Which came first: trigrams or hexagrams?

[bruce_g]

Interesting article, Lindsay. Feeling a bit like a late bloomer, in that I've never associated the tortoise as having a top and bottom shell, constituting two trigrams, before.

"..connected by holes and a hidden shaft." No idea how this might look. Would also like to see a picture of this.

 

[lightofdarkness]

The circle/square dynamic is 'refined' by 10 AD to give us:

 

[lightofdarkness]

thats 10-11th *century* AD

 

[heylise]

When you look at the chart I posted above, the vertical rows all are derived from the same trigram.
E.g the first row comes from trigram heaven: 64, 06, 50, 44, 38, 10, 14, 01.
The last row form earth: 02, 08, 15, 39, 24, 03, 36, 63.

64 undefined (heaven to heaven) no reality/earth, chaos
02 (earth to heaven) pure reality/earth

06 (heaven to lake) contend
08 (earth to lake) cooperate

50 (heaven to fire) rule the kingdom
15 (earth to fire) modesty

44 (heaven to thunder) high position/creating heir
39 (earth to thunder) limping

38 (heaven to wind) diverging
24 (earth to wind) returning

10 (heaven to water) treading (ritual)
03 (earth to water) beginning (germinative power)

14 (heaven to mountain) manifesting one?s assets/oneself
36 (earth to mountain) hiding one?s assets/oneself

01 (heaven to earth) top of creativity
63 (earth to earth) top of reality/earth

It does seem to make some sense...
LiSe

 

[lindsay]

For Bruce, a little science lesson from Wikipedia on turtle shells:

?The carapace is the dorsal, convex part of the shell structure of the tortoise, consisting of an external layer of horny material, divided into large plates known as scutes, which overlie a layer of interlocking bones. This construction allows for a sturdy tortoise.

?The plastron makes up the other half of the tortoise's shell. All tortoises from sea turtles to box (or painted) turtles and desert tortoises can be distinguished by their species-specific arrangement of scutes.

?The plastron is the nearly flat part of the shell structure of a tortoise, what we would call the belly, similar in composition to the carapace; with an external layer of horny material divided into plates called scutes and an underlying layer of interlocking bones. In certain families there is a hinge between the pectoral and abdominal scutes allowing the turtle to almost completely enclose itself. In certain species the sex of a testudine can be told by whether the plastron is concave, male; or convex, female. This is because of the mating position.?

Why is this important? Well, for one thing, the ancient Chinese only used the plastron part of the tortoise shell for divination (shell-cracking). Which means they must have cut the turtle in half sideways. I don?t know what they used the carapace for ? matching (turtle) soup bowls, perhaps?

 

[lindsay]

I wonder which kind of plastrons were favored for divination, concave or convex?

 

[bruce_g]

Thanks, Lindsay. So much for the two shell trigram visual. They don't know what they missed!

 

[lightofdarkness]

slightly off topic but this covers how experiences can specialise the brain, and that would include 'in depth' exposure to particular forms of divination etc - and so 'small world network' creation and preferences for particular forms of interpretation - SUM these networks and out will pop the core universals that they stem from (of note, is once you have experienced something it is not forgotten such that it is good to learn quality stuff if possible, even if difficult, since it will stay with you - learning off poor quality can elicit 'bad' habits - very hard to remove etc):
------------------
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050627/athletebrain.html

Musicians' Brains Permanently Rewired

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

? The swing of golfer Tiger Woods or the hand movements of cellist Yo-Yo Ma seem effortless, in part, because their brain patterns permanently are organized to handle activities associated with golf and music, suggests a new study.

The research, presented at the recent meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Toronto, reveals that the extensive practice of musicians, and likely that of athletes and other physically skilled individuals, can change their brains as well as their bodies.

The changes can be permanent, even if the person stops practicing or playing. "The brain is dynamic, and is changing constantly in response to external stimuli," said Steven Small, who led the study.

"Thus, I would suspect that there are some permanent changes that will not revert, but also, that there would be some additional changes based on the new experiences of the person."

Small and his colleagues tested eight expert amateur violinists and eight non-musicians, all right-handed, on their ability to use specific fingers from each hand, including the thumbs, to press a violin string located on a fingerboard placed in their laps.

 

[lightofdarkness]

LiSe, an observation - note your sequence just gives the dominating hexagram in each binary sequence pair as the root - it folds back to the quartet levels of the recursion of yin/yang - thus for earth we start off as (02,23,08,20) etc
The form PAIRS, 02,23 08,20 etc

(the trigrams in your diagram are in binary ordering column/row)

Thus the Yin side would be:

earth
02,(23)
08,(20)
mountain
15,(52)
39,(53)

The sequence reflects the 'variations on a theme' perspective where the yin and yang sequences are layed side by side (we take the binary sequence and cut it into two, a yin thread and a yang thread). Thus the Yin element in the Yang side then follows the above with:

Thunder (bottom line variation of Earth)
24,(27)
03,(42)
Fire (bottom line variation of Mountain)
36,(22)
63,(37)

The dominating focus is on DIgrams (bottom two lines) and yin/yang sequence. (thus the 8 x 8 is also ordered by bottom pairs of lines)

Move to the Yang side, reading from 01, and we have:

Heaven
01,(43)
14,(34)
Lake
10,(58)
38,(54)

Move to the yang element in yin ---

Wind
44,(28)
50,(32)
Water
06,(47)
64,(40)

 

[heylise]

The sequence is binary because the writer of the book, Boering, happened to use that one. I myself use another sequence. But here the sequence did not matter. The list was the row of hexagrams which can be formed from doubling the earth and heaven trigrams. I put them two by two together, so it would be more visible if one of the two had a connection with heaven, and the other one with earth.

64 is the doubling of trigram qian with all three lines 'young', 06 when the top line of qian is 'old', 50 when the middle line is 'old'.

I posted it because Hilary was searching for a common theme in all hexagrams derived from the same trigram.

LiSe

 

[lightofdarkness]

Thanks LiSe,

To me the only issue I find is that in moving through a hexagram so change is reflected temporally as yang into yin, yin into yang moving 'up' the trigram/hexagram. As such, translating a trigram line into a hexagram line would be yin into yang over yin, and yang into yin over yang.

As such, a full change of the heaven trigram into a hexagram format would translate into 63 rather than 64, as earth would translate into 64 rather than 63.

In the trigrams with moving lines model, and with the translation of hexagrams with moving lines into dodecagrams that is what I use to emphasise (a) the movement from begin to end, general to particular, and (b) the compression factor.

Thus the trigram of heaven into hexagrams would follow:

line(s) changes - hexagram

0 - 111 becomes 111111 (01)
1 - x11 becomes 101111 (13)
2 - 1x1 becomes 111011 (09)
3 - 11x becomes 111110 (43)
1&2 - xx1 becomes 101011 (37)
1&3 - x1x becomex 101110 (49)
2&3 - 1xx becomes 111010 (05)
1&2&3 - xxx becomes 101010 (63)

Note here the only 'pure' translation is 111 into 111111

If we move to the Fire trigram extended into hexagrams then we have:

101 - 110011 (61)
x01 - 100011 (42)
1x1 - 110111 (10)
10x - 110010 (60)
xx1 - 100111 (25)
x0x - 100010 (03)
1xx - 110110 (58)
xxx - 100110 (17)

The only 'pure' translation is 101 into 110011 and so reflecting the wave patterns mentioned before.

BTW Which sequence do you use?

Chris.

 

[heylise]

The single lines do not ?change to? double lines, but can be written as double lines.

can be written as

can be written as

can be written as

an be written as

So?

can be written as

can be written as

can be written as

The sequence I use is heaven ? wind ? fire ? lake ? mountain ? water ? thunder ? earth.
From most yang and ideal/universal to the reality of lake and mountain and back again to most yin, the other ?side? of universal. Or you can put them in two rows, heaven and earth, wind and thunder, fire and water, mountain and lake.
Maybe universal is not at all the right word, but i seldom describe them, just use them as the images they are, how they feel to me.

LiSe

 

[cal val]

Hi Hilary & Lindsay...

Just here for a sec. Very busy this week. Can't read every post here. Just came back to this thread after an exhaustive search for a photo of this archaeological find of a jade tortoise and tablet to discover that Hilary is asking the same question I am. Where's the picture? I'm especially intrigued because of my 'dexacant' dream and the emerald colored subdivided tablet in it.

I found some more articles about the find, but no photos. And, if it exists, photos must abound. But where? Does anyone know?

In the meantime, all I can hear about this is the liturgy I heard over and over when I was a child... from BOTH parents. "Believe nothing that you hear (read) and only half of what you see." It's echoing loudly in my head. And this is something that I really want to believe.

Love,

Val

 

[cal val]

Hi Candid...

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

Interesting article, Lindsay. Feeling a bit like a late bloomer, in that I've never associated the tortoise as having a top and bottom shell, constituting two trigrams, before.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
Interesting article indeed! Where did you see mention of this concept of "a top and bottom shell, constituting two trigrams"? I've read the article three times now and am feeling like quite the dummy because I can't find it. Would you mind pointing me to it or elaborating because I'm lost here. I'm not lost about the rounded back shell and the plastron. I had a few tortoises in my backyard as a kid. I'm lost about it constituting two trigrams. I can't find where it says that.

Thanks!

Val

 

[bruce_g]

Hi Val,

The visual was only in my head. Top and bottom shell constituting two trigrams. But it was way off. Funny though, I stopped off at friends' house on the way back from the studio today. They have a few large tortoises. I looked carefully at the top and bottom shells, and I still see top/bottom trigrams, with the meaning in the middle. Ah well. But no, I didn't see that anywhere in the article.

 

[hilary]

Now I have this wonderful mental image of Bruce looking carefully at a large tortoise, and a large tortoise looking carefully at Bruce.

 

[cal val]

Hi Hilary...


Thank you very much for posting the link to the Stephen Fields article. I printed it out and took it home and finally had time to read it last night. I'm suddenly very busy with work I created for myself by finding a way to fulfill a need we have in the company. And I've been arranging a trip the Yi has been hammering me about... telling me to act before it's too late, but that I didn't really get until I dreamt about it Sunday, so...

Now that I have my airline/hotel/car reservations made, I have a little time for a lot of questions.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

Quake/ manifesting: 19 (absolutely)
Stillness: 20 (skipping Stephen F this time as it doesn't fit )
Mediator, words for the shaman: 34 (not particularly?)
Kneeling, yielding: 33 (sort of?)
The Pit, suffering: 62 (narrow mountain pass?)
Bird of omen, revealing: 61 (there are a couple of birds around)<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

I missed how you came to group the hexagrams you did. I didn't understand what you were trying to say here:

<blockquote>"If the trigram idea was in the air as people wrote the Zhouyi, then the hexagrams made of trigrams with doubled lines (19, 20, 33, 34, 61, 62 - 1 and 2 just being themselves) might have strong allusions to the meaning of their trigram. If these were present, then said 'consensus' would be blown altogether out of the water."</blockquote> I can't understand how you are connecting hexagram 19 to hexagram 51 and hexagram 20 to hexagram 52, etc. Would you mind elaborating?

Don't you know I was delighted to read Field's tag for 51 - earthquake... and his reason for making that determination. I wonder if he's ever been through an earthquake.

I'm not satisfied with his assertions that the trigrams probably came first. He didn't back it up... left me wondering how he came to his conclusions. His examples of evidence of trigrams in the two writings he presented (that I can't reference properly right now because his site won't open) were insufficient. They clearly weren't written during the time the Zhouyi was compiled. One is from the school that compiled the DaoDeJing... or later, and the syntax and language of the other is all wrong for the time of the Zhouyi. They were both written much later. He doesn't claim either was written during the time of the Zhouyi, but he says the concepts were carried through the years from ancient times. He just doesn't support that assertion... and leaves it as heresay. Uggghhhh... disappointment.

Okay that's it for several days. I'm off to enjoy a very long holiday weekend. I'll be back on Wednesday to hopefully find my basket full of answers.

Thanks!

Love ya,

Val

 

[lindsay]

I have not been able to find a photograph of the disputed artifacts online, but I know they were excavated at the well-known Neolithic site of Lingjiatan in Anhui province by the archeologist Zhang Jingguo. This site is said to be ? among other things ? China?s oldest city, the oldest center of jade manufacture, and the birthplace of Chinese writing. Lingjiatan is thought to be 7,000-5,300 years old.

Each one of the links below offers a piece of the puzzle. Together, they make a fascinating story. Sorry I don?t have time to put it all together for you.

The final link refers to the book ?The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States? by Li Liu (Cambridge UP, 2005). I am pretty sure illustration 3.24 shows the artifacts in question.

What does it all add up to? You be the judge!

http://www.china.org.cn/english/2001/Feb/6978.htm

http://www.china.org.cn/e-kaogu/2000/22.htm

http://www.ancienteastasia.org/special/newsfromlingjiatan.htm

http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/e20029/f3.htm

http://www.earth.sinica.edu.tw/~wpes/Vol2/No3/V2n3p239.pdf

http://www.clta-gny.org/originofwriting.htm

http://www.tibetinfor.com/en/news/2001/11/c115866.htm

http://www.cnd.org/Global/02/07/29/020729-92.html

http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Jun/66806.htm

http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/38057.htm

http://assets.cambridge.org/052181/1848/frontmatter/0521811848_frontmatter.pdf

See illustration 3.24

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521811848/qid=1120266821/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-9196201-8277745?v=glance&s=books

Buy the book new from Amazon for $105.00, or used for a mere $99.25.

 

[hilary]

All links open in tabs and waiting for me to read - thanks, Lindsay! (Oh, apart from the last one. Great bargain, though.)

Val, sooner or later we are bound to be left with 'hearsay'. We may politely call it 'oral tradition', but it doesn't make it any more substantial. Substantial portions of the Shuogua do indeed sound like someone committing to paper - I mean bamboo - a list of received wisdom, perhaps for apprentices to refer to. How long the wisdom had been 'received' for is anybody's guess. Parts of it are clearly unrelated to the hexagrams.

I wasn't doing anything complicated - only the simplest version of what LiSe just explained. Take the trigram and repeat each line: | becomes ||, : becomes :: . Hence .

Now if the hexagrams generated this way could be shown to have consistent links in imagery or theme to the trigrams - really any part of the trigram tradition, not just the Zhouyi - then that would amount to clear evidence that whoever put together hexagrams and texts was aware of trigrams. If they can't (and I don't think they can), it doesn't prove anything either way.

Much as with Pairs

the more useful question is not 'What were the original authors thinking?' - all great fun to speculate, which is why I started this thread, but it's not as if we'll ever know - but 'Is it part of what I divine with now?'

 

[freemanc]

This was exciting to me:

From

http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Jun/66806.htm

The next day, archaeologists opened Grave M344, and saw an adult male whose head was missing. Where his head would have been were eight sets of tortoise shells and one fork-shaped bone artifact.

Hilary, Val? Do you remember our thread

http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/I_Ching_community/messages/48/4172.html?1112865005

and I was conjecturing that an intermediate version of the oracle might have had a set of (32??) tortoises?

8 would be very nice for this line of thought also...

I wonder if really nice, symmetrical, well kept sets of plastrons turn up in digs once in a while.

I'm conjecturing that these were used as the "reference manual" for a casting oracle rather than a cracking oracle.

I also found the disputation over the origin of writing fascinating. It makes me glad I'm not an academic, and can wave my hands at these wonderful ideas without weighing each gesture as a career move...

FC

 

[simple_complexities]

Hey Freemanc,

Eight is a very significant number for the oracle. The 64 hexagrams, when studied in pairs of complementary energies, e.g Force-Field (1-2), Already Fording-Not Yet Fording (63-64), Returning-Coupling (20-44), Sprouting-The Vessel (3-50) etc, can be broken down to 8 pairs of 2, all re-occurring 4 times. The nuclear hexagrams are much like the core energy of the system, where all other hexagrams have the opportunity to expand and grow, much like the nucleus of an atom supporting electrons.

When these 8 pairs of 2 are again broken down, they form 8 hexagrams, 4 yin based and 4 yang based. Now, the process of "breaking down" a hexagram is simple. If we view 1 Force and 2 Field as the archetypal and fundamental energies in their most natural form, this is where most hexagrams revert back to - to either a pure state of yin or yang, but with no potential for change. However...the 8 hexagrams remaining cannot return to a stable state and so are the catalysts for change within the whole I Ching!

The axis of this change is hinged on 63 Already Fording and 64 Not yet Fording, as you could liken both these hexagrams (on a pure atomic energy level) to the constant renewal of energy, one will accumulate, concord but divide, the other will release the accumulation and ford the events into a new chain. 63-64 are perfect for this operation because they are the balance of yin and yang in the strongest positions, yang on lines 1, 3, and 5 for 63 indicating the energies work in ACTIVATING the accumulation of energies gathered on its opposite and complementing partner 64. This creative balance is the engine to which all energy is continually renewed, much like Einsteins E = mc2 equation.

The other 6 hexagrams in the series of 8 all serve as important roles in other areas, but some form inner and outer partnerships, depending on their natures. Its a little like the big bang theory, where matter explodes fron humble origins. I have used the cycle these base energies follow on the earlier heaven and later heaven arrangements to plot the course of energy, much like you would plot aspects between planets on a natal chart in astrology. The earlier heaven shows a 3 dimensional light cone, on a 2 dimensional surface. This is a well known theory in Quantum physics and describes the nature and limits of the universe today, but doesnt explain how energy creates these laws or how to break them, the I ching may be the key to that. The later heaven depicts a pentagram, a 5th dimenional shape, that cannot be mathematically applied for solution in a 3rd dimensional universe, this is probably why the pentagram is seen as a very powerful tool in magic, both is Wicca and Satanism! But the pentagram was also the symbol for the Pythagorans.

 

[freemanc]

I'll just have to defer to you on that, because what I don't know about quantum mechanics, or classical physics, or cosmology for that matter would fill a book. I don't understand that sort of thing at all, and seriously doubt I'll ever be clever enough to do so. Just the prospect of trying to follow some sort of mapping of the light cone from special relativity theory onto ancient Chinese divinitory practices makes my head hurt.

What we were talking about in the earlier thread was this possibility: at some point in bronze-age China the actual turtles that had been used in the cracking oracle came to be used as a lookup table for the casting oracle.

So the fact that the number of turtles was a power of two would make for a complete look up table of combinations of casts. Three casts give eight combinations.

Slender stuff, and I wouldn't arm wrestle over it, but as a card-carrying Zhouyista, I guess I'm attracted to old shells and bones, and am pleased with the feeling that I wished this strange artifact into existance, like the hronir in the Borges story.

FC

 

[hmesker]

To add a fact:

The Chujian Zhou Yi (aka The Shanghai Museum Manuscript) has the hexagrams clearly divided in trigrams:

Which means that the trigrams were already used around 300 BC. It is suggested that the trigrams were 'invented' during the Han dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD), but the Chujian Zhou Yi shows trigrams are older than that.

Harmen.

 

[hilary]

Those are remarkable-looking trigrams. You can really see why you might call broken lines 'open' - they're opening like gates for the upward flow of the hexagram.

I wonder what they meant to people, in 300BC.

 

[hmesker]

This way of writing a yin line like the character 'ba' / \ = 'eight' can be seen in all old Yi texts. We find it in the Chujian Zhouyi, the Mawangdui Zhouyi, in the Fuyang Zhouyi, and in the Wangjiatai Guicang. Constance A. Cook writes about the latter:

"The hexagrams, like those found on the Zhouyuan oracle bones and at the end of Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, consist of a vertical tier of different combinations of the numbers 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8 which scholars in the past have understood to relate to the yang (odd, solid, 1) or yin (even, broken, 6 or 8) lines of the received text. "
('Myth and Fragments of a Qin Yi text - A Research Note and Translation'; Journal of Chinese Religions 26 (1998), p. 136

It seems that Zhang Zhenglang was pretty much right when he wrote his famous article about the divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones and bronzes, and their link with the Yi.

 

[cal val]

Freeman...

O fellow Zhouyista... said the hatchling Zhouyista. I just popped in here to say HI! and that I've been thinking a lot about you lately. I've had my head in your book a lot lately. When I cast, I have about four different books within arm's reach, and I usually want to see what yours says first. Then I compare your translation to Richard Rutt's, and they're always in the same ballpark. And then sometimes I throw in Shaughnessy's translation of the Mawangdui and maybe another translation. Then I read your interpretation... and it all cooks in my brain... on a slow burner of course... *grin*... but with this process, I'm starting to make more sense of it all. The light gets a little brighter everyday.

Many times it's easy to understand, of course, because the Yi is using available words. And this morning was one of those times. I was using your book and the Yi was using the available words... in your interpretation. It was a most enjoyable experience, and I'm about to open another thread regarding it. It's been a top priority all day. Hope to see you there.

And thanks!

Love,

Val

 

[cal val]

Hi Lindsay...

Thanks for all the links. I printed out your post... very valuable for when I have the time to search. I found several of those when I was looking for the picture of the jade tortoise.

I'd love to have that Cambridge publication, but $100... PHEW... I'll just check and see if the LA Public Library has it.

Love,

Val

 

[cal val]

Hilary...

Sorry... I didn't read LiSe's post... and didn't see her trigram acrobatics. Now I understand after your explanation. Interesting stuff... thank you both.

I too was tickled by an image of Candid standing in the yard... holding a tortoise up in the air... turning it over and then over again slowly... very thoughtful... while his none-the-wiser friends look on... wondering.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

Val, sooner or later we are bound to be left with 'hearsay'.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

I didn't articulate my thoughts very well.. always in a hurry any more. And I disagree. The more we learn through archaeology, the more pieces of the puzzle come together, and the less we have to depend on hearsay. Look how much light archaeological digs have shed on life in the Neolithic age as evidenced in the Cambridge book Lindsay has brought to our attention. We've had documents come out of graves in recent years that date to 300 BC and there will surely be more that date even further back. There's still much to learn from hard evidence still to come that will either confirm or deny the hearsay that so many of us rely on today.

And I think the evidence that Rutt and others offer to support the possibility of 'pentagrams first' (which is the sixth line of the hexagrams and the divination practices prior to the compilation of the Zhouyi) is much more solid than the 'evidence' Stephen Fields offers to support the 'trigrams first' theory.

Nonetheless, I'm still on the fence... and since I'm not anticipating falling one way or the other soon, I'm considering trying out some balance beam tricks to while away the time. And when I do come off the fence... I hope to stick a double back dismount after a perfect routine for a score of 10!

Love,

Val

 

[hilary]

What I meant about 'hearsay'...

Say you and I both have translations of a poem by Goethe. The translations are different. Which is right? Go find a German edition and compare. If we find two different German editions, we can hunt down the original edition or manuscript in a library somewhere. We started out with many versions, but we can trace back to the original, authentic text. (Well, OK, with some of G's earlier poems there will be an original version and one he revised for publication himself. But you get the idea.)

So the basic picture with the kind of literature we're familiar with is a triangle resting on its apex. We are at the broad end of the triangle, but the further down into the past we go, the closer we get to the point at the bottom, the original text.

Going back through Yi's history looks similar at first. Broad sweeps of different traditions, and as you peel those away you narrow it down to the relative simplicity of the received text.

But that's not where it stops. There are other manuscripts... so when they're different, which one is 'wrong'? And then of course there are theories that the written words we've inherited aren't what was originally there, or they're corrupt (etc) so the original needs reconstructing...

As we step back or climb down through Yi's history, I don't believe it narrows down to a point: The Original Authentic Text. No - it broadens out. Stories told, songs sung, diviners' recitations... oral traditions, aka hearsay, flowing together eventually (to change the metaphor) into a single stream. (Though there are currents within the stream that still don't mix much.)

The further back we reach, the broader and deeper and more diverse it gets. I suspect that the more we learn, the more The Original Authentic Text will look like a phantom.

 

[cal val]

Ahhhh... very interesting... and very true. This has been my experience attempting to go back to the original language (as it were) and seeing for myself, through my own experience, what the Yi has been trying to tell me all these years. I do grasp some understanding here and there, but the more I study, the more I encounter such words as 'speculate'. So now it's even more about experience for me. But I must say that going back to the original (as much as is possible), as you recommended a couple of years ago... thank you, is broadening my understanding considerably.

Love,

Val