...life can be translucent

Menu

Blog post: What’s wrong with carting corpses, anyway?

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418

Simple

Two lines in Hexagram 7, the Army, talk about carting corpses:
line 3:
'Perhaps the army carts corpses.
Pitfall.'
and line 5:
'The fields have game
Fruitful to speak of capture:
No mistake.
When the elder son leads the army,
And younger son carts corpses:
Constancy, pitfall.'
The core meaning is surely intuitively obvious: an army with cartloads of corpses is not doing well. It's like a much grimmer version of 'having baggage' – and in readings, that understanding works well.

Not so simple

But then Steve Marshall brought out The Mandate of Heaven, with its fascinating insights into the allusions to Zhou history in the text of the oracle. He pointed out that the word 'shi', corpse, could be singular as well as plural, and so this looked like a reference to the story of King Wu taking his father's corpse with him in a war chariot when he set out against the Shang.

The enigmatic 'Questions of Heaven' poem is the earliest source for the story:
'Wu rose up and slaughtered Chou [the last Shang king].
What need had he to worry?
He bore a body into battle.
What need had he for haste?'
('Shi' can be translated equally well as 'corpse' or the 'spirit tablet' that would house Wen's spirit, but Marshall follows those who read this as the more outrageous action of taking the body itself.)

The idea is that, before the prescribed three years of mourning for his father were completed, Wu received clear omens that it was time to march on Shang – and so he had to set out, taking the desiccated, unburied corpse in its chariot to lend Wen's spiritual authority to the campaign. The 'sons' of line 5 are Wen's sons, Wu and probably the Duke of Zhou. Despite this egregious breach of filial piety, their campaign was successful.

So since the Zhou triumphed, and this is the oracle of the Zhou for whom this was an unambiguously Good Thing, why the bad omens?

Explaining the omens

Marshall himself referred to a (later) tradition that there were bad omens for this campaign from both tortoise and yarrow omens, but a bold general threw away the yarrow stalks and stomped on the tortoise shells, saying, 'What do withered bones and dead plants know about good luck or bad luck!' They marched on, and won anyway.

This, though, leaves us with an almighty puzzle about the lines. When we consult Yi and it says,
'Perhaps the army carts corpses.
Pitfall.'
– are we supposed to spot the historical reference and not take the omen too seriously? Did we consult the oracle just so it could remind us that oracles sometimes get it wrong? ('Don't believe me; I'm a liar.') The irony seems a bit much. (And the idea of stomping on the sacred tortoise, which comes from a 1st century AD source, seems anachronistic.)

Stephen Karcher incorporated many of Marshall's discoveries in his Total I Ching, and his solution to this conundrum is simply to add text of his own, 'borrowed' from Hexagram 55:
“The Legions are carting the corpse.
'Perhaps stay in mourning?' Trap! The Way closes.”
So the bad omen becomes associated instead with not marching out with the corpse, 'carrying your inspiration with you'. (Though he also incorporates the traditional understanding, and encourages you to be rid of old, dead ideas.)

I puzzled over this one when working on my own book, and settled on the idea that just because exceptional measures worked then, in the Golden Age, it doesn't mean they'll work now. I found an elegant literary parallel at work: carting the corpse is like carting a precedent of great emotional significance to you, and not a good idea.

'The corpses used to be filled with vitality, but now they're just dead weight. The mindset, strategy or emotion that used to be an inspiring source of strength is now a lifeless husk.' (As you can probably tell, I also had in mind the fan yao, 46.3, with its once-lively empty city.) I found this refinement of the original 'gruesome baggage' idea also worked well in readings, so I've got quite attached to it.

Perhaps it is simple, after all

But then came Stephen Field's Duke of Zhou Changes, in which he says that the occasion on which Wu carted the corpse into battle was the first of two marches on the Shang, one from which he turned back because of bad omens.

Marshall knew of this story and didn't find it credible – but since then, David Pankenier has correlated it very exactly to astronomical signs.

In this version of Zhou history, Wu marched east to the Fords of Meng in 1048BC, only two years after his father's death. He followed the path of Jupiter, as it moved east across the night sky. But then Jupiter suddenly paused and went retrograde, and when they arrived at the Fords they were met by atrocious weather and bad omens from both tortoise and yarrow. Wu rejected the urging of his bellicose generals and retreated back to the Zhou homeland. Two years later, there were spectacularly favourable celestial omens, similar to those that first gave his father Wen Heaven's Mandate, and he marched out and conquered.

Oh.

So perhaps those cryptic lines in 'Questions of Heaven' are suggesting that Wu didn't need to be in such a hurry, after all? And two-part structure of 7.5 makes more sense:
'The fields have game
Fruitful to speak of capture:
No mistake.
When the elder son leads the army,
And younger son carts the corpse:
Constancy, pitfall.'
On the one hand, talking about the prospect of a successful campaign is no mistake. On the other hand, carrying your idea through with constancy, actually marching out with the corpse, is a bad idea.

I started realising just how beautifully this version of Zhou history resonates with the Yijing text when looking at the Sequence, and specifically the set of 10 hexagrams that revolve around the axis of hexagrams 11 and 12. I have a course to finish writing on that… but for now, suffice to say that the oracle of Hexagram 12,

'Blocking it, non-people.
Noble one's constancy bears no fruit.
Great goes, small comes.'​

looks to me more than anything like the terrible experience of marching all the way to the Fords with the best of intentions, only to find that stars and natural omens and both oracles are all against you, so there's nothing for it but to turn back.

Also, perhaps this is relevant to lines 6.2 (zhi 12) and 6.4?

One more hint

More and more, I'm finding Yi has a lot of answers hidden in plain sight. In this case, 7.3.5 changes to Hexagram 48, the Well:
'The Well. Moving the city, not moving the well.
Without loss, without gain,
They come and go, the well wells.
Almost drawn the water, but the rope does not quite reach the water,
Or breaking one's clay jug,
Pitfall.'
This is a beautiful hexagram, but also highly unusual in having an omen of misfortune in its main oracle text. It specifically describes the misfortune of almost making it, but not quite. 48 is not quite 49: we need better preparations, a fully-lined well, a longer rope and a new jug before the Revolution.
 
Last edited:
O

oceangirl

Guest
Bottom line (for me) is - if you're carting corpses - you or someone else is carrying sh** one no longer needs. If it's literally your son....then they're carrying the sh** of their ancestors.
 

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418
Yes, true. What I've found is that this shit you're carrying is also something of deep personal significance, maybe something you regard as a talisman for success, or part of your identity, or an indispensable help or justification - any of the ways Wu and the Duke of Zhou might have felt about carrying their dead father with them.

I drew a complete blank when trying to think of an image to illustrate this post. Any suggestions?
 

Liselle

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 20, 1970
Messages
12,851
Reaction score
2,388
The question I had when reading this (and not processing it very well) was, are we sure Wu did cart the corpse? Or did he think about doing that, but then decided to forego all such rituals and just get on with things?

That would seem to fit with what we usually say about 55 - don't spend time mourning, march out forthwith.

The idea is that, before the prescribed three years of mourning for his father were completed, Wu received clear omens that it was time to march on Shang – and so he had to set out, taking the desiccated, unburied corpse in its chariot to lend Wen's spiritual authority to the campaign.

In this version of Zhou history, Wu marched east to the Fords of Meng in 1048BC, only two years after his father's death. He followed the path of Jupiter, as it moved east across the night sky. But then Jupiter suddenly paused and went retrograde, and when they arrived at the Fords they were met by atrocious weather and bad omens from both tortoise and yarrow. Wu rejected the urging of his bellicose generals and retreated back to the Zhou homeland. Two years later, there were spectacularly favourable celestial omens, similar to those that first gave his father Wen Heaven's Mandate, and he marched out and conquered.

Questions:
  • Was their usual ritual really to let a body sit rotting in a hut for three years? :eek: (Especially if the hut was anywhere near their own dwellings, ick.)
  • I don't understand the Jupiter-version chronology vs. 55. 55 seems to say: stop mourning > march out > success. But the Jupiter version seems to say that the favorable signs came four years after his father's death, which would be after the three years' mourning anyway. So then what's 55 about that says to stop mourning early?
  • Or did he think Jupiter was the favorable sign, but then when it went retrograde + everything else bad happening: nope, apparently not, go back? Why does 55 skip that and make it sound simpler? Was the sign in 55 the first sign, the second one... ???
 

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418
The short answer to all your questions is we don't know. The Yi allusions, such as they are, are probably the oldest sources we have for any of this, and then there are a bunch of different versions of the story dating from several centuries after the event. And a lot of different scholars weighting these sources differently and giving different versions.

Longer version...

The question I had when reading this (and not processing it very well) was, are we sure Wu did cart the corpse? Or did he think about doing that, but then decided to forego all such rituals and just get on with things?

That would seem to fit with what we usually say about 55 - don't spend time mourning, march out forthwith.
Corpse-carting is the alternative to observing correct mourning ritual - especially if it is a literal corpse in the war chariot and not the spirit tablet, but maybe even if it's the tablet.
Questions:

Was their usual ritual really to let a body sit rotting in a hut for three years? :eek: (Especially if the hut was anywhere near their own dwellings, ick.)
Oh no no no. You bury the body with due ritual, you install the tablet that houses the ancestral spirit in the temple, and you yourself go into mourning for three years. This is how you show respect for your parents, by not going back to business as usual.

(In my googling I did find mention of taking ancestral spirit tablets into war, so that when you conquered a place you could install them in new temples straight away. But maybe keeping Dad hanging around in a war chariot, even housed in a wooden tablet, is not so respectful.)
I don't understand the Jupiter-version chronology vs. 55. 55 seems to say: stop mourning > march out > success. But the Jupiter version seems to say that the favorable signs came four years after his father's death, which would be after the three years' mourning anyway. So then what's 55 about that says to stop mourning early?
Or did he think Jupiter was the favorable sign, but then when it went retrograde + everything else bad happening: nope, apparently not, go back? Why does 55 skip that and make it sound simpler? Was the sign in 55 the first sign, the second one... ???
Er, good questions. All we actually know is that 55 is called Feng and says not to mourn. Then there is the word 'yi' in the oracle, which Field actually still translates as 'appropriate' though Marshall pointed out it's an offering, and the reference to 3 years and the hut in line 6 which sounds very much like the observance of mourning.

All the other ideas we have about this - that it happens very soon after Wen's death, that mourning must be stopped early, even that it is definitely about marching out - come from Marshall and his solar eclipse theory. Since he has an exact date and time for the solar eclipse - June 20th, 1070BC - the rest of the timeline needs to fit.

If the 'don't mourn' moment of 55 corresponded with the first sign, then it would be not quite three years after his father's death, so that's a possibility. Pankenier has not said anything about Hexagram 55 (he only mentions the bits of Yi that are directly relevant to astronomy, and he says the whole eclipse idea is a mistranslation). Stephen Field, who has read Pankenier (and everything), sees 55.6 as people peering into the hut, and not seeing Wu there because he has gone on campaign.

It does seem clear (I think!) that Wen died at Feng, so it was there that Wu had to take over. Even if he wasn't marching out at once, he still couldn't just disappear into a mourning hut: there were omens to watch for and covenants to be made. 'Don't mourn, make the offerings' would be good ongoing advice even over a span of years.

Also - just as 7 is not just about misguided corpse-carrying but also has line 6 about founding the new state, 55 doesn't have to be about just one historical moment at Feng. It can be all the things that happened there or that you could imagine happening there, in such a time and place.
 
Last edited:

Liselle

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 20, 1970
Messages
12,851
Reaction score
2,388
Thanks, Hilary...hm, when discussing hexagram 55 readings, I usually do say something like "don't mourn, march out." Maybe it'd be better to stop with just "don't mourn"? Maybe, "don't mourn..." (whatever "mourning" might be in the person's question), "...and start doing whatever needs doing" - ? Which may or may not be actually setting out.

What do you think?
 
Last edited:

charly

visitor
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
2,315
Reaction score
243
Yes, true. What I've found is that this shit you're carrying is also something of deep personal significance, maybe something you regard as a talisman for success, or part of your identity, or an indispensable help or justification - any of the ways Wu and the Duke of Zhou might have felt about carrying their dead father with them.
I drew a complete blank when trying to think of an image to illustrate this post. Any suggestions?
Hi, Hilary:

I can see Wu Wang and Zhou Gong taking such a determination for reasons of strategical impact. But I cannot imagine Zhou Gong carrying the corpse with him.

I always believed that was Kang Hou, a much youger brother of both who was charged with that burden. The horrible prognostication than ends lines 7.3 and 7.5 applies to the necessity of carrying a corpse, say, Kang Hou was burdened with the worse part.

Even worse if one thinks that the carriage is literally a sedan chair that didn't exist in times of the Zhous. The caracter can be read as CARRYING ON SHOULDERS. Maybe not to be understood literally but describing the feelings of Kang Hou.

But nothing lasts forever, in the «Changes» all changes. Not strange that misfortune turned into fortune. After such an ordeal Kang Hou has to become strenghtened.

In 7.3 the character often translated PERHAPS or maybe can also be read SOME: «In the army some must carry the corpse», somebody must charge with the worse part.

In 7.5 elders get the most honorific tasks, youngers get the dirty work. Elders or Chiefs are supposed to be the more manly. Youngers, by opposition, maybe effeminate, which was said of men unable to restrain themselves.

And Kang Hou (whose name was FENG, maybe a variant of H.55 title) was known for being very fond of women and wine. But that's another story.

All the best,

Charly
 

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418
Thanks, Hilary...hm, when discussing hexagram 55 readings, I usually do say something like "don't mourn, march out." Maybe it'd be better to stop with just "don't mourn"? Maybe, "don't mourn..." (whatever "mourning" might be in the person's question), "...and start doing whatever needs doing" - ? Which may or may not be actually setting out.

What do you think?

Well, we could always just quote what it says ;)

Insert obligatory spiel about the dangers of using one's own idea of a hexagram in place of what it says here. Though of course we do need our own ideas of hexagrams, and couldn't avoid having them anyway. Maybe 'don't mourn, take on responsibility'?

Hi, Hilary:

I can see Wu Wang and Zhou Gong taking such a determination for reasons of strategical impact. But I cannot imagine Zhou Gong carrying the corpse with him.

I always believed that was Kang Hou, a much youger brother of both who was charged with that burden. The horrible prognostication than ends lines 7.3 and 7.5 applies to the necessity of carrying a corpse, say, Kang Hou was burdened with the worse part.

Good thought. I mentioned the Duke because he's mentioned as having been there (giving wise counsel about retreating when timely, of course). But I suppose Kang must have been there too, as a good supportive brother.

...
And Kang Hou (whose name was FENG, maybe a variant of H.55 title) was known for being very fond of women and wine. But that's another story.
He was? It is? All I know about him is that he helped sort out rebellious lords post-Conquest, knew what to do with a gift of horses, and may have had his mother's protection. Tell the story, please!
 

Liselle

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 20, 1970
Messages
12,851
Reaction score
2,388
Well, we could always just quote what it says ;)
Of course...

Insert obligatory spiel about the dangers of using one's own idea of a hexagram in place of what it says here. Though of course we do need our own ideas of hexagrams, and couldn't avoid having them anyway. Maybe 'don't mourn, take on responsibility'?
...but, in my own defense (sorry, this is the sort of thing that could easily just sound argumentative :(), don't we often tell more of stories than is literally in the text? However if we are finding out we're not sure of the truth of things, in ways that might be misleading in readings, I'll be happy and relieved to avoid that. Probably better to miss out on some illustration than mislead anyone.

That seems different from, say, the eclipse/sunspot controversy, which as you've said probably makes no difference in readings.
 

Trojina

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
May 29, 2006
Messages
26,921
Reaction score
4,426
However if we are finding out we're not sure of the truth of things, in ways that might be misleading in readings, I'll be happy and relieved to avoid that. Probably better to miss out on some illustration than mislead anyone.


In the end if more comes to light about the history behind the lines, and things are coming forward all the time, new ideas about translation, historical discoveries, new ways of joining up the dots as Hilary is doing by connecting Pankenier and her thoughts about the sequence and so on, well in terms of one's own interpretation, for actual divination, one still has the work of feeling out how it connects to our lives now.

On the one hand we cannot look at our experience of a line for example and then declare 'this is what it means', we still have to reckon with what it actually says. We can't make the line fit to our experience and yet I think it is also true our experience can at the same time be a good guide to sensing for ourselves what to take from the line. If one repeatedly finds in 'real life' that there is a huge gap between what the line says, even looking at various translators, and our own experience then well an individual may go with the historical version that tallies with that or the translation that tallies with that.



It's a delicate balance of course between going off into one's own world where any thing can mean anything, ie when I got 61.6 x happened so 61.6 means x and just sticking doggedly to what 'it's meant to mean' regardless of one's repeated experiences and hunches about the line.

There are some lines for example where my experience is repeatedly so contrary to common commentaries about 'what it says' I leave a question mark over it regardless of which scholar said what about it. 55.6 has always been like that for me. The gist of the line is generally given as 'don't stay in mourning , march out'. I cannot see one instance in my own readings where that has applied. It has always seemed to me over the years that not marching out was, even in hindsight the best thing to do. So although half my mind goes with the usual interpretation the other half doesn't and I have no scholarly knowledge to back that up.

The reason I'm saying all this is that you don't need to suddenly change your interpretation of a line because someone makes a discovery about it. You'll need to flesh that out for yourself, work with it in your own readings first, see how it goes. You don't have to change your ideas immediately about what's happening in 7.3. or 7.5, it's just something to consider.

Quoting again

However if we are finding out we're not sure of the truth of things, in ways that might be misleading in readings, I'll be happy and relieved to avoid that. Probably better to miss out on some illustration than mislead anyone.

How can we ever be totally sure of the truth of things with the I Ching ? We can't. I don't see it as a matter of misleading anyone else but trying it in your own readings and going from there.
 

Liselle

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 20, 1970
Messages
12,851
Reaction score
2,388
Liselle said:
7.3 and 7.5 seem trickier

...or not. Thinking more about it, the whys and wherefores that matter are probably just our current ones. Why/how might "carrying" whatever "corpse" be "pitfall"? Hilary explained how that's not necessarily contradictory to eventual victory, which also might be something to keep in mind. "Pitfall" might not be the same as "defeat."

(This is rapidly becoming thread-clutter, sorry. Am trying to work it out for myself. At a stopping point now, I think, lol. But it's helpful to get right track / wrong track feedback, so, thanks for that :) )
 
Last edited:

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418
How can we ever be totally sure of the truth of things with the I Ching ? We can't. I don't see it as a matter of misleading anyone else but trying it in your own readings and going from there.
Yes, absolutely.

Of course...
...but, in my own defense (sorry, this is the sort of thing that could easily just sound argumentative :(),
and what would be wrong with that?
don't we often tell more of stories than is literally in the text?
Indeed we do, all the time. To say nothing of telling personal stories that aren't in the text at all, like 'The last time I had this line in a reading...' - improvising and going with our feeling for what will help.
However if we are finding out we're not sure of the truth of things, in ways that might be misleading in readings, I'll be happy and relieved to avoid that. Probably better to miss out on some illustration than mislead anyone.

That seems different from, say, the eclipse/sunspot controversy, which as you've said probably makes no difference in readings.

As Trojina says, it's an iterative process, just like any other way we get a feel for a hexagram or line. Does this story seem to fit convincingly with the hexagram, with some reasonably solid evidence? If so, does it help me understand my readings? (Or, if I open my journal and look back, would it have helped?) If so, when it feels helpful, I'll try offering it to other people. Here, let me tell you a story about Feng, see if it reminds you of anything...
 

hilary

Administrator
Joined
Apr 8, 1970
Messages
19,149
Reaction score
3,418
Post crossing!

I wonder if a reasonable thing to do is keep the bigger stories in mind, as background, but also keep in mind that what we know might be inaccurate. And then think something like, "Okay, against all that, here's what the text literally says."
Sounds about right.
7.3 and 7.5 seem trickier, because the text literally says, "cart corpses...pitfall," but, as Hilary said, we know for sure that the Zhou won.
As I said in the original post, I think the two-marches version of the story would be the simplest resolution for this.
 

Liselle

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 20, 1970
Messages
12,851
Reaction score
2,388
Here's a Wikipedia article about the battle, for whatever that's worth (it only lists a couple sources):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Muye

It doesn't mention anything at all about corpses, and it (the "battle" section) makes the victory sound quite easy. It says a lot of the Shang troops were fed up with the Shang and didn't fight hard, or even defected.
 

Liselle

Supporter
Clarity Supporter
Joined
Sep 20, 1970
Messages
12,851
Reaction score
2,388
Oh dear, is an old problem coming back? :(

See post #11? I just now posted that. It should be the last thing in the thread (well, above this post), but it's not. Also, it mis-attributed what's in the quote box to Trojina, and I had to edit it to say "Liselle."

I can't remember how we fixed that before, or what caused it...will try to find the thread...
 

charly

visitor
Joined
May 9, 2007
Messages
2,315
Reaction score
243
...
Good thought. I mentioned the Duke because he's mentioned as having been there (giving wise counsel about retreating when timely, of course). But I suppose Kang must have been there too, as a good supportive brother...

...He was? It is? All I know about him is that he helped sort out rebellious lords post-Conquest, knew what to do with a gift of horses, and may have had his mother's protection. Tell the story, please!
Hi, Hilary:

I've already post some hypothesis about Kang Hou in this thread:

«Who was Kang Hou.
Kang Hou, the Marquis of Kang, 8th son of Wen Wang, had for name FENG, ... the name of H.55, has the same phonetics...»

See more ,with readable chinese characters, here:

I believe that if the wooden tablet of Wen Wang was carried to battle, like a chinese ark of the covenant, it was not a great burden and hardly should have a great impact in the Shang troops.

Or was Wen Wang corpse as said by Steve Marshall or the corpses belonged to somebody else, like those of soldiers died in battle. But then, why should a brother of the king charge with them?

If was not Wen Wang, I believe,there is another possibility:

The so called CORPSE radical is part of many compound characters meaning parts of the body.

Say, the meaning of this radical is close to BODY (wanted dead or alive) and in old calligraphy characters depict a side view of a bent person with protruding buttocks.

Maybe somebody in the battle had to pick up living bodies, maybe women of the enemy caught as slaves ot for sharing among the officials or even among the troops. Remember what happened in the begining of the Illiad. A dirty job, of course.

Possibly the little brother carried women, not as a dealer but for his own profit, not an exemplary behavior for a Lord. Horrible!

Perhaps Kang Hou was strong and calm, a kind person. Just as women fell in love, his brothers cared for him and so received important tasks in strategic areas. With few reprimands, because they secretly admired him.

I don't remember any source where I might have read this. But it's a possibility, I think. My memory is not good. Nobody's perfect.

All the best,

Charly
______________________
P.D.: Maybe the women that Kang Hou picked up were Ladies taken as HOSTAGES for securing the loyalty of the defeated Shangs to the new rulers.

Ch.
 
Last edited:

Lilly-La

visitor
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
220
Reaction score
7
Hex7 reminds me of Sun Tzu, Art of War. There are quite some parallels, see f.e. I 4 -13 and II15 .(..it's much better to cart the enemies provision than corpses.)
http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

Add: when 7.3 changes trigramm water changes to wind which, so i believe, is a symbol for ghost/demons/ancestral demon/haunting too. Thus the bad omen in general.
Usually the eldest son is the propper heir not the youngest. One could read: the correct order is the eldest son as ruler leading the army, the youngest has not received the mandate.
 

equinox

visitor
Joined
Jan 19, 2017
Messages
721
Reaction score
57
I received 7.3.5 a few days before one of the most important persons in my life died in his late twenties. Sometimes I still think his death could have been avoided, a lot of people (including me) in a crucial position made unfortunate decisions. It was a catastrophe for me and others and still I am haunted and highly influenced by this event. -- But not only in a bad way, I think it also changed me for the better, I learned a lot from it.

And I only realize after reading this thread, that the metaphor of still carrying his "corpse" with me could still be accurate. Interestingly Trojina answered to one of my threads on the validity of answers after many years saying "There are many answers I still carry with me from years ago and see them unfold gradually or rather my understanding of them unfolds gradually"

P.S And I realize only by now, that >48 also could have had a (additional) literal meaning in this story. He drowned.
The whole story happened many, many years ago and I wasn't experienced with the I Ching back then. I only knew very well, that the word "corpse" meant a bad omen in this context, and that "the army" wasn't in a proper order indeed.
 
Last edited:

Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom

Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).

Top