Skuo Kua / Discussion of the Trigrams

[Sparhawk]

Do you take pictures in the Pocossin Wildlife Refuge of NC or just retire there to think in the Southern style? Have you a name or only a location there?

I am confused. You don't really know who "Pocossin," the person, is? He's been using that moniker for ages in I Ching forums and, unlike those that stubbornly cling to their anonymity when asked directly, has made no effort to hide his real name. If you want to really go back in time, he was also a member of Hex-8 mailing list.

 

[meng]

The Dao De Jing is an exaltation of the feminine.

Nice to see an affirmation of this, as it's a position I'd taken on threads here years ago. For me, not so much an exaltation, but a principle of emptiness or empty bowl which precedes the fruit which fills it. Or, that the earth precedes the seed which falls upon it.

However, we may have different perspectives on whether this idea is in the Yijing as well. I think I understood that you don't see that same principle applying?

I'm not saying this is any kind of law, but I've perceived that before there could be a creation, there had to be a space or place for it to be created in, therefore, in theory, gua 2 precludes gua 1. And that matches seamlessly with my view of the Dao De Jing.

1 is only potential. 2 makes it possible. To become real, possibility is what matters first. Even a question comes before an answer.

 

[robertluoshu]

Chinese Talisman and the Lo Shu

I believe this Chinese talisman uses the same mathematical and cosmological principles as the Chinese jade bi disc.

I am following a technique used by Alfred Schinz in his book The Magic Square as he describes a jade bi disc. (Schulyer Cammann also uses this application in his article, The TLV Pattern on Cosmic Mirrors of the Han Dynasty.)

Quoting from page 72:

A ritual jade disc probably from the early Zhou dynasty (not the above bi disc). The invisible Magic Square represents the yin force and forms the basic frame for the proportions of the two circles, which represent the yang force and are clearly visible. The interplay between the outer square (yin) within the outer circle (yang) and the inner circle (yang) within the inner square (yin) shows the interlocking of the two forces in a very complex fashion.

As stated earlier, the odd numbers of the Lo Shu represent Heaven, the even numbers Earth. The odd numbers form a Ya shape, as illustrated here:

Lars Berglund (The Secret of the Lo Shu) and Sarah Allan (The Shape of the Turtle) believed the Ya shape was incorporated into sacred spaces such as temples and tombs for the royal kings. Schulyer Cammann and Berglund believed the Lo Shu model and Ya shape were the basis for the bronze TLV mirrors as well as the Ming Tang Temple.

This is also the ground plan for early Byzantine church design known as the quincunx or cross in square design (Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture). There exists a school of thought that supports an influence of Chinese iconograpahy and cosmology (divining and the Yi Jing) with early Christian art and architecture (Strzygowski).

 

[pocossin]

The debunking of Thermodynamics was the beginning of my transition out of a Chemistry major. Do you ever manage a post that doesn't highlight Me, my Self and I?

Can't help yourself, can you, Frank? I am pleased to learn that you are superior to Thermodynamics, but you did manage some on-topic questions, and I will try to answer.

Visual and conceptual interpretation of the trigrams mutually support each other. They aren't separable. ☵, for example, among other things is a pig (a quadraped as viewed from above), and this meaning of ☵ occurs in hexagram 37, The Family. The character for a family is a pig under a roof: 家 . The lower nuclear trigram of 37 is ☵, and the two upper lines of the hexagram are solid, as in the character. This is common knowledge for anyone who has carefully studied the Yi, and requires no documentation. The relation between pigs and water ☵ and the impulsive, torrential ☵ nature of pigs is also common knowledge. ☵ also is visually similar to the ancient character for 'water'.

How does the wind Sun direct anything?

☴ is 'thigh' visually (the lower broken line, the feet) and 'breath' (see Bradford, Vol.I, p.471-3). ☴ is visually similar to the character for words: 話. The radical on the left is a mouth with words (or breath) coming out, the two upper lines representing words and the lower broken line, the mouth. Words are the instruments of directing in the Yi: the ruler issues commands and others carry them out. ☴ is also correlatively the role of the eldest daughter in the family who typically acts as a stand-in for the mother in caring for younger siblings. "Big mother, little mother." For all these and other reasons, ☴ directs. May I call your attention to the directress of Clarity

 

[fkegan]

I am confused. You don't really know who "Pocossin," the person, is? He's been using that moniker for ages in I Ching forums and, unlike those that stubbornly cling to their anonymity when asked directly, has made no effort to hide his real name. If you want to really go back in time, he was also a member of Hex-8 mailing list.

Hi Luis,

No, I don't remember Pocossin or anyone else much from Hex-8 days other than the major players I emailed, etc. I only know him from his posts here-and-now and I find them quite surprising from a number of perspectives. I clicked his profile and then Googled Pocossin to find it was NC wetlands and not any name or such. One of my friends from Boston mentioned chatting with someone from the South who spoke of going off into his family's swampland to think. She found that strange since she assumed folks thought in all sorts of circumstances without requiring special privacy for such activities. So, I raised the question as I find Pocossin a difficult moniker to relate to, especially as it so easily devolves into Poco SSin which would be a Latin 3 year old hissing out little snake from the Serpent in the Genesis story. I would prefer addressing him by name as I call you Luis, Meng Bruce and myself Frank, etc.

Yes, I agree it is annoying of Panther to maintain his overly Scorpio elephant man mask especially combined with his totally exoteric beliefs about esoteric Paths and Schools as the sina qua non of respectable opinion. But we must all play together in our sandbox.

Frank

 

[fkegan]

Can't help yourself, can you, Frank? I am pleased to learn that you are superior to Thermodynamics, but you did manage some on-topic questions, and I will try to answer.

Visual and conceptual interpretation of the trigrams mutually support each other. They aren't separable. ☵, for example, among other things is a pig (a quadraped as viewed from above), and this meaning of ☵ occurs in hexagram 37, The Family. The character for a family is a pig under a roof: 家 . The lower nuclear trigram of 37 is ☵, and the two upper lines of the hexagram are solid, as in the character. This is common knowledge for anyone who has carefully studied the Yi, and requires no documentation. The relation between pigs and water ☵ and the impulsive, torrential ☵ nature of pigs is also common knowledge. ☵ also is visually similar to the ancient character for 'water'.

☴ is 'thigh' visually (the lower broken line, the feet) and 'breath' (see Bradford, Vol.I, p.471-3). ☴ is visually similar to the character for words: 話. The radical on the left is a mouth with words (or breath) coming out, the two upper lines representing words and the lower broken line, the mouth. Words are the instruments of directing in the Yi: the ruler issues commands and others carry them out. ☴ is also correlatively the role of the eldest daughter in the family who typically acts as a stand-in for the mother in caring for younger siblings. "Big mother, little mother." For all these and other reasons, ☴ directs. May I call your attention to the directress of Clarity

Hi P'sin,

I help myself lots in many ways, you need to be more explicit if you expect me to understand your snide remarks. Yes, I am very proud of having unraveled the hidden truth about Thermodynamics and exposed entropy as the new name for Caloric when that notion was eliminated. Thank you for your interest in another of my triumphs.

I also thank you for your expression of your views. You are aware that the Chinese generally resent Western attempts to look at their ideograms and attached foreign meanings to them? I also like that approach of finding meaning in the elements of the ideograms; though I am more taken with the Jesuit text Chinese Characters and of course I know better than to use phrases like "This is common knowledge for anyone who has carefully studied the Yi, and requires no documentation" which is simply offensive to any and all scholarship in any century and perspective. Everything requires documentation, and putting yourself beyond such constraint just highlights your lack of grounding in reality. Having studied Chinese ideograms and Philology I clearly know such statements are just silly in any language--yours are remarkable in their deficits and problems...

The pig under the roof, which appears in Hex 4 Meng1 and also in Hex 37 is not just about a particular mammal, as nothing in Chinese, a relational language (cf. Maruyama ) can be taken in such a totally Western way. In Hex 4 it is a reflection of the baby boy who spurts urine like an artesian fountain. In Hex 37 it is about the Chinese home as a tangible construction to create a basis for the privacy family. This is more important in the set of hexagrams from 31 to 40 that are all about monogamous love the the place of regular marital sex in maintaining the family and the society in order. Both ideograms involve pigs under the roof, but not just a reference to porcine species in any way shape or form.

I am not sure what you mean calling attention to Hilary and relating her to trigram Sun. In general I would not give my permission to your calling her out in your way. Seems an impertinence.

The eldest daughter always helps out her mother in all cultures, though I would not say she ever is in control or directing much. She has a special relationship to the parents and special obligations to serve family interests. If she cares for the younger siblings it is as unpaid help. The wind does not direct but follows the pressure gradients. The eldest daughter does not direct but works very hard to meet expectations forced upon her.

So, what are you talking about in your smug and unsupported view that somehow your notions that clearly have little support outside your own imagination would be of any objective relevance to anyone? What will it take for you
to join reality and climb down off your cloud of the self-taught and learn about Hex 58.

Frank

 

[pocossin]

I am very proud of having unraveled the hidden truth about Thermodynamics . . . In Hex 4 it [☵]is a reflection of the baby boy who spurts urine like an artesian fountain.

Bizarre, Frank, and delightfully whimsical. I shall not respond to you again, for clearly we do not live in the same world.

 

[pocossin]

1 is only potential. 2 makes it possible.

The ancients in their number symbolism did not possess the zero, which is properly the mother of numbers, so I would say that 0 is potential, and 1 makes it possible.

To become real, possibility is what matters first.

Agreed.

 

[meng]

The ancients in their number symbolism did not possess the zero, which is properly the mother of numbers, so I would say that 0 is potential, and 1 makes it possible.

I can see the logic.

 

[rosada]

When the trigrams intermingle, that is, when they are in motion, a double movement is observable: first, the usual clockwise movement, cumulative and expanding as time goes on, and determining the events that are passing; second, an opposite, backward movement, folding up and contracting as time goes on, through which the seeds of the future take form. To know this movement is to know the future. In figurative terms, if we understand how a tree is contracted into a seed, we understand the future unfolding of the seed into a tree.
-Wilhelm

 

[rosada]

This makes no sense to me at all. Can anyone rephrase what Wilhelm is saying for a bear of very little brain?
-rosada

 

[maremaria]

not sure if i'm correct but a "tree" or a "seed" is moments but how the seed becomes a tree is the phases of a procces.
"To know the seed ... "comes into my mind

Yet, have not the experience to say that is what whilhel meant . Small brain here too

 

[meng]

past

future

The future is rolled up in the past before it's unrolled. Theoretically, the scroll can be rolled in either direction.

 

[maremaria]

past

future

The future is rolled up in the past before it's unrolled. Theoretically, the scroll can be rolled in either direction.

This is a very interesting visual image of Wilhelms words.

So , if you say we are a farmer who knows all the stages of growth of a seed, and lets say that to the part of the roll is open( in the middle) we see an image of a stage, he is in position to know what is in the unrolled'/hidden part of past or future.

 

[rosada]

"1 is only potential. 2 makes it possible. To become real, possibility is what matters first. Even a question comes before an answer."
-meng

"The love in your heart was not put there to stay for love is not love till you give it away."
-Oscar Hammerstein

 

[pocossin]

This makes no sense to me at all. Can anyone rephrase what Wilhelm is saying. . . ?

My highschool history teacher had a saying -- the one thing she wanted us to remember if we didn't remember anything else: "To know nothing of the past is to know little of the present and to have no conception of the future." One's past, the foundation of character, forms one's future, for character is fate.

When the trigrams intermingle, that is, when they are in motion, a double movement is observable: first, the usual clockwise movement, cumulative and expanding as time goes on, and determining the events that are passing; second, an opposite, backward movement, folding up and contracting as time goes on, through which the seeds of the future take form. To know this movement is to know the future.

The future is duration, the continuity of the past through the screen of the present. Ancient Chinese expressed this continuity as the voice of the spirits of the dead, the shen. In divination we attend to "the seeds of the future." I understand these seeds to be the numinous aspects of an omen, those aspects by which the character and fate of the querent can be appraised.

 

[fkegan]

Bizarre, Frank, and delightfully whimsical. I shall not respond to you again, for clearly we do not live in the same world.

Hi Pocossin,

We all live upon the same Planet Earth in Truth, though I did notice last time I was in NC a few summers ago not everyone has accepted Lincoln's message of forgiveness or benefits from Pres. Obama's leadership in this new springtime of the transition from Post-postmodern into the true Age of Hope and Change.

As they say, silence is Consent or more generally, there was no comeback to my last crushing argument pointing out your errors and misunderstandings. I accept your surrender and allow you to keep your horse and sidearms. Go in Peace and Enjoy the Benefits offered you by my Senator Harry Reid and our Great Speaker of the House. What a Wonderful Country we Share!!

Frank

 

[fkegan]

This makes no sense to me at all. Can anyone rephrase what Wilhelm is saying for a bear of very little brain?
-rosada

Hi Rosada,

Pooh is the cutest of bears in all the world and it is his softness not his brain power that is important.

Wilhelm is trying valiantly to translate the learning of his Confucian teachers. Clockwise refers to the natural motion of things as an analog clock moves through the hours of the day. This is how we experience our world, the day starts at dawn with the sun rising and it moves through the sky until sunset. This is the normal forward motion we see clearly in many things.

Science types will tell you that this apparent clockwise motion is actually the result of the angular momentum of the spinning Planet Earth going the other way. Or in more traditional terms, what we see and experience as unfolding first to final actually arises from prior conditions and situations that are the causes of this current timing and its process. In a Yi hexagram this can be seen in the Nuclear Hexagram interacting with the Environment line pair (lines 1 and 6) to form the current hexagram.

The reference to a tree and its seed, also found in the teachings of the Buddha is a traditional reference to DNA which is the part of a seed that controls what kind of a tree it will grow into and how it will grow. That seed has no connection to what might happen during the day today, yet as the cause of the tree's growing it is a powerful influence. To learn about the seed you would have to research the past when that seed got its mixture of DNA.

Meng's illustration is of a Torah Scroll that is usually unrolled forward from one's week's Torah Portion to the Next, though on Simach Torah when the last portion is finished, it must be rolled back to begin again with the first lines of Genesis. Those remarks about forward and back refer to making sense of the wonders of a circle in a linear mentality.

Pocossin in his posts shows off his usual humanity. Zero is not the mother of numbers, it is a creation of the place number system of writing numbers as a power series in algebra.
One is the Unit and numbers get the name numbers from being multiples or a number of that unit.

He also has slightly mangled his quote:

"Character is Destiny” a famous remark by Heraclitus cf: http://in2deep.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/character-is-destiny/

That was cited often by Marc E. Jones in his explanations of horoscopes and their ability to describe what might happen in one's life.

Reality is pretty simple, its just folks attempts to explain it all that gets complicated...

Frank

 

[pocossin]

The Seeds of the Future

A concrete example:

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/showthread.php?t=9788&page=29

Message #286 contains pictures. Message #288 contains an appraisal of the pictures. The appraisal is in terms of features of character. Such features are "the seeds of the future."

 

[meng]

This is a very interesting visual image of Wilhelms words.

So , if you say we are a farmer who knows all the stages of growth of a seed, and lets say that to the part of the roll is open( in the middle) we see an image of a stage, he is in position to know what is in the unrolled'/hidden part of past or future.

Well, thing is, my scroll is analog. Imagining it (time) moving back and forth. It looks pretty clumsy, like a reel-to-reel tape recorder. But, yes, the present would be the part that is open.

Now imagine it like a hard drive that doesn't ever have to wind and rewind, so it runs very fast.

Then imagine it's all in the chip or op-amp, and it's practically instant. It could be nanosecond to nanosecond, from recalling to foretelling. Stepping on your own toes that have been there before you got there. lol

 

[pocossin]

Life of a Plant in Terms of Trigrams

Read from bottom up:

☰ dispersal of seed
☲ seed pod
☴ pollination
☱ flower
☵ thorns
☳ sprout
☶ swelling seed
☷ winter dormancy

 

[meng]

Maria, continued..

But about the farmer foretelling his harvest... that gets tricky. It's like us trying to predict our next Yi reading. But we can roll back time and recall the signs of what became the future, and use that to inform us of probabilities for the present future. That's the benefit of much experience. However, it's still tricky if we rely too much on our experience, because our experience can blind us to seeing with fresh eyes, understanding with fresh understanding. So the farmer can't foretell his crops, but he can recall, and he can read the signs of the present (the open part of the scroll) to maximize his future harvest. I think that's basically what the Yi does.

 

[fkegan]

This is a very interesting visual image of Wilhelms words.

So , if you say we are a farmer who knows all the stages of growth of a seed, and lets say that to the part of the roll is open( in the middle) we see an image of a stage, he is in position to know what is in the unrolled'/hidden part of past or future.

Hi Maria,

There is a great deal of mystery and faith in the action of the farmer and his seeds. They are thrown out into the prepared fertile field where their germination and nurture by the Spring rains (Hex 3) are both out of his control until the green sprouts appear (Hex 5) and then its a lot of hard effort by plant and farmer (Hex 46) until the ultimate task of the Harvest (Hex23).

The Torah Scroll in Bruce's post is not quite that mysterious. It is all about coming to grips with cycles in a linear mindset. More to the point, New Year's in the Hebrew calendar is the beginning of the 7th month since that begins the second half of the 12-month year and if the end of the last month is going to meet up with the next beginning month ( around the Vernal Equinox and Pascal Holiday) things must not continue off on a straight line tangent but turn around to complete the circle. Thus 10 days into this 7th month New Year celebration is the Day Of Atonement to allow folks to return to God themselves as well.

The calendar is not such a hard, objective reality. The US Naval Observatory ducked the question of when exactly was Jesus born noting that there wasn't a hard astronomical reality to the years of the Hebrew calendar. It is a lunar calendar that must be adjusted to keep it in line with the Solar seasons that control crop growth and harvest, so an extra month needs to be added to the 12 named lunar months. Also, it was the custom of the High Priest in the time of the Jerusalem Temple to also take note of the year's crop of new lambs, and if they seemed to need another month or two to be ripe for that year's animal sacrifice for Passover such additional months could be added for that as well.

The literal use of the Torah Scroll as an image for the trigrams and other symbolism of past and future being within the Present leads to pretty pictures but complicated philosophical explanations.

Frank

 

[meng]

Read from bottom up:

☰ dispersal of seed
☲ seed pod
☴ pollination
☱ flower
☵ thorns
☳ sprout
☶ swelling seed
☷ winter dormancy

This was immediately relevant to me, and wanted to ponder it before commenting. It's interesting, but I'm still not sure how it fits with an annual dilemma here with goat-heads.

Each year, Ti Ming decides whether the massive potential goat-head thorn crop (hardened and pointy seed shells) will reach fruition through spring storms and heavy rains, or will summer desert heat come early and dry the green vines out before they reach the swelling stage, you mention, and then return to winter dormancy. Those years they reach fruition have been about 1 in 3 or 4 years. The sun usually wins out. The years the thorns make it are hell on every walking thing here due to the way en mass they proliferate. These things are really nasty when they harden, and here the entire valley floor literally gets carpeted with them, if they make it to that stage.

Anyway, I got a funny/interesting reading about this year's battle with them. I asked: will they succeed in reaching the thorn stage this year? 30.3,6-51. I love the images of the lines, they feel playful. Line 3: some will give up, some may go on beating pots, but I think only a few will (so far) do that. Yesterday I spent quite awhile out there chopping off the heads of their leaders (see LiSe for line 6 on this---digging them up with a flat shovel, but probably still leaving at least a remnant of root). 51 I took as exciting the growth through storms, so lots still depends on that. But even now, at this stage, you can see the excitement in each hopeful seed.

 

[pocossin]

Each year, Ti Ming decides whether the massive potential goat-head thorn crop (hardened and pointy seed shells) will reach fruition through spring storms and heavy rains. . .

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

Why don't we call it Kegan weed? But wait, Meng. Maybe this nusiance has a benefit:

"Tribulus has been shown to enhance sexual behaviour in an animal model. It appears to do so by stimulating androgen receptors in the brain.

Some body builders use T. terrestris as post cycle therapy or "PCT". After they have completed an anabolic-steroid cycle, they use it under the assumption that it will restore the body's natural testosterone levels."

30.3,6-51: So appropriate. First the clinging, then the cry of pain.

Since you are an art person, please consider my notion above of divination as art appreciation.

 

[pantherpanther]

My highschool history teacher had a saying -- the one thing she wanted us to remember if we didn't remember anything else: "To know nothing of the past is to know little of the present and to have no conception of the future." One's past, the foundation of character, forms one's future, for character is fate.



The future is duration, the continuity of the past through the screen of the present. Ancient Chinese expressed this continuity as the voice of the spirits of the dead, the shen. In divination we attend to "the seeds of the future." I understand these seeds to be the numinous aspects of an omen, those aspects by which the character and fate of the querent can be appraised.

>>>>
When the trigrams intermingle, that is, when they are in motion, a double movement is observable: first, the usual clockwise movement, cumulative and expanding as time goes on, and determining the events that are passing; second, an opposite, backward movement, folding up and contracting as time goes on, through which the seeds of the future take form. To know this movement is to know the future. In figurative terms, if we understand how a tree is contracted into a seed, we understand the future unfolding of the seed into a tree.
-Wilhelm

Wilhelm's allusion to "seeds" may refer to the system of musical tones or sounds upon which the I Ching is based. When the Turtle Chart was converted from dots to trigram strokes, it became the King Wen arrangement of trigrams. It is the expanding-contracting tonal interaction of these eight trigrams with the converted Dragon Chart that produces the sixty-four hexagrams-tones. This can be pictured as one wheel of eight Number-tones spinning counter-clockwise, inside a second wheel of the same eight Number-tones spinning clockwise. Each set of Number-tones is part of a music scale traveling towards the Origin or away from the Origin.

To raise personal tonal frequency to a level of subtlety that can hear and resonate with the planetary tones enables one to move consciously backward and forward in Time.The planetary bodies are the messengers of Time, the modulators of the solar tonal frequencies that control the rhythms of human and all earthly destiny. Failure to listen to the music of these planetary spheres creates a separation between the body of the individual and the body of Nature: one’s worldly destiny is then unconsciously controlled by their forces.

This correlates with the Indian tradition:

Bi-ja
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Hinduism and Buddhism, the Sanskrit term bi-ja , literally seed, is used as a metaphor for the origin or cause of things and cognate with bindu...
The metaphor is considerably extended in the Consciousness-only teachings of the Yogacara school of Buddhism. According to this theory, all experiences and actions produce bi-ja as impressions, stored in the alaya (storehouse) consciousness. The external world is produced when the seeds "perfume" this consciousness. This view of bi-ja has been equated to memes, with the theory itself positing an extreme form of memetics (i.e. reality and existence consist purely of memes)....

Khanna (2003: p. 21) links mantras and yantras to thoughtforms:

Mantras, the Sanskrit syllables inscribed on yantras, are essentially 'thought forms' representing divinities or cosmic powers, which exert their influence by means of sound-vibrations.[1]

In some tantric traditions, the Bija of the 'Varnamala' (Sanskrit; English: "garland of letters"; which may be rendered as alphabet) are understood as aniconic representations and sound embodiments of the matrikas, note how nearly homophonic and etymologically related 'matrika' is to 'mantrika', that is "a practitioner of mantra".

 

[rosada]

I see further on Wilhelm has more to say on the subject:

4. Thunder brings about movement, wind brings about dispersion, rain brings about moisture, the sun brings about warmth, Keeping Still brings about standstill, the Joyous brings about pleasure, the Creative brings about rulership, the Receptive brings about shelter.

Here again the forces for which the eight primary trigrams stand are presented in terms of their effects in nature.

The first four are referred to by their images, the last four by their names, because only the first four indicate their images natural forces at work throughout time, while the last four point to conditions that come about in the course of the year.

Thus we have first a forward moving (rising) line, in which the forces of the preceding year take effect.
According to section 3, following this line leads to knowledge of the past, which is present as a latent cause in the effects it produces.

In the second group, named not according to images (phenomena) but according to the attributes of the trigrams, a backward movement sets in (a jump from Li in the east back to Ken in the northwest). Along this line the forces of the coming year develop, and following it leads to knowledge of the future, which is being prepared as an effect by its causes - like seeds that, in contracting, consolidate.
-Wilhelm

 

[maremaria]

Maria, continued..

But about the farmer foretelling his harvest... that gets tricky. It's like us trying to predict our next Yi reading. But we can roll back time and recall the signs of what became the future, and use that to inform us of probabilities for the present future. That's the benefit of much experience. However, it's still tricky if we rely too much on our experience, because our experience can blind us to seeing with fresh eyes, understanding with fresh understanding. So the farmer can't foretell his crops, but he can recall, and he can read the signs of the present (the open part of the scroll) to maximize his future harvest. I think that's basically what the Yi does.

yes I agree .I think you are right. I need to revise my though because I didn't want to say excactly that , i mean the foretelling part. What i was thinking was something happened some year ago. It was a weird winter and some trees and flowers blossom much before their time. So the farmers based on the natural growth cycle noticed that something was not as it used to be and the had to take some measures to protect their future crops. Plan ahead ?

when i 'ld move to the place you live the difference between me and you regarding the goat-head thorn matters is the I probably wouldn't do anything about them because I just don't know but for you is something that you have seen again and you know that you have to take some measurements.

 

[meng]

30.3,6-51: So appropriate. First the clinging, then the cry of pain.

LOL, hadn't thought of that interpretation. True enough though, if they make it to the thorn stage.

One particular year here, before I knew which plant produces those awful thorns, the majority of the backyard looked like this. How nice, I thought, to see green carpet over this dusty, dry and compact desert dirt - until I realized what it actually was. What a terrible mess, especially for my dog to live around, as it's really mostly his yard. I sweated for days on end to get it all cleaned up, and got myself pretty beat up and marred in the process. They were at the exact stage shown in the picture. It was too late to stop them, as the green thorns had already become hardened inside. Nutlets is what they're called in your Wiki link.

Anyway, it was the sequence of your growth images that made me wonder if this plant was typical or atypical.

 

[pocossin]

Wilhelm's allusion to "seeds" may refer to the system of musical tones or sounds upon which the I Ching is based. When the Turtle Chart was converted from dots to trigram strokes, it became the King Wen arrangement of trigrams. It is the expanding-contracting tonal interaction of these eight trigrams with the converted Dragon Chart that produces the sixty-four hexagrams-tones. This can be pictured as one wheel of eight Number-tones spinning counter-clockwise, inside a second wheel of the same eight Number-tones spinning clockwise. Each set of Number-tones is part of a music scale traveling towards the Origin or away from the Origin.

Very interesting material, Panther. This connection between tone and the Yi is new to me. Would you give some sources? I'm sure there must be many because of the connection between tone and divination as given in chapter 10 of Robert Temple's The Genius of China.