Where does Stephen Karcher get his wild stories from?!

[hilary]

Hooray - today they appear! Lovely website.

 

[hilary]

You know... in the trigrams of Hexagram 10, you can imagine the shamanka dancing below heaven. Dui the youngest daughter, and dui as all things broken open at the top, so they are open to the skies. And now looking at those bronze characters, I wonder if I'm seeing the same picture.

Next question: what's that above the dancing figure? An animal? But it seems too simple. A scythe? (I'm sure I've seen a component like that before, but I can't remember where.)

 

[charly]

You know... in the trigrams of Hexagram 10, you can imagine the shamanka dancing below heaven. Dui the youngest daughter, and dui as all things broken open at the top, so they are open to the skies. And now looking at those bronze characters, I wonder if I'm seeing the same picture.

Hi Hilary:

I believe that yes. Maybe not necessarily the same picture but similar dramatic scenes lead by equivalent inner drives. Depending on the context Dui performer can be a girl or a boy, but in both cases being open minded and behaving playfully in spite of taking considerable risks.

Speaking on the connetion with the sky I believe that the Outskirts (JIAO) Temples lacked of roof for get open to heavenly influence.

Next question: what's that above the dancing figure? An animal? But it seems too simple. A scythe? (I'm sure I've seen a component like that before, but I can't remember where.)

Shamans use to wear spoils of some powerful animals, skins, claws, horns, teeth, feathers. Also,, hanging from their clothes, all kinds of paraphernalia such as mirrors, chains, knives, spoons, knotted ropes...

In some variants of the bronze characters, not all, I believe that the dancer can have a hat with horns.

In the perspective of the Higer Divinity jumping top down from the heights over the naked dancer, I see the one eyed big head of the ancestor over wich there are the edge of a robe and the ancestor's legs.

In the case of the falling lidded vesell, maybe the upper strokes depicted a ribbon or cord meaning the sacred bonds preserved between the Holy Container and the Higher Divinity.

Of course, I believe that all must be seen not as static sketches but dinamic, almost holographic compounds continuously subject to sudden changes in perspective and swapping from the iconic to the symbolic.

Maybe a little fanciful etymology: nobody's perfect!

All the best,

Charly

 

[charly]

Hi Hilary:

I'm believing that the Watchful Eye may belong to the Divinized Ancestor, the Pretender Shaman, or even the Tailed Tiger. The three share as an outstanding feature the possession of a Strong Gaze potentially harmful. The three can look fierce and dangerous.

Say that we have another character in the scene. The Tiger is well known in the Changes by:

• ... a fierce and angry stare, according with a strong drive for hunting even people, as atested in 27.4 and ...
• ... also for enjoying a Recognized Authority, as atested in 49.5 (must be said that the Tiger in traditional folk art wears the King's Mark on his forehead like a badge).

In spite of all that, the Tiger of 10.0 doesn't bite persons. Even those dancing on the tiger's tail can remain unharmed. What's happening?

Gene Kelly Dancing Tap​

(To be continued)​

All the best,

Charly

 

[charly]

Hi Hilary:

I'm believing that the Watchful Eye may belong to the Divinized Ancestor, the Pretender Shaman, or even the Tailed Tiger. The three share as an outstanding feature the possession of a Strong Gaze potentially harmful. The three can look fierce and dangerous.

Say that we have another character in the scene. The Tiger is well known in the Changes by:

• ... a fierce and angry stare, according with a strong drive for hunting even people, as atested in 27.4 and ...
• ... also for enjoying a Recognized Authority, as atested in 49.5 (must be said that the Tiger in traditional folk art wears the King's Mark on his forehead like a badge).

... the Tiger of 10.0 doesn't bite persons. Even those dancing on the tiger's tail can remain unharmed. What's happening?

View attachment 3267
Gene Kelly Dancing Tap​

(To be continued)​

All the best,

Charly

Hi Hilary:

After reading some pages of Birth in Ancient China: A Study of Metaphor and Cultural Identity in Pre-Imperial China by Constance A. Cook, Xinhui Luo I believe to understand what did happen with the tiger that didn't like to bite humans.

Let us them speak:

-



​

All thee best,

Charly
_______________________
P.D.:
The bronzes are well known, al least the first two:
A) is a handle of the big cauldron called Hou Mu Wu Ding for the royal wife to whom it was offered.
B) is the famous Tigresse or Cernuschi Bronze that appears in the cover of K.C.Chang's "Art and Ritual", She looks scary but the guy seems not to think so.
C) I believe less popular, its photography appears in "Ritual Civilization and Mythological Coding", available preview in Google Books.

The jades, the two that I know:
A) appears in the cover of Katheryn Linduff's "Gender and Chinese Archaeology", also in Google Books.
B) is the spread winged hawk that can be seen in Jade from Fu Hao's Tomb, only front view (not the cowry shell, with less respectable association).
Here: https://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/archae/2fuhjade.htm
[for some unknown eason I cannot select texts for copying, formatting, etc. neither with mouse nor cursors].

Ch.

 

[hilary]

In Cecilia Lindqvist's lovely book, China, Empire of Living Symbols, she also shows the trusting, child-like figures in the mouths of the tigers (though it doesn't occur to her that this might represent birth - it certainly occurred to Karcher, though!). And she links that to modern Chinese children wearing tiger caps, collars and shoes, for protection:

A few years ago I found a worn collar for a child in the shape of a tiger skin in a market outside Xian, and I suddenly remembered a shimmering green bronze axe from the Shang dynasty, on which a small man, his eyes open, is looking out between the jaws of two huge upright tigers, as secure as the children who ever since have looked out of their tiger caps and tiger collars.

 

[charly]

In Cecilia Lindqvist's lovely book, China, Empire of Living Symbols, she also shows the trusting, child-like figures in the mouths of the tigers (though it doesn't occur to her that this might represent birth - it certainly occurred to Karcher, though!). And she links that to modern Chinese children wearing tiger caps, collars and shoes, for protection:

Hy Hilary:

There is a long tradition of tiger fascination in ancient China, Lindqvist pointed to granted protection against evil influences. That protection covers children's lives even before birthing. Karcher may lack of critical apparatus or scholarly references, but doesn't lack of foundation.

Here something about remnants of friendly relation between tigers an humans and about positive influence of tigers over fertility and childbirth:
. .

Source:
Mark Elwin: "The Retreat of the Elephants", Yale University Press, 2004.
Freely availabe for download in Academia.edu.

All the best,

Charly

 

[hilary]

Karcher may lack of critical apparatus or scholarly references, but doesn't lack of foundation.

Very true! And I think we've all been there - oh, this fits with that thing that I'm sure I read somewhere...

I wonder whether Fan Xiong had cast hexagram 8.

 

[charly]

Very true! And I think we've all been there - oh, this fits with that thing that I'm sure I read somewhere...

Hi Hilary.
Of course, nobody's perfect!

I wonder whether Fan Xiong had cast hexagram 8.

I believe that if Fan Xiong casted the coins and received H.8 (比, bi3, Crowded) asking how to put tigers under control, there was a high probability for reading the hexagram name as 妣, bi3, Ancestral Mother. (1)

Maybe he immediately understood "beware of Tigers, they use to be personifications of Ancestral Mothers!". As Fan Xiong was not a Shaman but a Prefect, say, a bureaucrat, he didn't want to be entangled in strange affairs with immortals, his wife would not have approved it. (2)

He must have said to himself; "I'm ideed in the 5th. line, the Ruler, at least in this district. If I cann't contlrol the upper broken line (the Ancestral Mother) I always can control the lower ones (the people)". (3)

Instead of trying to convince Tigers not to eat People he commanded People not to provoke Tigers and let hills and forests for them. It seems that the Changes had reason. (4)

Otherwise it would have been disastrous.

All the best,

Charly

__________________________
1) Fan Xiong didn't read Constance Cook but he must have heard interesting stories from his aunts about elves and tigers during the childhood nights.

2) In those remote days it was not believed in pure friendship between men and women, be dead or alive. Only shamans dared to engage with immortals. And the times of Feudal Lords related by blood with Kings had passed away long ago.

3) Prefects didn't belong necessarily to High Nobility but all local people were submitted to his authority and in female possition with respect to him while the Ancestral Mother although female was in higher, top, male possition. The Prefect could not command on her.

4) ASAP an almost literal translation of 8.0 Crowded.

Ch.

 

[charly]

Hi, Hilary:

Almost literal translation of H.8:

比 吉。
bi3 ji2
NEARING LUCKY.
Ancestral Mother: Lucky.

原筮元永貞。旡咎。
yuan2 shi4 yuan2 yong3 zhen1 wu2 jiu4
ORIGINAL STALK_DIVINATION MAIN PERMANENT OMEN. NO WRONG.
First sight intuition, sudden insight is always better
than questioning the oracle again and again. Don't overthink.


不寧方來。後夫凶。
bu4 ning2 fang1 lai2 hou4 fu1 xiong1
NON-PEACEFUL PEOPLE WOULD COME BEHIND A MASTER HORRIBLE!
If not, dangerous people from strange lands
could come after their chiefs. It would be the worse!
​

All the best,

Charly