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Plum Blossom Error

44bob123

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I came across an article on Andy Nicola’s astrology website which said there was an anomaly in Plum Blossom calculations. Although I e-mailed him several times he didn’t provide explicit evidence or examples.
I therefore resorted to a spreadsheet to see if I could identify it and a section is shown below.

If one uses the calculations given by Lillian Too, Da Liu and Wang Yang an error does occur. The inner trigram is based on the four pillars of hour, day, month and year. The resulting total number being divided by eight, with the remainder being the number of the trigram.

Similarly the four pillars total is again used to find the moving line. This time the same total is divided by six. The remainder being the number of the moving line.

However if you look at the spreadsheet, it becomes clear that an even-numbered trigram will always end up with an even-numbered moving line and vice versa.

I don’t know if the more traditional ways of calculating the hexagrams and lines also have this problem. Lorraine Wilcox, “Plum Flower Divination and Medicine”, uses totally different methods to derive hexagrams and lines.
:confused:
Has this anomaly been mentioned before?

Code:
	        Trigram no.		                Line no.
Number	        Remainder		               Remainder
2	8	2	                       6        2
3	8	3		               6	3
4	8	4		               6	4
5	8	5		               6	5
6	8	6		               6	0
7	8	7		               6	1
8	8	0		               6	2
9	8	1		               6	3
10	8	2		               6	4
11	8	3		               6	5
12	8	4		               6	0
13	8	5		               6	1
14	8	6		               6	2
15	8	7		               6	3
16	8	0		               6	4
17	8	1		               6	5
18	8	2		               6	0
19	8	3		               6	1
20	8	4		               6	2
 
Last edited:
H

hmesker

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It is not an error, it is a consequence of one of the rules in Meihua Yishu 梅花易数 for obtaining a hexagram:

年月日为上卦,年月日加时总数为下卦。又以年月日时总数取爻。
Year, month and day make the upper trigram. The sum of year, month, day and hour make the lower trigram. Also use the sum of the year, month, day and hour the get the (moving) line.
(http://www.4hn.org/files/article/html/0/84/5175.html)

...says the original Meihua Yishu book. Something similar occurs in Heluo Lishu 河洛理數. With the rules given for calculating your birth hexagram it is impossible to get hexagram 30 and 58 as Xiantian hexagram. This is not a flaw in the system, it is simply a consequence of the rules that are applied.

Whether you are able to accept these consequences is an entirely different matter.
 

44bob123

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"Anomaly" rather than "error". It just seems strange that Shao Yung wasn't concerned that his system didn't encompass all the possibilities of moving lines in the hexagram. I'm not sure what the significance is as people happily continue to use the Plum Blossom method.

I double checked the methods used by Lorraine Wilcox and she has the same outcomes.
 

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