Clarity,
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Probably but what difference does it make? If you agree 33 is about some creature retreating from harm, why does it bother you that various authors picked a pig?could't we then just as easily have 33 be about dogs, or elephant, or bears ... and that any of these would also work?
That is a very good point!Where I might already struggle with interpreting the Yi, now on top of that, I have to also struggle with interpreting or intuiting Karcher's interpretation of an interpretation?
This strategic retreat gathers and focuses positive qualities, connecting you to Heaven-energy, the Dragon force. It is a retreat that allows you to conquer in the end, leaving the Small People who must adapt to circumstances behind. It specifically refers to a sojourn in the Mountain Shrine, talking to the Tiger Spirit and the Mountain Men, the Sages hidden beyond the borders of the civilized world, a retreat to a more primitive state that evokes animal maskers and hidden transformation rituals.
I think a better name/handle might be 'Seeking the Proper (Correct) Distance': at times we want to or need to be up close to something (a person, a situation, an idea) in order to gain an understanding of it - so here Mountain is in the forefront, maybe so much so that's all we see (and the bugs and tree roots, and grains of dirt look really really close!)
But sometimes we need to get much more distance from something in order to understand it, or see it clearly, so the mountains become little bumps on the horizon, and the very vast, Great Blue Sky is what we're seeing!
Yes, I see that now that you've posted your mountain/sky ideas, which - appreciated.But to answer your question, I think it does make a difference, because I don't agree that 33 is only about a creature retreating from harm.
I know we're exploring here, but a part of me wants to say, 'good god woman!
Freedda said:Where I might already struggle with interpreting the Yi, now on top of that, I have to also struggle with interpreting or intuiting Karcher's interpretation of an interpretation?Liselle said:That is a very good point!
I'm really glad you included that. Up to then, I'd thought your quarrel was specifically with pigs and I did not understand. It makes a lot more sense now that you've explained the "nor retreat" part.If you want, look at Post #46 above, for another way that I understand 33 - which does not necessarily include a pig's tail, nor retreat.
As to Karcher, I think I've already said quite a bit, at least about 33. I have no issue, per se, with using myth or history. But he confuses me much more than he adds to my understanding - at least with a lot of his myth-laden commentary and interpretation.
One point for me is that this Pig/Hex 33 connection is tentative at best (and could very well be made up) ... and if so, could't we then just as easily have 33 be about dogs, or elephant, or bears ... and that any of these would also work?
Okay, I know we're exploring here, but a part of me wants to say, 'good god woman! how far do we have to go to try to make sense of Karcher?' It really seems like a whole lot of bending and streching and reaching to try to give 'tiger spirt' and his 'myths' about 33 some inkling of legitimacy.
If nothing else, we need to keep this in mind when trying to understand his mythic-poetic translation. And for me, it also means that to find meaning here we may simply need to wipe or strip away these poetic or mythic layers - that were never a part of the Yi in the first place!
My understanding of the Chinese language (and it's historic use) is very, very limited, but what I have gathered is that over three quarters of the characters are compound, which means they contain 'semantic' characters that are related to (an original or 'root') meaning, but they also include a 'phonetic' part, which tells us not only how the word is to be pronounced, but also what new meaning it has.
So, looking at Hex. 33, it is called/titled Dun, which means to hide, to escape, to leave ... and it has been given various names related to this meaning, such as Retreat(ing), Distancing, Withdrawal.
The word Dun, is a compound character: it includes the semantic character for road or foot (maybe: road-foot), AND the phonetic character for pig, which means - as I understand it - "we take the root word/meaning road-foot, and we pronounce it like we would the word 'pig' and in pronouncing it this way we give it a new (but related) meaning: 'to hide, escape, leave' (which are all ways that feet might act when escaping on a road)".
What Karcher seems to have done is given an entirely different function or meaning to the 'pig' part of Dun, so now it has taken on mythic-poetic weight, and he goes so far as to add 'pig' into his translation, when it was never there in the first place!
Hi Michael:I can see how you are thinking. As cultures develop there is certainly a trend towards obscuring their barbaric roots of man's inhumanity to man. The softening / obscuring eventually ...
... Kings do gain the priviledge of cutting off heads much like victors write the history, so I think I am attempting to stand up for the little men who may be losing their heads through being fed one particular narrative down their throats before the axe bears down on the chopping block...
... The idea of a sacrifice these days is more in the line of giving up something, especially something of value, in exchange for other considerations either for yourself or for others. Not so much of the blood, guts and killing things appear in the sacrifice these days.
Available in UC Berkeley as downloadable pdf here:The anti-imperial uprisings, the warlord power struggle, the War of Resistance, and the Chinese Civil War took twenty to thirty million lives. Half of the casualties were civilian. Republican China, not unlike the Union government during the American Civil War and the European states during the First World War, began to manage the war dead ...
... In twentieth-century China, conflicts were viewed as rational political choices, inevitable in the modern age, and inseparable from human experience, laying the rhetorical ground for further violence. Examining the changes in compensation and commemoration law from the 1910s to 1940s, I demonstrate that two processes – the bureaucratization of death (the construction of deaths with numbers and formulaic arratives) and the civilianization of war (increased presence of civilians in war as victims, supporters and penetrators) – contributed to the routinization of violence in postwar China.
Political struggles from the 1950s to the present testify to how wars of earlier decades have normalized death in the cultural, social, and economic realms. Furthermore, I propose that the dead have sovereignty as their oft-perceived formidable power in the afterlife necessitates that political, social, and cultural institutions develop the means to control the way by which they are remembered. The sheer number of the dead, the eerie specter of their wronged souls, and the multiplicity of their memorialized identities upset the core of human existence...
Linh Dam Vu : «The Sovereignty of the War Dead - Martyrs, Memorials, and the Makings of Modern China, 1912-1949«
Normalising of violence and other less savoury forms of behaviour is practiced regularly, and almost religiously, in today's society. Not only in today's society it has been prominent over the centuries in many ways and forms.Political discourse had focused more in obscuring the perception on actual violence more than obscured that of the ancient times. Current violence gets naturalized, people is encouraged to acustomize themselves to it.
I could paraphrase this as:You notice that a pig has a kind of preservation instinct that does not compromise with its owner. The owner feeds and cares for him, but at no time does he let this relationship take precedence over his instinct - the same for cats.
The same cannot be said of other animals like dogs, horses or sheep. Each of these has a much more committed and dependent relationship with its owner.
We have the dog that is easily influenced by its owner. We have the horse that creates a relationship so strong that it does not mind going into battle with its owner. And the sheep that accepts death by the hands of its owner innocently and without opposition.
First, Karcher wrote the book, but I'm the one reading it - and how I might choose to do so is my damn business!
I'm still valueing everybody's contibutions on this thread, Freedda. Every thesis needs an antithesis otherwise we just keep on trotting out all the same old, same old, same old, same old stuff. The diversity gained from your perspective has brought this thread alive and certainly for me has prompted me to challenge my own ideas and views.I have, however, asked questions, and raised some objections to Karcher's 33, which I think we were invited by My_Key to do.
Hi Trojina:... Lise came along and said no it wasn't it was a tablet, a seal and 'wind' was just one of Xun's attributes. Well I thought she was wrong in that context and you were right. For me Xun is wind and I would interpret it as such and in that reading, it would scarcely have made sense as a tablet/seal indeed I don't even know if I think that meaning is valid in the same way I'm not sure about the pig and I'm not convinced of any grey rat in 15 either. As you said sometimes there's one of these 'radicals' added to a character that indicates actual sound of the word and then a translator decides to take it further and make it mean that...
Well I thought she was wrong in that context and you were right. For me Xun is wind and I would interpret it as such and in that reading,
巽 Its shape looks like two seals over a table or two kneeling persons or instead of it two kneeling persons with big heads, if there is a phonetic component it might be the upper, but both little to do with wind.
巽 xun means obedient, modest, mild and is the name ofthe trigram here known as wind, but wind is not the meaning of xun as joyous is not the meaning of 兌 dui.
That was about trigrams, though (at least I thought so - heaven only knows how wrong I might be )To start, the part of the conversation you took my comment from was not at all about pigs, nor trigrams. It was about how much stretching Liselle had to do and how much time and energy she had to take to find a place or connection between 33 and the 'tiger spirit.'
Hi Michael:I'm still valueing everybody's contibutions on this thread, Freedda. Every thesis needs an antithesis otherwise we just keep on trotting out all the same old, same old, same old, same old stuff. The diversity gained from your perspective has brought this thread alive and certainly for me has prompted me to challenge my own ideas and views.
I find Nigel Richmond's translation to be helpful on many occassions. Here's his take on Hex 33 from 'Language of the Lines'. No pigs but his world is inhabited with 'grazing deer' and 'prowling cats'.
View attachment 2825 View attachment 2826
Hi Liselle:Probably but what difference does it make? If you agree 33 is about some creature retreating from harm, why does it bother you that various authors picked a pig?
Even if the character dun isn't really "pig" (what you linked to about compound characters), there is a connection. In that sense it's not made up. As I said before, dun isn't "otter + web-foot = swim away fast," it's "pig + road-foot = run away / escape." So naturally Karcher et al picked pig to illustrate with, not otter. "Pig" fits the idea of it, and there's a pig sitting right there in the name character...
I agree 33 could just as easily be written without referring to any animal at all. Even in this version of Karcher the lines don't have pigs. Hilary's don't, Wilhelm's don't, etc.
- ... Inner self-restraint now gives you the ability to connect action
with the spirit. Heart Theme: 44 Coupling with a new fate...- ... Heaven above Mountain. Father and Youngest Son ...
- ... ideas have borne fruit and the womb is full. Stay quiet for now ...
- ... You are coupled with a creative force. (44 Coupling) ...
(Chase-Daniel & Karcher version)
I think you are right Charly. This version of Karcher has clearly been influenced by Chase- Daniel to align with more with the 'message' her Mothering Change organisation are looking to give. I like some of the ways the text has been modified to give easier access to advice for less I Ching oriented users.Love your insight! There is no pig in any line in Chase-Daniel & Karcher version, maybe for the influence of the lady. But he is hidden, concealed in the right part of the character 遯dun4, wich means among other things «hidden, concealed».
And is implicit in the lines if one follows the key given by the autors, the piglet means a baby in the womb!
See that this version of H.44 follows the concept of Margaret J. Pearson: the girl of GOU is a bride coming to meet her destiny. In H.44 this version doesn't say that the woman is strong but that she is strenghtening. It doesn't say don't marry her, it says don't act, take your time and marry her.
For those interested in Tony Saroop about the «Joy of cutting off heads». it's availabe in Wayback Machine, here:I can see how you are thinking. As cultures develop there is certainly a trend towards obscuring their barbaric roots of man's inhumanity to man. The softening / obscuring eventually transforms to the place of focussing on the positive rather than the negative, so focus on feasting and celebration rather than sacrifice over time is only to be expected and welcomed. After all the society is becoming more refined, more cultured, more sophisticated, more civilised.
Kings do gain the priviledge of cutting off heads much like victors write the history, so I think I am attempting to stand up for the little men who may be losing their heads through being fed one particular narrative down their throats before the axe bears down on the chopping block.
...
Hi Hilary:... To the best of my knowledge, the pig in 33 is quite real, not a phonetic phantom...
The list of PIG translators is long. Even some traditionalists who believe that PIG was not the intended meaning of 遯 dun4, think that the 豚 tun2 component adds CONNOTATIONS that worths not to pass unnoticed, like Tuck Chang or the late WU JING NUAN:... and nothing to do with Karcher. It can be found in Field and Rutt, for instance.
肥 fei2: FAT, plump, obese, FERTILE, loose-fitting or large, to fertilize , to become rich by illegal means ...The adjectives applied to 'retreat' in all the line texts (eg 'fat') actually apply more naturally to the pig.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).