wilhelm/baynes commentary

[dobro p]

The Wilhelm/Baynes commentary on the Yi is designed for middle managers.

 

[dobro p]

Divination for bureaucrats.

 

[meng]

Why do you say that, Dobro?

 

[dobro p]

The WB commentary's always talking about how to manage your followers while at the same time not getting into hot water with superiors. I have no interest at all in managing my followers. I'm exquisitely interested in managing my life however, to the extent that self-control without being a control freak is possible, anyway. And although I can see how certain traits in my personality could be construed as 'followers', I don't really see things that way, cuz I view those parts of my personality as ego-based traits which must inevitably fall into line if I succeed in attaining some sort of higher consciousness. Harmony, balance and evolved awareness rather than crowd control, in other words.

 

[meng]

Mm, yeah, I can see that. I've done a major W/B editing job in my own head, which buffers that whole superior/inferior, leader/follower, yang-good/yin evil thing. But with all that, I am still most inspired by those commentaries. They, to me, are the most impressionable and memorable, with all its flaws. But I know what you mean.

 

[fkegan]

Confucian and Taoist commentary

Divination for bureaucrats.

Hi Dobro,
I quite agree with you, the WB follows the Confucian commentaries which were put together for use of the Yi as part of the Imperial Civil Service Exam and then to help bureaucrats rise in their jobs.

Gia-Fu was very eager to make clear that the Taoist interpretation of the Yi was different from that. For me, the difference came to the fore when I was working with my correspondence of the Sabian Symbols of M.E. Jones to the Yi lines of hexagrams 3-62.

I was at first using the Rudhyar An Astrological Mandala version of the Sabian Symbols and I noted that in the same Yi line to degree correspondence the WB Yi would be saying humiliation, bad fortune and Rudhyar would be saying great creative opportunity, the sky's the limit for your innovation.

That brought home to me the WB was about advice to the bureaucrat whose worst fear is to be responsible for some action where he might be judged to have acted upon his own initiative. Rudhyar was writing in the '70's with vast New Age hope and optimism for how everything could be made new and different, turning the page on the problems of the past without bothering to deal with them.

Frank

 

[Sparhawk]

Divination for bureaucrats.

Yeah! And the world is full of them...

 

[fkegan]

Yeah! And the world is full of them...

Bureaucrats have special need for the Yi since they don't go beyond their desk or bureau much or interact with other folks and have little access to outside information.

Frank

 

[ben_s]

my correspondence of the Sabian Symbols

I'm curious how you came up with a correspondence between the Sabian Symbols and the Yi.

Also, do you know if there's a free online edition of Taoist interpretation? I'm more Taoist than Confucian myself, and sometimes uncomfortable with the rigid roles and hierarchy in the Wilhelm commentary, both in relationships and in official business. Personally, I would much rather "rely on actionless inactivity" than have to figure out whose butt to kiss at that palace! (I must admit that having known the Yi would have really helped me in my days as an employee of mega-corporations... but I hope those days are behind me now!)

 

[Sparhawk]

I'm curious how you came up with a correspondence between the Sabian Symbols and the Yi.

On this topic, you may also want to check LiSe's site, here

Personally, I would much rather "rely on actionless inactivity" than have to figure out whose butt to kiss at that palace! (I must admit that having known the Yi would have

I wouldn't discard ALL butts off hand...

 

[fkegan]

On this topic, you may also want to check LiSe's site, here


I wouldn't discard ALL butts off hand...

Hi Luis and Ben_s,

I must disagree with Luis here. LiSe has a purely personal correspondence of Yi lines to Sabian Symbols....

In terms of the systematic correspondence of the 60 hexagrams 3-62 with the 360 degrees of the Zodiac and their Sabian Symbols... that is solely my work. Forming a circle of those 360 lines, I related the Yi lines beginning at the bottom and the Zodiac beginning at the left (Eastern horizon in the horoscope) which put 1 Aries to line 1 of hex 48 and line 1 of hex 3 to 1 degree Cancer.

The link to Gia-Fu Feng's (with my assistance) Taoist I Ching is in my signature...

The link to my correspondence of the Sabian Symbols to the lines is..http://www.stars-n-dice.com/sabiansymbols.html
Frank

 

[Sparhawk]

Hi Luis and Ben_s,

I must disagree with Luis here. LiSe has a purely personal correspondence of Yi lines to Sabian Symbols....
Frank

Hey! I made no statements! Disagree with me on the other issue in that message , not for pointing someone to works related to the specific topic inquired about. I said "you may also want to check"... Didn't I?

 

[fkegan]

Hey! I made no statements! Disagree with me on the other issue in that message , not for pointing someone to works related to the specific topic inquired about. I said "you may also want to check"... Didn't I?

Hi Luis,
Per your request, I disagree with you over how many butts to dismiss especially as the original comment was about not wanting to HAVE to kiss any butts. That doesn't imply anything about discarding any butts, just not having to kiss any of them.

Ben,
There are various attempts to associate the Yi hexagram poetry to the Sabian Symbols of Marc Jones. Rudhyar did it as a general proposition, that is just recasting the Sabian Symbols and suggesting his work could be used " as an astrological mandala, an American I Ching like thing." Others, like LiSe have read the poetry, enjoyed the images and found ways to connect the two systems in ways that result in some emotionally satisfying connections...emphasis upon the some.

My work is based upon the notion that there is one global, Planet Earth system of number symbolism that is the basis for the I Ching hexagrams in the King Wen Sequence and the astrological Zodiac...

LiSe explains her rationale, and I explain mine, each of us on our own websites...

Frank

 

[Sparhawk]

Hi Luis,
Per your request, I disagree with you over how many butts to dismiss especially as the original comment was about not wanting to HAVE to kiss any butts. That doesn't imply anything about discarding any butts, just not having to kiss any of them.

See, that's a worthy thing to argue about: to kiss or not to kiss... Living in Vegas you may have "information overload". Me, on the other hand, I'm left to fantasize...

 

[fkegan]

WB put in context of Yi through Gia-Fu text and Sabian Symbols...

See, that's a worthy thing to argue about: to kiss or not to kiss... Living in Vegas you may have "information overload". Me, on the other hand, I'm left to fantasize...

Yes, Luis here in Las Vegas kneading, ogling, fantasizing are so much a part of the tourist culture down the Strip we do have information and availability overload. When Gov Spitzer had his moment in the news, the local news did a piece with a local madam upon what one could buy for the rates he was paying....the punchline was that he was renting a modest car relative to the fancy sports car or performance models you could get for elite rates out here, another order of magnitude in the per hour rental.

As to the Wilhelm/Baynes, it is truly uptight, kiss your boss's butt and cover your own perspective. To maximize the contrast, compare a degree in Rudhyar's Sabian Symbols with a line in Wilhelm:

A delicate bottle of perfume lies broken, releasing its fragrance vs The bed is split at the edge. Those who persevere are destroyed. Misfortune. [Gia-Fu EATING AWAY THE BED AT THE FRAME. COLLAPSE. ZEST. CALAMITY. Isolated without friends brings collapse]

Or:
An Indian chief claims power from the assembled tribe vs At the tail in retreat. This is dangerous. One must not wish to undertake anything.[Gia-Fu AT THE TAIL OF THE WITHDRAWL. DANGER. NO USE TO ACT. Stop before it has started. How could you suffer calamity?]

Or:
A large diamond in the first stages of the cutting process vs Entangled folly brings humiliation. [Gia-Fu IGNORANCE IS STUCK. REGRET. He is alone and far from reality]


I came to make my correspondence from purely technical considerations, the circle of the Zodiac begins at extreme left with 1Aries, the Yi grows from its roots in the fertile, growing Earth.

However, when I saw such juxtapositions between the lines I had put together I wondered why one judgment would be for humiliation and misfortune while the equivalent was for maximum personal freedom and creative innovation. Then it hit me, one was an American New Age ('70's) perspective while the other was for an Imperial bureaucrat of either ancient China or 19th century Protestant Germany.

Gia-Fu tried to walk in the middle as it were remaining with the Yi imagery but taking a non-judgmental perspective particularly about personal responsibility as misfortune and humiliation.

The final step in my correspondence, once I accepted that I did indeed have the right systematic one-to one connection, was to look at the dice number patterns on a dice cube and use them to express the symbolism of each line place in terms of my Flux Tome names for the hexagrams and the line place slogans--roots of, legs/structure of...
passion of.. etc.

I found it was the dice-face patterns and line place slogans that were the magic key to see how the obscure lines and degrees were deep, deep down the same structural symbolism.

That is how I did mine...others take their favorite sets of poetry and their favorite notions and jam them together to get something that works at least occasionally and that is enough since they don't see the absolute perfection of the details in the Yi, putting much greater stock in gut feelings and ancient texts and grave artifacts.

I reacted to Luis note of additional information about one correspondence between Yi and Sabian Symbols on LiSe's site since it has absolutely no connection to mine. In fact in each detail of her explanation mine is totally different, starting with her saying, "maybe the KWS isn't random but based in lunar months..."

We do both choose the hexagrams 3-62 as our 360 lines to correspond. Once I got set up with my Gia-Fu text in database, I abandoned both the Rudhyar degrees and the Wilhelm lines, going for the deeper alternative, Gia-Fu text and the original mimeo lesson version of the Sabian Symbols which are the best, however, that Marc himself never enjoyed.

He was going to dump them totally, except his students found them great. Later he only published his brief short hand notes not the whole spoken scenario by Elsie Wheeler and later yet he asked his students to stop using the mimeo version since they annoyed him--not realizing or not accepting that annoyance was their beauty, original psychic insight not under his conscious control.

Hard to know that, however, without an impersonal, structural system to check it all out with instead of just gut feelings and immediate reactions to the poetry. Wilhelm did a precise German for Chinese rendering of the Establishment commentary upon official text of the Yi which Baynes then did his best to put into academic English.

What they missed was the subjective stuff which was eliminated (or obliterated) in the drive to make the Yi suitable for Confucian oriented Imperial bureaucrats and the imperial civil service exam. There is a fancy astrology exam by the Am Fed of Astrologers with a similar purpose to make astrology a mathematical system suitable for academic respect.

Wilhelm would be a great aid to anyone working for a boss who can be said--he wants to be the top dog, sole creative genius and lone risk taker in his hierarchy. To be responsible for a new anything is to be in danger. It is like the little secret of the 100 different stock analysts offered by one big firm: They each have a different mission statement, but they all know, that if you take one step beyond what everyone else is doing you had better be at least 110% better in the final results or else. If you follow the lemmings over the cliff, you only need to show you have the same results on average as the others and you are safe. Perfect Wilhelm Yi country.

Frank

 

[ben_s]

Thanks to both of you for the links. I look forward to learning about both points of view.

Frank, I betcha that if Spitzer had consulted the Yi, he'd have got advice about using discretion to protect the palace, and also advice to be sure one gets one's money worth. (At least from Wilhelm he'd have got these...)

Fun conversation here.

was to look at the dice number patterns on a dice cube

Well there's Wilhelm's whole problem. If he'd have lived in Vegas, he'd have had some juicier metaphors to use. "Six in the third place means: you have a pair of eights, but the shoe is thin and the pit boss is scowling." "Nine in the fifth place means: quick, the cops are coming."

 

[fkegan]

Thanks to both of you for the links. I look forward to learning about both points of view.

Frank, I betcha that if Spitzer had consulted the Yi, he'd have got advice about using discretion to protect the palace, and also advice to be sure one gets one's money worth. (At least from Wilhelm he'd have got these...)
Fun conversation here.

Well there's Wilhelm's whole problem. If he'd have lived in Vegas, he'd have had some juicier metaphors to use. "Six in the third place means: you have a pair of eights, but the shoe is thin and the pit boss is scowling." "Nine in the fifth place means: quick, the cops are coming."

Hi Ben,
Spitzer apparently made enemies on Wall St by his zeal, and they then put him under illegal surveillance and then called their friends in the Bush DOJ to finish him off. Seems he was under more internal pressure than the Yi could help him with, he reached his Peter Principle level of incompetence as A.G. further promotion was bound to fail.
Wilhelm was a 19th century German Protestant for whom living in Vegas would not have been an option (and the city didn't legalize gambling during his lifetime). But for those in other places its a fun image.

The dice face patterns are not gambling paraphernalia they are ancient number theory illustrations of the numbers 1 to 6 which do wonders in explaining the basis for the hexagram line places and such. The hexagram line places form pairs parallel to the number pairs through the dice cube--1,6--2,5---3,4.

There is a general rule in ecology that specialist entities do very well over large areas which meet their specialization, and true generalists are relegated to extremes where they can survive and no specialist entity can. Dice are great generalist survivors that in a world of random math specialization are only found in games and gaming since nothing else can match their ability to deliver the precisely perfect number value for any situation. Not at all random, the person rolling the dice is empowering them to roll to the exquisitely perfect value for that situation at that moment.

Frank

 

[philippa]

Hey Luis,

I can't help noting your new Lindsay-inspired signature looking particularly prominent in this thread. LOL!

 

[Sparhawk]

LIndsay has been a source of inspiration for many years... A "muse" with hairy arms and legs, but a muse nevertheless...