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ernobe

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The Nanjing rules have been mentioned in some previous threads here and there. You can get an idea of the theory behind it by reading the account of one of those who worked on it: Shih-chuan Chen. It is based on some extant results of divination from a reputable source, of which Wikipedia says, "For many centuries, the Zuo zhuan was the primary text through which educated Chinese gained an understanding of their ancient history." In this text, the divination always results in a single line changing, and some other results from a related source show that even in cases of no lines or multiple lines changing, the diviner mentioned that they had received an "8" (a single line) for the reading. The rules are based on the same numeric theories behind the yarrow stalk method, which are mentioned in the Ten Wings. It shows how a single line may be derived, which can be any of 9,8,7 or 6, and which accounts for all the extant readings of the ancient diviners. If you are one of those who for some reason, and contrary to Hilary, find single line results of interest, this sounds like something worth looking into. This is a brief account, which doesn't go into the significance of the numeric theory, but in this respect is no less credible than the yarrow stalk method itself.

I really have nothing more to add, so if you want I can post this in Exploring Divination and link to it in my signature. As for five elements, the arguments against it can be refuted by the evidence of the Ten Wings as well. In other words, if for you the Ten Wings "are not the I-Ching" then the five elements won't be either. To debate this any further is a waste of everyones' time.
 
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hilary

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Yes, please repost and link. And could you also start a separate thread there to explain how you use 5 elements in readings, and link to that?

Edited to add: no, I don't think debating different approaches to Yijing interpretation is a waste of time. That's pretty much why I thought it might be nice for Clarity to have some forums...
 

moss elk

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The Ten Wings are commentary, (very often helpful) written several hundred years after the I Ching. They are not the I Ching.
It is simple to understand.

The five elements theory and the Nanjing Rules are also not the I Ching.

I'm just trying to make this clear for everyone.
 

hilary

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Thanks for the new thread, Moss Elk.

Er - strictly speaking, by definition the I Ching = the ancient Zhou text + the 10 Wings. That's what was canonised in 136BC, when it became 'Ching' and not just 'I'. (There seems to be a bit of debate as to whether the Zagua was included back then, but that's the basic idea.)

Ernobe, what have you found in the 10 Wings that mentions the 5 elements?
 

moss elk

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Thank you for the clarification Hilary,
I will edit my signature as well.
 

hilary

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The Image is the 3rd and 4th Wings - not Zhou. But the signature's a nice touch.
 

moss elk

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Ok, I'm quite ignorant.
I edited the sig.
Thanks.
 

hilary

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There's enough I Ching to go around that we can all be ignorant about something :D.

Can anyone, not just Ernobe, think of a mention of 5 Elements in the Wings?
 

ernobe

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Can anyone, not just Ernobe, think of a mention of 5 Elements in the Wings?

5 elements are in the Wings as qualities assigned separately to the trigrams. It is not there as a system.
 
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bradford

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I think it was one of the biggest mistakes in Yixue history to try to jam the Wuxing into Yijing and Bagua, and a whole lot of silly errors like this were made in the Han dynasty. They remain a puzzle and a source of confusion to this day because they just don't fit. Five belongs in a universe of five parts and Eight in one of eight. And the Zhouyi was already five or six centuries old when the Wuxing were formulated, so there is no way they could be fundamental. When the Zhouyi was written, the five had a sixth companion, and together they were known as the Liu Fu, the Six Storehouses or Treasuries, with grain or seed being the sixth. These can be seen in the Book of Documents.
 

hilary

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Thanks, Brad. That's what I thought about the history, though I didn't know about the 6th member. But that reminds me... I dimly remember Margaret Pearson saying something about yin and yang being part of a trio to start with. Do you know anything about that?

Ernobe - thank you for adding the signature and 5 element thread - I'll head over there for 5 element discussion.
 

bradford

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. I dimly remember Margaret Pearson saying something about yin and yang being part of a trio to start with. Do you know anything about that?

In Chapter 42 of the Daodejing, Laozi mentions Yin and Yang as integrated by Qi. It's his only mention of Yin and Yang and it's as part of this trio. My unpoetic literal rendering:
"The myriad beings carry the shadow and embrace the light
Blending (these) vital breaths to make harmony"
萬物負陰而抱陽,沖氣以為和。
(Why can't I post the Chinese anymore?)
Of course Yin and Yang don't appear in the Zhouyi either, except Yin is shade in 61.2. It plays with binary opposites of course, but not in a way that reflects or even anticipates later metaphysical Yin-Yang philosophy. I also don't think that's what the graphics of the Gua are about.
Yin and Yang and the Five Movements didn't get put together and didn't get any traction in the culture until the 3rd Cent BCE, when Zou Yan (305-240) started the Yin-Yang School.
 

bradford

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Even by the second century BCE the five-phase theory wasn't predominant
in Chinese metaphysics. According to the Huainanzi (Ch. 3, tr. Graham),
this is how it all came to be:
When Heaven and Earth were not yet shaped, it was amorphous, vague, a
blank, a blur; call it, therefore, The Primal Beginning. The Way
began in the tenuous and transparent, the tenuous and transparent
generated Space and Time, Space and Time generated the Ch'i. There
was a shoreline in the Ch'i; the clear and soaring dissipated to
become Heaven, the heavy and muddy congealed to become Earth. The
concentration of the clear and subtle is easy, the concretion of the
heavy and muddy is difficult; therefore Heaven was completed first
and Earth afterwards.
The superimposed quintessences of Heaven and Earth became the Yang
and the YIn, the concentrating quintessences of Yin and Yang became
the Four Seasons, the scattering quintessences of the Four Seasons
became the myriad creatures. The hot Ch'i of the accumulating Yang
generated fire, the quintessence of the Ch'i of fire became the sun;
the cold Ch'i of the accumulating Yin became water, the quintessence
of the Ch'i of water became the moon; the overflow of quintessences
of sun and moon became the stars. Heaven received the sun, moom and
stars, Earth received the showers of water and the dust and dirt.
 

hilary

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Sorry about the Chinese characters that aren't. Making those work broke a bunch of vital forum functionality - I never did find out why.

Thank you for quotations.
 

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