wrote about these. Stephen Karcher has adopted them as the 'Ideal' hexagram. I tried, but I haven't really found a use for them in readings. The 'Earlier Heaven' arrangement of trigrams is actually a more recent one, laid out to be nice and symmetrical and well-ordered, and it doesn't seem to me to have much connection with the Yi.
 

bradford

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People should understand that the Xian Tian, the Early or Primal Heaven, despite its being the perfect arrangement of both bagua and gua, is new to Yixue (Yijing studies). In form, it's just straight up binary numbers. But the system isn't known to go back any further than Shao Yong (1011-1077) of the relatively recent Song Dynasty. It can still be used to interpret readings, but like Yin and Yang themselves, they are NOT foundational to the Yi, and were not a part of the thinking of the original authors.
 
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svenrus

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One could think that it was the arrangement ascribed to Fu Hsi and thereby think that it was older than the later Heaven arrangement of the trigrams ascribed to king Wen. :)confused: tricky)
 

bradford

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One could think that it was the arrangement ascribed to Fu Hsi and thereby think that it was older than the later Heaven arrangement of the trigrams ascribed to king Wen. :)confused: tricky)

Only if you're the type who believes everything they read and doesn't grasp the difference between myth and reality.
 
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svenrus

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Hi, sorry for my late reply. I've searched in the material accessible to me and YES: the arrows points toward the Song-era-philosophers.

There were thou those at those time who was arguing against it:
"..... Many of these men did not hold the diagrams [ie the Before Heaven and After Heaven diagrams] in particular favor; for example, speaking specifically of the hsien-t'ien [ie Before Heaven] diagram, the eminent Chu Hsi [1130 - 1200] relates that 'the Before Heaven diagram is indeed subtle. It did not begin with Shao (Yung) K'ang-chieh or Ch'en (T'uan) Hsi-i, (but) has existed long before their time, from the beginning. It is merely that it is mysterious and was not transmitted (until much later).....' ..... "
Source: The recluse of Loyang, Don J. Wyatt, University of Hawai's Press 1996, ch. 7 pg. 199

(Personally I'm satisfied with the information given in Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching, book II, Shuo Kua Ch. II, pg. 266 the 1968 Ed.)
 
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hilary

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Yes - tradition says the Earlier Heaven/ Fuxi arrangement is the original. When you create/ discover a trigram arrangement, naturally you make the claim that this is the most ancient - when antiquity=value, that's equivalent to saying that it's the most important. And naturally, people would like the original arrangement to be something neat, tidy and straightforward like the Fuxi one, arranged according to a logic we can understand. The Later Heaven arrangement, the one actually linked with the Yijing text, is a whole lot more mysterious.

It might be tempting to attribute this way of thinking to hidebound Chinese traditionalists, if it weren't for the fact that modern Westerners do exactly the same thing - solemnly rearranging the hexagrams into an order they can understand, and then pronouncing that this must be the original order.

In fact, isn't / wasn't there a website somewhere in which some twerp reorganised and rewrote the I Ching on the basis of the 'original' Fuxi bagua?
 

bradford

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In fact, isn't / wasn't there a website somewhere in which some twerp reorganised and rewrote the I Ching on the basis of the 'original' Fuxi bagua?

Roy Collins comes to mind, but he had it ass-backwards and thought Qian was zero instead of Kun.
 
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svenrus

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That the Later Heaven arrangement can be traced farthest back in time as written source and that the Early Heaven arrangement somehow can't be traced that far back in time without taking myth into consideration would answer jjsalas's question with an: "concentrate on the Later Heaven arrangement" - of course if she or he with Former Heaven hexagram meant that.... (?)
 
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Freedda

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I will sometimes look to the 'Ideal' hexagram (found by swapping out the component trigams of the King Wen sequence for those of the Early Heaven/ Fuxi Bagua) as a way to access or approach the meaning or 'lesson' of the cast hexagram.

By way of example, in a recent reading I asked -- in a very open, broad way -- what would be a theme or idea for an art exhibit I'll be doing later this year at a local cafe. I got 24.2.6 > 41 -- Returning > Decreasing. This reading felt right for my situation; some of what I wrote is:

24 - Returning. Coming and going without error. Winter solstice sun’s return. The spirit of repetition: walking one’s path over and over until it fully becomes one’s own. A time of rest and slow awakening (the passes were closed at the solstice) > 41 - Resultant - The Empty Caldron. Decreasing resentments and desires. Concentrating. Getting to what is essential.

The Ideal of 24 is 37 - Family members; the family (the Clan), and for me: Making a home a place of beginnings – a place one can return to. To make a place worthy of a (young) woman’s commitment. -- The takeaway for me, rather simply, is that Retuning and getting to essentials starts at home. (Thanks Dorothy!)

All that being said, I realize -- as Bradford points out -- that this is a bit far afield from, and not foundational to the Yi, and I often feel I need to caution myself not to lose sight of the original Yi lessons as I traverse down the many possible Yi sidepaths, be it the ideal or shadow, or nuclear hexagrams, or the change operators, or the pairs or sequences ...
 

Rks1157

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Early or former heaven refers to a sequence of the "eight trigrams" (rather than hexagrams) in which each is set across from its opposite in an order in which (from the top going clockwise) the firm lines are replacing by yielding lines and back to firm again. (Much like the taijitu [yin and yang symbol] goes from light to dark then light again). It is sometimes called the primal arrangement. All hexagrams are made up by these trigrams.
 

Gmulii

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While the historical aspect can be interesting, I personally am a lot more interested in how it is used in practice today, as after all divination in that part of the world is consider an craft/art by many of the people living there.

When it comes to practical ways these two arrangement are used in the Five Arts in Asia today, the idea is a little different.
First have to clarify that this isn't just Trigrams and the numbers associated with them, it also affects the stems and branches from the Solar Calendar(the animals we probably know in the west, Dog, Dragon etc.) and other parts of the systems.

Both are based on Lo Shu and He Tu.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo_Shu_Square



So what is the Lo Shu... Long story, but in short when it comes to the Trigrams if you just count the dots you will see its the Later Heaven Trigram arrangment. However in the Five Arts its used for many techniques, one example could be in Feng Shui where we "fly the stars" using this, another QMDJ where this is the battlefield map, and in many other systems from there.
Also may be important to mention that the numbers on the Trigrams are different in their early condition/state.


Earlier Heaven is based on HeTu:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River_Map

In practice for most systems coming from Yi Jing, it's worked almost always with Later Heaven Arrangement. Only exception is when we make hexagram from events or numbers, as then we use the early numbers(that is mostly Plum Blossom Divination).
There is reason for it. The idea here is that Later Heaven is the world as it is now. Early heaven is the perfect condition before something is created.
As we usually want to know something about the world around us when asking, we use that order.

In BaZi and in all Five Arts system that works with the branches, there are more situations when we use early heaven. That would be when lines combine.
The idea is then when a specific type of combination happen the "lines" turn back to earlier heaven arrangement. Something manifest its true form in the world around us.

What does that mean...

Lets see example from Liu Yao / Six Lines Divination:

example-of-combination.png


Looking at the lines, we have the branches/relations on them.
We can see the combination in books or the net.

In this nice blog there is info for the specific type of combination we look for:

https://kevinchanbazi.wordpress.com/2014/07/19/bazi-relationship-earthly-branch-combination/

So now in this example the Yong line combines with Second line as Zi combines with Chou.
Someone around us have relation with someone with authority. As Officer can show illness too, it may mean someone around us has an illness, or many other things. Images will depend on what the question is.


Anyway, just wanted to present some view of how it is used in Asia and the Five Arts, practically today. : )

If we go to the first question... When to use early and when later heaven numbers... In the Five Arts we use Early Heaven only if we create Hexagram from events(old man going east, qian on top of zhen for example) or static info(numbers, date etc.).

Hopefully this can be interesting/helpful. While some of the systems used today in Asia may be younger then the text with the lines, they still have been proven for more then a millennium in most cases, and even today are very respected and utilized in that part of the world, after all.
 

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