Lower trigram past, upper trigram future?

[rosada]

I just read* that when a change line occurs in the lower trigram and another occurs in the upper trigram they can be usefully interpreted as the lower referring to the past and the upper line referring to the future. Anyone have any thoughts, experiences with this?

* The Nature of The I Ching by Charles Ponce

 

[Tim K]

I think that is a natural consequence of the structure of hexagrams. The lines progress from 1 to 6, the influence of hexagram grows with each line, it unfolds so to speak. Maybe the lower trigram speaks not only of the past but of the present.
I think I've used this technique without really knowing. It's just natural with some combinations, depending on the actual text, that 1-3 are usually bad, and 4-6 good, promising that it can get better or really worse in case of line 6.

48 is a clear example, .1 muddy old well, work gets done, .6 clear well full of water open for all.

But if you are speaking about distant past then I don't know.

 

[Tohpol]

I think that would make a lot of sense. Interesting.

 

[bradford]

That's one of many ways to look at it. There's a couple of pages on the subject in my Vol II, pp. 22-3, "Ban Xiang"

 

[boyler]

... it should be rather opposite ... namely sixliners are built from bottom up, so the shapes of the things which are about to come (future) appear bellow, or enter at the bottom of a sixliner (lower threeliner), while the shapes of the things that are about to go (past) appear above, or exit at the top of a sixliner (upper threeliner) ...