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"Trigram" Hexagrams

jte

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Hi, all -

I'm interested in Hexagrams that "form" a trigram with doubled lines, these being:
19 - Chen
62 - K'an
20 - Ken
33 - Sun
61 - Li
34 - Tui
(and of course, 1 and 2).

Has anyone seen any writeups/expositions (of either a scholarly or esoteric nature) on these Hexagrams/this type of Hexagram? Would appreciate any links or references. Thanks much!

- Jeff
 

bradford_h

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Hi Jeff-
I've never seen anything scholarly on it, and don't know a Chinese name for it, though I coined the term Da Ba Gua in the San Cai section of my dimensions chapter. I'm sure there's something somewhere in the Chinese lore - I will ask on another, more bilingual forum. Esoterically, Aleister Crowley touches on it in "The Book of Thoth" (Knight of Disks, I think).
I think it has some interesting possibilities as an interpretive dimension, and I've drawn on it frequently in my own understanding of these six Gua images. I wouldn't be quick to say that the original authors didn't see or use it either, but then I'm one of those who doesn't buy into the hypothesis that the Ba Gua came along later.
 

bradford_h

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Oh crap-
Now something subliminal is nagging at me, like maybe either Wilhelm, Legge, Hacker or Ponce may have mentioned this dimension as well.

b
 

jte

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Thanks, Brad -

I wouldn't worry about "mentioned" stuff - if there's something that looks at them in detail, though, I'd love to hear it.

That said, are either the Hacker or Ponce source you mention "must haves" in your opinion? If so, please don't hesitate to post the title. (My Amazon.com search found 2 refs for Hacker, 0 for Ponce, btw).

Thanks!

- Jeff
 

bradford_h

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Hi Jeff
Both are must haves IF your library wants to be more than 20 volumes. Both are available used thru ABE: http://dogbert.abebooks.com
Ed Hacker, I Ching Handbook, Paradigm, 1993, is still under $35 (it's a big handbook, more than $60 new), awesome Bibliography too, but nowhere near as complete as the bib he did with Patsco and Moore.
Charles Ponce, The Nature of the I Ching, Award, 1976, is a little mass market pb long out of print. Unfortunately it's been rediscovered so the used price has jumped from $5 to $75 in the last two years. Time to xerox that one.
 

bradford_h

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My God, Harmen-
ABE has one for $375, but still six times what I paid. It's not THAT good! Do you have an interlibrary loan system there? Your country seem pretty culturally advanced. Better check it out first.
 

bradford_h

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Hey Jeff-
I posted your question on our scholars' forum.
Here's the first reply:

Try A Companion to Yi jing Numerology and Cosmology: Chinese Studies of Images and Numbers from Han (202 BCE - 220 CE) to Song (960-1279 CE). London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, pp. 36-38.
Best wishes
Bent Nielsen
 

bradford_h

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Back again -
Richard Smith (author of _Fortune-tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society_) added this further recommendation of Bent Nielson's book (forgot to say that he was the author):

Dear Brad,
Let me just add, for those who may not already know about it, that this book--based on a wide range of Chinese sources and organized alphabetically by pinyin transliterations of names, terms and titles--is an absolutely indispensable reference work on the Zhouyi, and, in fact, it covers even more territory than the expansive title indicates. Cheers, Rich Smith


And Harmen-
If you're really having trouble finding Schuessler (without having to sell your children), just write to me offline & confirm that I have your current mailing address. I can mail you mine on loan for a month.
brad
 

heylise

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I have one, if Harmen needs it, it might be easier to post it from here, just a half hour's drive away. I'd be happy to give it on loan. But I think he has it (I don't think it is possible that I have a book he doesn't).

liSe
 
H

hmesker

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Brad and Lise, thank you for your generous offers but I don't think Schuessler can give me anything I do not already have in my other dictionaries (it is true Lise, I don't have it. It <u>is</u> possible, you see). But next time I go to the Sinological Institute in Leiden I will check it out. A book with such prices connected to it must surely be worth a peek!

Warm wishes,

Harmen.
 

lightofdarkness

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Those hexagrams are covered in the IChing Plus expose on the derivation of meaning in the IC.

They associate with a 'wave' interpretation of the IC and each hexagram 'maps' to a trigram showing the invarience of the core qualities associated with trigrams.

See:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/IChingPlus/WaveStructure.html

The direct reference to those hexagrams are at the end but reading the whole page will show how they contribute etc.

Then, to cover the general methods in encoding meaning etc using waves, see:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/wavedicho.html

Chris.
 

lightofdarkness

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Another page that gets into this but from the focus on the interpretations that come out of quantum mechanics (same diagram as used above (wavestructure page) but done a while back:

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/bits.html

by understanding the method we use as a species to create metaphors to describe reality (e.g. QM or the IC) so we can flesh out finer details on what these perspectives are trying to say.... and so move from the 10th century BC to the 21st century AD. ;-)

Chris.
 

bradford_h

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Harmen-
Just a cautionary note- the Dictionary of Early Zhou Chinese violates some of the main principles of context criticism, especially in its heavy reliance on sources which "may have been compromised" during their transcription into Han characters. It relies heavily on the Shujing and Shijing, and on the context in which the words are found in the Yijing. It's also incomplete, using corroborated words only, so it only has about 5/8 of the characters used in the received Yi text. Finally, the characters are all Hanzi. It's alphabetized in Pinyin.
b
 

bradford_h

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Hi Jeff-
Yet another response:

Hello Everyone,
Lai Zhide of the Ming mentioned #61 and #27 as hexagram-sized versions of the fire trigram, also #62 & #28 as large versions of the water trigram. Lai considered it significant that these enlarged trigrams came right before pure fire and water (in the upper canon) and mingled fire and water (in the lower canon).
Larry Schulz had an article about the King Wen hexagram sequence in Journal of Chinese Philsophy, sometime around 1978,79. He said that Lai noticed symmetries between the upper and lower halves of the King Wen sequence, and that this business about the enlarged fire and water trigrams is part of that.
Larry (Lawrence?) Schulz wrote his dissertation about Lai's commentary, with partial translation.
Regards, Denis Mair
 
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hmesker

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Thanks Brad, it seems Schuessler applies the same principles as Karlgren in his GSR? In other words, Schuessler is just as outdated as the GSR? The study of bronze characters has evolved a lot in recent years, maybe Schuessler needs to write an updated version of his book. However outdated it may be, it still seems to be a standard reference in this field. Which calls for an update.

Harmen.
 

bradford_h

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Hi Jeff-
One more. Just please don't adopt Lai's use of "Da Xiang" to name this dimension. There's enough confusion in Yixue already.

Greetings, all:
I just checked Lai Zhide who calls such configurations "da xiang" or big
images; thus #28 Da Guo says the beam is buckling because "the da xiang of
this hexagram is Kan [#29], and Kan is a beam and is dangerous, thus the
buckling."

In other words, it does not appear that Lai Zhide actually does anything
theoretical with this gestalt except add it to all the other miscellaneous
possible connections that he was such a master of adducing to explain the
text using his "imagist" techniques. In most cases (IMHO) Lai Zhide is like a
jazz improvisation over the text so you can see how far the envelope can be
pushed.

Anyway, however, to me, Lai Zhide is part of the phenomena to be explained
rather than part of the explanation. His notice of this symmetrical property and
the way fire and water are used is an important indicator that there is
something going on in the formal design of the text.

Symmetry is a key to the design, because at the ends of both "halves" of the
text one finds fire and water conjoined or combined (#29/30, #63/64), next to
the symmetrical pairs (#27/28, #61/62). Breaking the symmetry in one or both
of the hexagrams in these pairs produces hexagrams that fall nearby in the
sequence, thus: external symmetry-breaking on #27 produces #23/24, and
internal symmetry breaking (in the human position) produces #21/22; and
external symmetry-breaking on #62 produces #55/56, while external
symmetry-breaking on #61 produces #59/60. Some of the textual effects of
this formal feature derive from these devices: the tiger's mouth (#21 to #27)
and the flying bird (#56 to #62), for instance.

Somehow the text progresses from the opening, very different all-yang Qian
hexagram and all-yin Kun hexagram, to the very slightly different final After/
Before Completion hexagrams at #63/64. The overall form seems pyramidal
to me: widely different at the bottom and mixed at the top. #62 Small Passage
is the narrow passage through into the unthinkable burning water at the top.
There is something like integration going on as the opening, diatonic
differences become chromatic and rainbow-like. In my opinion the real
challenge is to find out how this kind of "integration" is taking place.

The symmetrical trigrams are doubled at 1/2, 29/30--they frame the first "half."
The doubled asymmetrical trigrams stand grandly to the left and right of
Hexagram 55, bearing the name of the Western Zhou capital city which is also
the name for surplus harvests. I liken the 50s to the king's court, so these
doubled-trigram hexagrams flank the center and show balanced symbolism.

Doubled mountain at #52 means that starting from dead center of the text and
adding 20 one gets to (externally) doubled mountains, whereas the "Big
Trigram Hexagram" (internal double) of mountain itself is at 20. By my reading
20 and 50 are poles of the text in accordance with age of entry and exit from
service (the age-grade hypothesis), but 52 by another set of criteria (32 + 20)
can also be seen to correspond to 20. It is important to understand the idea of
doubled mountains at the time. Of course mountains were holy sites, and #52
may be read in part as sacrificial offering at a shrine. But the cities also had
artificial mountains, raised mounds on which one conducted other rituals
possibly corresponding to or "activating" the remote sites. In this way urban
shrines encompassed the locality shrines throughout the domain. Thus this
game in the Zhouyi of doubled double mountains seems very appropriate to
early Chinese thinking.

Another region of symmetry in the Zhouyi formal structure is in the 40s, and in
the 30s. The symmetrical trigrams are displayed in a neat manner here (from
#43 to #50): sky/sky, earth/earth, water/water, fire/fire. Meanwhile, the same
pair of asymmetrical trigrams revolves as constant companions: Sun and Dui
appear in all four pairs. This is a very remarkable deployment of trigrams.

Then, imitation of this in the 30s, beginning with #33 to 40, sky/sky, earth/
earth, fire/fire, water/water. But the asymmetrical trigram compansions are
more variable. However, #33/34 form "Big Trigram Hexagrams" of Sun and
Dui. By the way, the "heads" of these two "decades" at #31/32 and #41/42 are
similar in structure, combining the asymmetrical trigrams in different ways.

I don't know what this all means exactly but would like to figure out a way that
these patterns are part of the overall movement towards integration as seen in
#63/64. Somehow it is co-ordinated in an effort to explore symmetry,
symmetry breaking, and asymmetry.

It is too hard for me to analyze, but in a way it resembles the way patterns of
2s and 3s, 1s and 2s, 3s and 4s, etc., work in music to produce interesting
variation in melody/rhythm.

Thanks for your patient reading if you've gotten this far.
Scott
 

jte

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Well, I'm going to have to print that out and sit with it a while, but I think I understand the first 5 paragraphs pretty well. However, any idea what this part means? I don't understand it...

"#62 Small Passage is the narrow passage through into the unthinkable burning water at the top. There is something like integration going on as the opening, diatonic differences become chromatic and rainbow-like. In my opinion the real challenge is to find out how this kind of "integration" is taking place. "

- Jeff
 

bradford_h

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Jeff
He's trying to make sense of the transition from 62 to 63 (fire over water or burning water) in Lai Zhide's terms. I don't have the context and I'm not sure what he means with the colors, or where he's going with that. I've given up on making sense of the more random seeming parts of the Hou Tian sequence and mainly work with the Xian Tian, even if it's newer. I think I've saved myself some headaches that way.
 

bradford_h

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oops-
water over fire. anyway, somehow light and water make rainbows together.
 

pakua

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Sounds like maybe he's into the more esoteric alchemical stuff, cooking in the inner cauldron to create the spiritual thing - fire of the heart and water of the kidneys merging.
 

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