What's the name for this?

[rosada]

Is there a special name for this technique? What do you call it when you are taking one hexagram and starting with line one, changing it, and then going to the resulting hexagram and changing line TWO, then on to the next, changing line THREE and so on until at the end you are at the exact opposite hex from the one you started out with?
Thus
1.1 > 44.2 > 33.3 > 12.4 > 20.5 > 2.
And is there a purpose to this? I mean are these six hexagrams thought to describe something about hex. I?

Thank you!

 

[willowfox]

Maybe I'm stupid this morning but what is the point of the exercise?

 

[dobro p]

Maybe I'm stupid this morning but what is the point of the exercise?

Nope, not stupid.

 

[Sparhawk]

Rosada, this may help...

 

[rosada]

Thank you Luis! (and Hilary!)
We certainly have a goldmine here at Clarity!

Rosada

 

[hilary]

This sounds most like Brad's method of reading changing lines - forgot the name of it, sorry - late at night here, brain has powered down automatically. With 1 changing to 30, for instance, he'd read 1.2 and then 13.5.

I've no idea what you might learn by systematically tracing through a whole hexagram's worth of changes like this. (And even after midnight, I think I'd remember if I'd mentioned it on that 'changes' page.) Let me know if you work it out.

 

[bradford]

This is not a divination method but a way of relating hexagrams to each other in sets.
I only know it as the shi er di zhi or 12 earthly branches method (see figs 15-19 in my Dimensions chapter). The set you used for illustration, using the opposites of Kun and Qian, is the most familiar family - it is more commonly known as the Sovereign Gua of the 12 Moons. Two of these are referred to in the old Zhouyi - the eighth moon (Gua 20), mentioned in the text of its opposite (Gua 19) and the 11th moon or Winter Solstice (Gua 24).

 

[rosada]

Thank you Hilary and Brad!
I was fiddling around with 39. Obstruction, seeing if this method offered some insight into what creates Obstruction and how to deal with it. I was struck that using this method the lines seemed to closely describe what's been going on in my family. My son is going to be married here shortly and I thought it would be so nice if they would ask my sister's daughter who is an Episcopal Priest to officiate.This led to all sorts of complications clearly described by each of the different hexagrams. Without going through all the lines I will just note that this method ultimately leads one to 54.6 > 38.
54.6
The woman holds the basket, but there are no fruits in it.
The man stabs the sheep but no blood flows.
Nothing that acts to further.

This describes a wedding service that has no meaning. This is exactly what the Obstruction was here at home! My niece felt she could not officiate at a wedding that was not Episcopalian, and the kids felt such a service would not have meaning for them. So this says to me that Obstruction comes from people having fundamental values that they cannot pretend to overlook just for politeness sake, they must 38. Amid all fellowship retain individuality.

From doing this exercise I got a stronger sense of what Obstruction refers to - it's not a case of superficial misunderstandings but deeply rooted differing belief systems that must be respected.

--
Any comments as to your experiences using this method, Brad?

 

[bradford]

Any comments as to your experiences using this method,

No. But I don't suppose it hurts to take your mind out on little walkabouts like that.
Each of the lines has a broad ranges of meanings, which needs to be narrowed down
in relation to something else to have specific meanings. It might as well be an exercise
like that as a divination question. But I think that the point of the exercise is that your
mind gets practice in seeing the line meanings from different perspectives, not that such
meanings are somehow built into the Yijing or its structure.

 

[rosada]

Yes! And it is so invigorating to read the hexagrams in a different order from a different perspective. You see things in them you had never noticed before, even though it was all right there in the usual sequence. Makes me think of how it feels when your doing Sudoku. You can sit staring at the page for an hour and not see any pattern and then if you leave it alone and come back to it whole new connections jump out.
So in answer to your question, Willowfox, the purpose of this exercise - for me anyway - is to get fresh insights from looking at the lines in a different context.