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Shogua - Etymology Help Please

kevin

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The first line of 5.2.6 or Chapter 5 is variously translated as...

"The Lord comes forth in Thunder"

or

"God comes forth in Thunder"

Can anyone tell me, please, the Chinese character for 'Lord' or 'God' in this context?

Also possible alternative English words for that character?

And even what this word/concept might have meant to the authors of the Shogua.

Rather a lot there.

Very interested to hear folks thoughts on this line.

Thanks

--Kevin
 

bradford_h

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Hi Kevin-
The word is Di: divine, sacred, celestial.
You can find it in the Yi itself at 11.5 and 54.5 as Lord Di, 2nd to last Shang sovereign, and at 10.T, 16.X, 42.2, 50.T and 59.T with the other meanings.
I don't like the transation God, not just cuz I'm not a latent Christian - I just don't think it captures the Chinese sense of divinity. I like "the divine" the best because it has room for those who don't need a personal deity in their heads.
brad.
PS the Wing name is Shuo (explaining) Gua (the symbols)
 

hilary

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An original (and good!) view on the passage is here:
http://www.fengshuigate.com/bagua.html

and you can look at 'Di' here:
http://www.internationalscientific.org/Etymology.aspx?characterInput=%E5%B8%9D&submitButton1=Etymology
(it seems to get more abstract - and more like religious symbols from other cultures - the further back you go. Very strange.)

AFAIK (which is not, obviously, as far as Brad does), Di was basically the Shang's supreme god, and later people increasingly preferred the more abstract 'Heaven'. But I do agree that it is hard to use a translation like 'the Lord God' without thinking of the Judaeo-Christian one.
 

kevin

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Brad and Hilary

Thanks for those excellent references.

Hmm, definitely a deity and worship there in places.

I never really saw that before.

I suppose its natural. Indeed it is surprising that there aren't more such references.

I have been trying to understand the trigram Sun so as better to get inside the idea of hexagram 44.

To do that I needed to understand Chen a little better and then met up with di4.

There is much to think about from your references.

Reading through them all gave me a slightly better glimpse of these people hidden in the mists of many years. Quite wonderful.

Thanks

--Kevin

BTW Brad I really like your rendering of the Tuan Zhuan for Hexagram 10

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

Respectful conduct:
The flexible treads upon the firm
Pleasure, but also attunement with the creative
And so it is that treading upon the tiger?s tail,
Without (it) biting one, (is) success
The firm (is) central (and) correct
Taking steps in a divine place, and yet escaping suffering,
shows wisdom.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

I have now written out 100 times ?Shuogua? ? I only had five different copies open at the time of writing? ugh!
 

kevin

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More thoughts

Yup - I am not keen on a god either. I like the concepts of gui and shen though. As real and as archetypal processes.

In addition I like S Karcher's Dark Animal Goddess of hexagram 2 as an archetypal figure.

I hope I never msake my mind up on the matter tho'

--K
 

bradford_h

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A comment on Hillary's comment-
Shang Di, which I prefer to transate as "the highest divinity" to avoid personalizing it, was the Shang's supreme being, and at that time it was much more personal. By the Zhou it was evolving from some sort of Ultimate Ancestor into something more like the Heavenly Clockworks. But we tend to forget way too easily that culture is never homogeneous and there is always a big range in levels and degrees of comprehension among a people. It is likely that lots of folks in the Zhou still believed in a personal deity. However, that's not the real question, which to my mind is "What was Di to the authors, who lived near the Zhou court at the center of the culture?" I think it's this sub-cultural perspective that is moving rapidly away from the mythological view, much more quickly than the culture at large.
 

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