Great images

[green dragon]

Hi everybody,

I would like your opinion about the great images of the hexagrams, how much do you use them? I tend to use them a lot, several times when I was confused about the the interpretation of a reading I read the great image and it seemed to me that things became cristal clear.

Here is how I interpret my readings now :

I read the text of the hexagrams and the text of the moving lines, trying to find a litteral meaning applying to the situation. I have noticed that often the I Ching do not use symbols : it talks about the things how they are quite litteraly. I take into account the judgements like "fortune" "misfortune" when it comes to decide if it is more a "yes" or a "no". I usually interpret "persistence" as "continue what you are doing", "cross the great waters" as "do some bold move" and "to have in view some goal" as "what you are considering to do is ok".

Then I read the great image, trying again to be quite litteral in my interpretation.

Then only I read any other commentaries.

Any feedback on this is welcome.

Best regards
Green Dragon

 

[pocossin]

Because in Wilhelm and Hatcher the Image is given before the line text, I usually read it first and give it more weight.

 

[bradford]

IMO the Da Xiang represents the clearest understanding of the Hexagrams. That's why I put it first.
But it's built strictly on the upper and lower component trigrams, which is not all there is to the hexagrams.
For me, this makes the Yi specifically an educational book, ethical instruction for the young king and his nobles. Young noble or Junzi figures in most of the hexagrams, although there are also several references to the kings of old instead. Young noble was the original meaning of the term, before it got perverted by the Confucians' pretentious misunderstanding of the term as "superior man." The whole point of the 64 Da Xiang meditations is to put yourself in a place of learning.

 

[green dragon]

"Young noble" !? This changes completely the interpretation of some of the hexagrams. Instead of thinking "this applies only to very advanced people" it would read "this applies to those who want to make progress".

 

[bradford]

"Young noble" !? This changes completely the interpretation of some of the hexagrams. Instead of thinking "this applies only to very advanced people" it would read "this applies to those who want to make progress".

That is precisely the difference between the Zhouyi as written and the Confucian approach to it.

 

[charly]

Zhou Yi vs. Da Xiang

Hi, Brad:

I always believed that the Great Image [Da Xiang] was a confucian treatise not much comparable with the ancient core text [Zhou Yi], but I also believed that it was inspired on earlier practices of reading the hexagrams by the component trigrams.

The Da Xiang should give for each hexagram only one exemplar reading proceeding by a parallellism between one image of the inner and outer trigrams and how, inspired on it, behaves a Young Noble, a King of long ago... Only one possibility, one story although it can accept multiple meanings.

Maybe ancient illiterate diviners had the same practice with the stalks, making an image form the two trigrams and deriving an exemplar story based on parallellisms and metaphors. They had a wider range of possibilities compared with the Da Xiang. But maybe the same procedure.

From this point of view, the Da Xiang should be older (the procedure) and younger (the text) than the Zhou Yi.

About the Jun Zi, the Noble Youngs, they were not superior men even maybe they were not aristocrats. What made them noble was to be young, say, they accepted to behave by emulation, they were not exemplar, they were neither masters nor sages. They were learning.


At least, I believe so. Am I wrong?

Best whishes,


Charly