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Interested in spiders and glowing fumes?

heylise

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I am translating an article about the GuiCang from (simplified) Chinese. It is very interesting ? I found the ?glowing fumes? of hex.22 in it, and the spider of hex.63. But my Chinese is rudimentary. I can search for a hexagram name and such things in dictionaries, but translating a modern article is beyond my abilities.
Is there anyone who can, and who is interested enough in the results to make the effort worthwhile for him/her self?
You would do me a HUGE favor!

LiSe
 

cal val

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Hi LiSe...

Please bear with me. I'm just getting the hang of seeing the Yi as telling of real historic images and events, and translating Chinese to Dutch...or even English is out of the question for me, but I have a 'call' into a friend who does translations from many languages into Danish. She might be able lead you in the right direction. Or have you found someone yet to help? Have you tried babelfish for translating Chinese to English yet? It's probably not at all what you want, but it might help a little. It will do 150 words at a time or a web page.

In the meantime, I found the glowing fumes of 22. It looks to me like there's a lava spout at the bottom of the mountain which is probably really a volcano, and the sulphur fumes glow at night.

But I can't find the spider in 63. I found a fox, an ox, a pig, some raggedy clothes and a boat...but no spider. Where is it?

Thanks.

Val
 

heylise

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The glowing fumes (which I see as a glowing cone of moxa, since ancient times used in acupuncture etc), the spider, labor (29), a deer with antlers, meaning beautiful (hex.30), and more, they are the hexagram names in the GuiCang.
There are three old oracle books, the Lian-Shan, which is extremely old, from the time of the Xia dynasty. The Gui-Cang, from the Shang dynasty, the one before the Zhou dynasty. And finally the Zhou-Yi or Yi Jing, of the Zhou dynasty.
In 1993 a copy of the GuiCang has been unearthed in Wangjiatai, I have an article about it by Shaughnessy. But Harmen Mesker found another article on the Internet, at http://www.bamboosilk.org/Wssf/2002/wangning04.htm

I have not yet been able to find the name of the author. Maybe Wangning.
It has pictures for those characters, which do not exist anymore in this way of writing. Together with Shaugnessy?s article it gives a lot of information. It is not really big, but for me there are difficult things in it.
I can translate it word for word in Wenlin ? bless Wenlin ? but then ..
When it says ?dang shi? I can translate ?serve as to be?, but does that mean should be, or absolutely is, or probably is, or might be?? In many cases I can guess, but here and there it makes a bigger difference, and I want to be sure.

I don?t translate into Dutch, for some reason I can?t. It is too intellectual, or maybe too well-defined. No double meanings and such. English seems to be closer to Chinese.

It is very nice you are searching for a possibility. Maybe if someone could look through my own result (will take at least a week more) and turn my pidgin into English. It does not have to be good English, just eliminate the vaguenesses (Word?s spellingandgrammar is telling me that this is certainly not good English!)

LiSe
Yi Jing, Book of sun and moon
www.anton-heyboer.org/i_ching
 

heylise

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GREAT!!!
I went to Babelfish, and their job is about as good as mine, but in seconds.
I have been searching for something like this for a long long time now.
I saw the link when I posted my mail, in the other in my mailbox I did not recognize it as a link. Planned to put Google on it, but here it was already.
THANKS!!

LiSe
 

cal val

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LiSe...

EGAD! I'm sorry. I never stopped to think about the fact that some email clients can't read my 'embedded' urls. I won't embed them any more. I will write them out.

I translated the page in Babelfish as well, but I lack the experience interpreting Chinese that you have, and could only make out that the author suspects mistakes in the recreation of characters in recently discovered documents that predate The Book of Changes. I see that, if his premise is true, Hex 28 has quite a different meaning and as well as several others.

I'm certainly hoping someone fluent in Chinese who's reading this thread will take the time to translate the Chinese properly so that we can all benefit.

Thanks for the imagery regarding the deer's antlers, etc.

Sincerely,

Val
 

heylise

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In Babelfish it is difficult to see what is meant, because many hexagram names are translated, and the result is many incomprehensible sentences. I turned them back to the hexagram-characters, and then the structure becomes visible.

Here is a provisional list of hexagram names in the GuiCang. Most are translated by Babelfish, and far from perfect.

#2. few; scant, tasteless, widowed
#9. small supervising
#14. is right
#15. mausoleum
#16. lies between
#18. night
#20. fills
#21 yarrow divination
#25 does not perish
#27 also
#29. labor
#30. deer?s antlers: beautiful
#32 permanent I (me)
#37. scatter family members
#43 netting twine or carpet of rough tissue.
#45 died
#50. Round Ding with narrow opening (this one is interesting for Val!)
#63. spider

I am looking them up in a big dictionary with the old characters, and when I find better descriptions I will post them.

LiSe
 

hilary

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Hello LiSe,

Is the Guicang made of hexagrams too, then, with these different names for the same patterns of lines? Or is there another way of connecting it with Yi? Beginner's lesson, please!
 

heylise

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The YiJing was not the only oracle book. Probably there were several different ones, and maybe also different versions of the same books.

For centuries most people thought the reports about the Lianshan and Guicang referred to mythical books. There are quotes in some old documents, and the sentences resemble ?our? YiJing, the received text, but there are also substantial differences.
But then, in 1993 a copy of the GuiCang has been unearthed in Wangjiatai, which caused a lot of upheaval. Suddenly there was proof that the Guicang was historical, and so the Lianshan might very well be historical too.

The GuiCang looks very much like the YiJing, they must have come from the same source. As far as I know, the biggest difference is the omen verse, which accompanies every hexagram of the GuiCang. For the spider of hex.63 it is ?A spider (in) his mat. Throw it in the creek. Spider is in the North. It is a female ..? (or maybe ?it is ox ..?, the last character is not clear)

There is also an older copy of the YiJing, the Mawangdui YiJing, found at Mawangdui in 1973. In this one there are also many different names for the hexagrams, and different characters in many sentences. An example, the name of hexagram 58: its ideogram is a bird spreading out its wings, at the point of escaping from a catching hand.

In many cases these other names give an extra dimension to the familiar ones. Of course some may be caused by errors when copying a manuscript, but to me it seems unlikely that this could be the case in many of them. Especially with the names, because they were important. When one copies an entire book by hand, there may be errors, but probably not in the most important characters.

LiSe
 

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