Thank you for the review of Margaret Pearson's "The Original I Ching". Your reviews are always so inspiring.

I was wondering though. I don’t know that much about the I Ching despite knowing of it for decades. Nevertheless, given that there are so many translations out there (and I know there are a few recommended ones), the advice sometimes given is to meditate on the image of the constituent trigrams.

Surely, though, given the preponderance of “original” I Chings and their historical sources, there is also disagreement with what constitutes the images of the trigrams within a hexagram.

So, I suppose my question is: Is there a good source of the “closest” to the original constituent images? Or is one of the recommended good translations also good at translating the images?

Another interesting thing for me would be: Are there books or sources where the images are actually that–the images rendered in good artwork which captures a good portion of what was intended?

There is not that much about trigrams. Long lists of associations, but usually not very usable. Lindsay (who used to post here in the past, but has now other things which keep him busy) once made a very complete list of all attributes, associated with them.

I made pages about them
http://www.yijing.nl/i_ching/trigrams/
but they are far from complete. In Dutch I have a lot more, but didn't find the time yet to translate it. If you are a member of Reading Circle: in the wikiwing is more about the images of the trigrams.

Good texts about trigrams:
http://www.fengshuigate.com/bagua.html by Stephen Field, and
http://www.fengshuigate.com/bagua.html who adopted many meanings from Field.

And here one of Harmen Mesker's articles, this one is about hexagram 58/trigram Lake.
http://i-tjingcentrum.nl/serendipity/archives/51-The-salient.html

celtic said:

So, I suppose my question is: Is there a good source of the “closest” to the original constituent images? Or is one of the recommended good translations also good at translating the images?

Click to expand...

I think the Da Xiang text does a good job of providing a meditation on the constituent trigrams. Take Water over the Mountain, for instance. Picture a storm on the mountain pass, your route is blocked. You have to do something else now. I found it useful to ponder these texts and not give up until I got it. It also sometimes helps to to see the lower one "using" the other, or learning from it. My own commentary explores these images in more detail then the Da Xiang text. See also Ban Xiang, in my Volume Two Dimensions chapter on how the upper and lower relate.

Thanks for adding your texts, Bradford. I meant to mention them too, because they are the best I know so far, but then, after searching for the other links, I forgot.