Visualizing Yijing relationships

[javalava]

Those of you who liked my hexagrams page might like to know I've just finished another one.

Visualizing the Yijing as a Whole

And now that's finished, I'm off on holiday!

 

[sergio]

Hola Javalava;
This is so very cool!Congratulations and thanks!
Sergio
P.s.:...where is the KWS explained and the Gia Fu translation?

 

[Sparhawk]

Great stuff, Chris. Thanks!

 

[heylise]

Impressive!

 

[fkegan]

Decads as not so totally strange notion for the King Wen Sequence...

Hola Javalava;
This is so very cool!Congratulations and thanks!
Sergio
P.s.:...where is the KWS explained and the Gia Fu translation?

Hi Sergio,
The Gia-Fu translation and the KWS are on my web site. www.stars-n-dice.com. The Taoist translation is the last link on the bottom of the Taoist I Ching page on the Nav Bar; the explanation of the KWS is on the Flux Tome page on the nav Bar. There are also links on Flux Tome (I Ching) page to the explanation of the Monad, Dyad, Triad, and Tetrad perspectives of the Decad system. Some of the direct urls are in my signature to explain my diverse and non-standard perspective And lots of other stuff...

Christopher,
It is a lovely animation. Thank you. Misspelling my name is not so great. KEGAN. Skipping out on vacation with a grin postpones discussion with you. I found it difficult to get back from your animation to this thread. Is that my limitation or your posting?

I have found the ability to imagine that there is a meaning superstructure over the individual hexagrams in the King Wen Sequence is indeed rare. The lines and trigrams are easily seen as forming hexagrams.The scholars note that numbers and lines were archaic, that is ancient to the ancients; however they find the hexagrams arising and then trigrams developing as components of those trigrams.

The notion of hexagrams as a middle ground with trigrams and lines developing within and decads and the whole symphony of the KWS developing beyond does not seem objectively to be such a stretch, but as you note it is. Perhaps it is a Piaget stage issue.
Most descriptions insist the KWS is 8x8 chessboard although the Wilhelm and all other sources show two sections, one of 30 hexagrams the other of the other 34.

That 30 hexagrams would be 3 sets of 10, one about the Earth, one about human society in general or agriculture as the way society grows crops upon the Earth, and the final one about the way Heaven rules both the Earth and society through Justice or natural consequence such as how thunder and lightning are linked is pretty standard Chinese perspective.

The second section is 3 sets from the individual perspective and a final four of abstract symbolism. Doesn't seem so extreme, but it is true no one has written about it in the official academic sources. And the insights are different from what is standard views either from ancient times or today. However, they are impressive in explaining current problems as well as ancient Chinese culture.

The 4 dimensions of physics developed as location in Cartesian space (x,y,z axis) where an observation occurred and the clock time of it. Trying to map those dimensions into that framework is tough. In the short time I was a graduate student working on a new open system thermo I developed a six dimensional system with the extra two being local organization (or complexity ala Teilard) and overall relationship to Source and/or Big Bang in current theory or relevance in meta-organization of info.

However, I don't quite get how you map the lines of the hexagram into 6 dimensions. The are 6 vital points not different axes of observation. I have been working on a simple and non-animated diagram of 3 concentric circles. The six lines are then the points of intersection of these 3 circles with a vertical diameter which forms three points above Center and three points below related as lines 1 and 6 from the outer circle; 2 and 5 from the middle circle and 3 and 4 from the inner circle.

Great set of options and opportunities on your animation.

Frank KEGAN

 

[bamboo]

Alas, I guess I am the only dinosaur who gets the very polite message saying "It appears you are using Internet Explorer...." If I use windows, then IE seems the default browser. Is there a way to download Firefox? and will it change everything about my computer processes?

 

[Sparhawk]

Alas, I guess I am the only dinosaur who gets the very polite message saying "It appears you are using Internet Explorer...." If I use windows, then IE seems the default browser. Is there a way to download Firefox? and will it change everything about my computer processes?

Go here

Will it change anything in your computer processes? Not really. It will increase your serotonin levels though and be happier...

 

[sergio]

Hi Frank;
What's your take on this?:
http://pages.prodigy.net/lofting/cracked.html
Sergio

 

[fkegan]

King Wen Sequence Explained fully by decad and No by Chris Lofting!

Hi Sergio,

I had a brief email interaction with Chris Lofting who had no interest in my views and soon got frustrated that I would not agree with him, even though he emailed vast, vast materials from his web site(s).

Here in the very beginning of the link you posted is his admission of his problem:

The traditional sequence of hexagrams found in the I Ching has for some time been considered 'unusual'. Coming from a software background my own preference has been for the Fu Hsi ordering that is derived through recursion where each level generates a set of symbols from basic yin/yang (level 1) to 64 hexagrams (level 6).

Here is my reply to such thinking (on cover of my Instant Oracle of 1980):

Needs no batteries, wires, video screens, computers or other primitive hardware. Everything you need is right here. Product of 30 centuries development beyond computer technology and relativity physics...

He seeks to "improve" the Yi by dumping the KWS and replacing it with his computer science binary fantasies. Lienshan uses the Shang era perspective, however, her work is a detailed and expert continuation of the divination perspectives before the 'unproven upstart' King Wen made his splashy entrance into popular divination.

The King Wen Sequence can only be understood from a perspective that is comfortable with the entire array of 64 hexagrams in two parts, one of 3 sets of 10 hexagrams and the other of all the rest. If you look at only lines, trigrams and even-odd hexagram pairs you are still thinking Shang and of course King Wen is an absolute mystery to you.

Frank

 

[javalava]

Misspelling my name is not so great. KEGAN. Skipping out on vacation with a grin postpones discussion with you. I found it difficult to get back from your animation to this thread. Is that my limitation or your posting?

Sorry about misspelling your name. Corrected now. I hadn't thought that I was "skipping out with a grin", but I can see how that might have been inconvenient. I was just SO PLEASED to have got it done in time so I didn't have it in my head any more. Do you feel relieved at meeting a deadline?

The animation is an ordinary HTML page and I don't use the JavaScript navigation object in any way, so I'm not sure why you had problems there.

The six dimensions simply come from 2^6 = 64. Adding each extra line adds another degree of freedom orthogonal to all those that exist so far. As far as I know, that is what a dimension is, isn't it?

Thank you for your comments, though. Always interesting. And although I'm not entirely sure about it, I do appreciate the new insights/links/parallels the decades view brings.

 

[fkegan]

Sorry about misspelling your name. Corrected now. I hadn't thought that I was "skipping out with a grin", but I can see how that might have been inconvenient. I was just SO PLEASED to have got it done in time so I didn't have it in my head any more. Do you feel relieved at meeting a deadline?

The animation is an ordinary HTML page and I don't use the JavaScript navigation object in any way, so I'm not sure why you had problems there.

The six dimensions simply come from 2^6 = 64. Adding each extra line adds another degree of freedom orthogonal to all those that exist so far. As far as I know, that is what a dimension is, isn't it?

Thank you for your comments, though. Always interesting. And although I'm not entirely sure about it, I do appreciate the new insights/links/parallels the decades view brings.

Hi Christopher,
My daughter reset my Windows and I have settled down and accepted there are time delays between my typing and the characters appearing on screen. Interesting meditative forced patience. Getting back from your animation works fine now.
It is a great research tool. Thank YOU. :bows:

Meeting a deadline is a great thing. I would use if I were a better person, but generally I take them badly and use in my mind. I am used to being associated with some sly or salacious remark from the Latin South (or North too) here.

Yes, you are correct that in mathematics 2^6 is a binary expression of the 6th order. More often taken as 6 sets of yes/no in the decision tree, like the 10 pairs of tortoise shells can't oppose it. Like flipping a coin and getting 6 or 10 heads in a row.

Einstein tried to change the notion of dimension saying his 4th dimension time was just regular clock time and meant if you do an experiment of Wednesday, it is different from doing it on Thursday, even if it's the same experiment in the same lab. No one seems to have caught on to that, so sci-fi 4th dimension time became all the rage.

Unfortunately, he didn't take the insight all the way and realize that of course God plays dice with the Universe, they are a very sophisticated Pythagorean Computer. Or that gravity that is being measured by tumbling dice or 3 thrown coins is all about seeing the timing currents from the Big Bang. He knew about the expanding universe, just didn't follow it back to Source.
He probably didn't cast the Yi Oracle either, though divination is in the Torah as standard practice for the High Priest Aaron.

Degrees of freedom for a six-place binary system I understand better. Of course, in your animation you must account for the 6 possible changes to each hexagram, .

Well, hopefully someday either I or someone else will look at the 64 Yi hexagrams in their two parts and realize the first 30 are the Earth(Water Cycle from Sunshine hex 1 to hex 10 back to the deep lake and sun shining again.), Human Society (working together to make the fields fertile (hex 11) and eventually grow stuff (hex 20); and finally the Heavenly Divine represented in how thunder and lightning appear together (21) all the way to how the motion of the sun keeps all life on Earth on track (hex 30).

The problem it seems is that folks get hung up in the associations to the names of hexagrams, their line metaphors, etc which are all very important in the use of the hexagrams in terms of specific Oracle answers. But the Yi isn't just a divination manual, it has divination aspects and philosophy combined yet interdependent.

Yes, I know I haven't followed my latest Panda Express fortune cookie and written it all out in short sentences with "simplicity of style," but there was no deadline or timing in the cookie divination. I am also still coming to grips with this level of metaphor over and above the individual hexagrams and their lines.

For example, who knew decad 31-40 is all about the total importance of monogamous love between committed spouses as the dynamic mechanism of a stable society-- The gyroscope of society?
Or that hex 39 indicates that the point of family life (with division of labor between husband out in the fields and wife in the house with the kids fighting with each other all day [hex 38] ) was all about building up sexual desire in each of the spouses to truly appreciate the final quiescent solution of the decad (hex 40) that is--satisfying marital relations after the kids were all asleep.

Amazing, but where is anything in any commentary to even hint at that? Huh?

The second part of the Yi is all about the individual--how individual love between husband and wife built upon their ongoing sexual relations is the private reality that builds the family and through that the successful nation.

Then decad 41-50 about how the individual reaching beyond his life toward the Divine comes to full expression in the domestic spirituality of the dinner Ting upon the family table. Who even has a Ting for their table these days?

And the last full decad 51-60 is all about how the thunderbolt from heaven strikes individuals and freaks them out making some (as the final product of this process midway through the decad--hex 56) ramble off forsaking their roots and becoming a Wanderer (not as simple in ancient China as U.S. Western frontier) until through a final high energy (hex 59) inner process (healing) such person finally achieves that quiescent state (hex 60) where their fluid activities once more fit into the local topography of their situation.

I am still just marveling at the elegant simplicity and brilliance of it all. And to some extent I am still in my own process through the Cartesian axes or double dichotomy of hex 57-60. Getting out of being raised in the suburbs by lawyers, and returning to the universal insights of the 6th century BCE doesn't come cheap in psychic energy and obligations.

In any event, I very much enjoy playing with the animation system and again I thank you for it.

Frank

 

[javalava]

Degrees of freedom for a six-place binary system I understand better. Of course, in your animation you must account for the 6 possible changes to each hexagram, .

Isn't that what happens when you click on a hexagram? The intention was to highlight the six hexagrams the chosen one can change to -- i.e. the six possible changes to that hexagram. Does the "" indicate I didn't do it right?

I am still just marveling at the elegant simplicity and brilliance of it all. And to some extent I am still in my own process through the Cartesian axes or double dichotomy of hex 57-60. Getting out of being raised in the suburbs by lawyers, and returning to the universal insights of the 6th century BCE doesn't come cheap in psychic energy and obligations.

Indeed!

 

[fkegan]

Ockham's Razor cuts again, what is simplest is generally true...

Isn't that what happens when you click on a hexagram? The intention was to highlight the six hexagrams the chosen one can change to -- i.e. the six possible changes to that hexagram. Does the "" indicate I didn't do it right?


Indeed!

Hi Christopher,
No, that indicates that of course you did it right, it was me I was duh-ing for ignoring that simple meaning and instead thinking of the possible integration of Teilhard's Noosphere with Open System Thermodynamics and the Tetraktys and being mystified and amazed.

Yes, in your animation you have 6 degrees of freedom requiring that each line may change and thus produce 6 other hexagrams that are the single moving line Resultants. And of course, all hexagrams can be connected to all other hexagrams by no more than 6 degrees of separation, the 6th being the hexagram resultant of 6 moving lines and the others forming from 2 to 5 moving lines. Forming also 6 dimensions of Changes defined from the number of changing lines to change any one hexagrams into any other.

When I was about 12, a grad student talked to our high school science club about how the mind gets grooved to solve easily a set of difficult puzzles of the same format, but not a very simple one: such as given two buckets, one of 1 gal capacity and one of 2 gal, how would you put 1 gal in each bucket? It stumped me for two weeks and forever after I keep going over that in any two moves you must only have 1 gal in each bucket.

So now I am being inspired by your animation to imagine how I would illustrate the 64 hexagrams in my perspective. It would require writing the hexagrams in terms of their two trigrams (basically just a bit of space between line 3 and 4) and also a bit of space between the first part (ending with hex 30) and the last full set of 10 (ending with hex 60.

And then changing the spacing to fit the Tetraktys. That is, to put a vertical space between all the hexagrams with final digit 1 (in Chinese numbering), and the pairs final digit numbered 2 and 3, the run of digits numbered 4,5,6 and finally the double dichotomy numbered 7 and 8, then another space between the final two numbered 9 and 10.

Looking over your various arrangements, I realized it was impossible for folks to visualize the Tetraktys without knowing it isn't really dots, but dot-patterns symbolizing the internal partitions built into the Tai Chi--the unit of the whole thing--all-in-one.
The Two polar opposites as a pair of structure and dynamics or background (Yin) and powerful focus (Yang), then the beginning, middle, end of narrative process and finally the double dichotomy or Cartesian axes of x-axis time development and y-axis energy balance.
Overall the 10th hexagram serving double duty as both the quiescent final state of the whole set established in the unit hexagram numbered ending in 1, and just the low energy pair to the hexagram numbered with the final 9-digit. In the Tai Chi (which has no perpendiculars) it is the two swirls and the two eyes with each eye and swirl of one color being the pair.

Your animation is fine, it is my thinking that runs off the rails at times...

Frank