Huang Lao and I Ching

[lienshan]

The Huang Lao school of thought was the pre-Laozi daoist movement. Their influence grew strong during the 4th century BC and they invented a new way of divination. Their divinatory manual is today known as the "Gui Cang", while Laozi named it "the envy-made Classic of the ten thousand things" in one of his many sceptical commentaries. The Huang Lao divination method had these three special features:

1. They operated with a steady line instead of a changing line.
2. They operated with the socalled nuclear hexagrams.
3. They operated with two hexagrams, a primary and a secondary.

The Huang Lao school of thought has left primary three texts concerning their divination method.
The two of them are the paragraphs 1 and 3 in Shuo Guo (the 8th of the ten wings).
The third of them is this Guodian text (buried 312 BC) in 14 sentences:

The Great One gives birth to water
and the return of water assists the Great One thus completing heaven
and the heavenly return is a big assistance thus completing earth.
The return of heaven and earth mutually assist thus completing light and spirit.
The return of light and spirit mutually assist thus completing yin and yang.
The return of yin and yang mutually assist thus completing the four seasons.
The return of the four seasons mutually assist thus completing freeze and boil.
The return of freeze and boil mutually assist thus completing moisture and fluid.
The return of moisture and fluid mutually assist thus completing time and end.
Therefore: What's time is the birth of moisture and fluid.
What's moisture and fluid is the birth of freeze and boil.
What's freeze and boil and what's the four seasons is the birth of yin and yang.
What's yin and yang is the birth of light and spirit.
What's light and spirit is the birth of heaven and earth.
What's heaven and earth is the birth of the Great One.
This is why the Great One conceals physical water and moves physical seasons.

The 12 sentences in the middle are symbolizing the primary and the secondary hexagrams.
How do I know all this? Well, I've learned how to read "warring states classical chinese"
The original Laozi texts is thus my source e.g. the first lines of the Guodian chapter 64:

The changed clasp of its steadiness is like the changed 6th line of its not yet topline.
The changed number 2 of its number 3 is like the changed walkability of its how many?

which are directly commentating on the Shuo Gua paragraph 1:

In the beginning,
when the sage's written change was the dark help from spirit and light and gave birth to milfoil,
was number 3 heaven and number 2 earth, but rely on the numbers.
Observe the movement from yin to yang then establish fortune telling brushing strokes
from curved broken to bent straight and give birth to the 6th topline.
Agreement is Dao and De of obeying logic.
The righteousness of ruling logic is the empty male qi ending naturally
by means of landing from command.

 

[pocossin]

The Huang Lao school of thought was the pre-Laozi daoist movement. Their influence grew strong during the 4th century BC and they invented a new way of divination. Their divinatory manual is today known as the "Gui Cang", while Laozi named it "the envy-made Classic of the ten thousand things" in one of his many sceptical commentaries. The Huang Lao divination method had these three special features:

1. They operated with a steady line instead of a changing line.
2. They operated with the socalled nuclear hexagrams.
3. They operated with two hexagrams, a primary and a secondary.

Would you give some examples of Huang Lao divination? What does "operated with a steady line" mean?

Other Huang Lao sources:

"Our limited exposure to the "lost texts" in the Silk Manuscripts seems to indicate that the thought of Huang-Lao contains several apparently unrelated but actually fully integrated philosophical concepts: a cosmological vision of the Way (tao) as the primordial source of inspiration; an administrative technique (fa-li), based on the principle and model of the naturalness of the Way; a concern for the cultivation of penetrating insight (kuan), so that a king could reign without imposing his limited, self-centered view on the order of things originally manifested in nature; and the necessity of attaining a kind of dynamic balancing (ch'eng) in order to ensure a steady flow, as it were, of the political system as a mirror image of the cosmos."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang-Lao

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangdi_Sijing

http://www.tony5m17h.net/Huanglao.html

Political ideology based on the tenets attributed to the Yellow Emperor Huangdi and on the Daoist teachings of Laozi. This method of governance, which stressed the principles of reconciliation and noninterference, became the dominant ideology of the imperial court in the early Western Han (206 BC – AD 25). The Huang-Lao masters believed that Laozi's Daodejing perfectly described the art of rulership, and they venerated the legendary Yellow Emperor as the founder of a golden age. Their teachings constitute the earliest Daoist movement for which there is clear historical evidence. See also Daoism.
http://www.answers.com/topic/huang-lao

If Huang Lao was effective, why was it abandoned?

 

[lienshan]

Would you give some examples of Huang Lao divination?
What does "operated with a steady line" mean?

Go to page 15 to 17 named case 5

The Mu Jiang divination story was obviously fabricated in order to show the superiority of the confucian text based divination method contrary to the Huang Lao divination method. But there are some practical information concerning this method:

The produced hexagram is named "Gen zhi ba" that'll say "the 8th of Gen". The topline of their hexagrams was according to Laozi named "the 6th line", so the secondary hexagram started from below with a 7th line and the topline of the secondary hexagram was thus the 12th line.

The 2th line of the first hexagram Gen and the 8th line of the secondary hexagram Sui are the same "steady line", while all the other lines are changing when Gen is compared to Sui. The Huang Lao diviner in the story does only make a ultrashort reading of the secondary hexagram name Sui, before Mu liang begins to quote the Zhouyi, so the Huang Lao way of reading, e.g. using nuclear hexagrams, must be prooved by other sources.

 

[pocossin]

Go to page 15 to 17 named case 5

The Mu Jiang divination story was obviously fabricated in order to show the superiority of the confucian text based divination method contrary to the Huang Lao divination method. But there are some practical information concerning this method:

The produced hexagram is named "Gen zhi ba" that'll say "the 8th of Gen". The topline of their hexagrams was according to Laozi named "the 6th line", so the secondary hexagram started from below with a 7th line and the topline of the secondary hexagram was thus the 12th line.

The 2th line of the first hexagram Gen and the 8th line of the secondary hexagram Sui are the same "steady line", while all the other lines are changing when Gen is compared to Sui. The Huang Lao diviner in the story does only make a ultrashort reading of the secondary hexagram name Sui, before Mu liang begins to quote the Zhouyi, so the Huang Lao way of reading, e.g. using nuclear hexagrams, must be prooved by other sources.

Case 5. begins,

Mu Jiang died in the Eastern Palace. When she first went there, she cast stalks
about it and met with Gen's eight.

This example is not clear to me. Was the casting 52.1.3.4.5.6 > 17? 'Gen's eight' is 17.2 (or line eight reading from the first line of Gen) and is an unchanging line, but it is not used in the interpretation and seems to have no relevance.

 

[lienshan]

This example is not clear to me. Was the casting 52.1.3.4.5.6 > 17?

The casting was 52.8 that'll say the 8th (line) of Gen (hex 52)
The lines 1 to 6 make the first hexagram and the lines 7 to 12 make the secondary hexagram.
The secondary hexagram has one steady line in common with the first hexagram (here the 8th).

A first hexagram of unchanging lines is easily made e.g. like flipping a coin.
The line from 7th to 12th is too easily found using 50 stalks: 1 stalk symbolize number 7.
The 49 stalks are divided by chance and one remove 6 stalks at a time as long as possible.
The remaining 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 stalks + the number 7 = 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th or 12th.

'Gen's eight' is 17.2 (or line eight reading from the first line of Gen) and is an unchanging line,
but it is not used in the interpretation and seems to have no relevance.

What changes is the hexagram name from Gen to Sui.
What changes is the Gen statement to the Sui statement.
What changes is the nuclear hexagram of Gen to the nuclear hexagram of Sui.
What change are the trigrams of hexagram Gen to the trigrams of hexagram Sui.
What doesn't change is the 2th line statement of hexagram Gen.

It isn't used in the interpretation? Maybe because the author of the story had an agenda? Zhouyi 52.2:

Keeping his calves still.
He cannot rescue him whom he follows.
His heart is not glad.

The contrast between the linetext and the diviner's interpretation makes the diviner look like a fool,
because everyone reading the story wonders like you and therefore checks the absent linetext.

 

[pocossin]

Ok, is this a correct description of the Huang Lao method?

1. A hexagram is selected.
2. The 50 stalks are used to find the unchanging (steady) line.
3. The other 5 lines change to produce the resulting hexagram.
4. The relevant text is that of the unchanging line.

 

[lienshan]

Yes, that's a fair description of the Huang Lao school's divination method with this addition:

The relevant texts are:
The line-text of the primary hexagram.
The statement-text of the resulting hexagram.
The image-text of the resulting hexagram.

The method has the disadvantage to the Zhouyi method, that a hexagram only can change into six other hexagrams and not all other hexagrams. But it's easier to practice, because there is always only one steady line to concentrate on, while e.g. two or more changing lines are very difficult to handle, when using the Zhouyi method.

How to handle the line-text of the primary hexagram and the texts of the resulting hexagram is described
at the end of Shuo Gua paragraph 3

The disagreeing lines are that which departs.
The knowledge of the agreement is that which comes.
The correctness of disagreeing cause the disagreeing lines.

('The knowledge of the agreement' means 'the line-text of the steady line')