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Counter indication vs. Hidden Possibility

joey

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Hi Everyone,

I'm not sure if this has been covered. I did a search and couldn't find anything so I'll ask.

In the older version I Ching by Ritsema and Karchar, the nuclear hexagram is referred to as the Counter Indication (I think as I don't have the book in front of me and I always forget to look but I wanted to ask this question anyway). This seems to be what the situation is not.
In the newer version the nuclear hexagram is referred to as the Hidden Possibility which I would take as something that could possibly happen.
Could anyone clue me in on what's going on? From my own previous experience, to me, the nuclear hexagram seems more likely Counter Indication than Hidden Possibility
 

hilary

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Hi Joey,

Books could be written about nuclear hexagrams... (I wish someone would get round to it!)

I would think of it as 'hidden possibility' - but in one's immediate experience of a hexagram, the emphasis can sometimes be more on 'hidden' than on 'possible'.

Another way of using the nuclear hexagram is to see it as what the main hexagram is 'about' at a simpler level. The main hexagram would be one way of dealing with/ processing/ developing the nuclear hexagram.
 

heylise

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When I got the R+K, I was very convinced they were right about the Counter Indication, it seemed to make sense.
Later, in practically every book, it was more or less the opposite.

My final idea? That they are not terribly important. Every time when I try to use the nuclear, it confuses my understanding more than that it helps. It is something to refer to, when the reading stays unclear. But usually an unclear answer is very difficult to make any clearer.

LiSe
 
C

cheiron

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Hi Joey

In Stephen Karcher?s follow on edit of the same work ?I Ching 2002? He changed it to ?Hidden Possibility?. He has now moved away from that idea completely.

I have only ever known it used as ?Seed of the time? or ?Hidden Potential of the time?

I have no ideas where they got the ?Counter Indication from? in the earlier work and always regarded it as an error.

Currently I am looking at other ideas which are something slightly different from ?Hidden Possibility? but broadly in line with it.

Others here might have other ideas? but hidden possibility seems to work very well for me.

I would regard the ?Opposite Hexagram? (Change every Yin line to a Yang and every Yang line to a Yin) as being the real opposite? but I have not explored this very deeply as I do not find the idea very useful.

In the west our conceptual roots are that life is dichotomous? that is, if there is white there is black? if there is a positive there is a negative. All hexagrams are arranged in pairs (see eigth wing). Every odd number of the King Wen Sequence (the usual order) is paired with an even number? 1&2; 3&4 etc. These pairs most often form complementary pairs each being an opposite of sorts but an opposite which is a necessary complement.

So Hx.1 Dragon / Creative energy (think sperm as one expression) is complementary to Hx. 2 the Nurturing gestating Earth energy (think womb as one expression). Sperm and Womb are not opposites ? they are clearly complementary energies making a whole.

Now just to confuse the matter some of these pairs are actually dichotomous? I do not have the numbers to hand? sure you can find them.

Hope this is helpful

--Kevin
 
C

cheiron

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I don't know about a book Hilary ? lol - but I am very intrigued with them and have been working on them for a few months now.

This I can say with fair certainty... They represent some key energy movement in the hexagram series.

It would be too easy to define them by their number patterns... indeed I have mapped them a little and like everything I find in the Yijing they form 'crystalline structures' quite readily... but meaning is the pearl this dragon is chasing.
happy.gif


When I asked the Yijing about them I received Hexagram 27... The 27 thread helped me along the way quite a lot? The energy that wells up and feeds the hexagram?... The Dao of the time which expresses itself in that hexagram? A seed of sorts like a core energy?

Or, maybe, the energy held within the hexagram which drives the moment of change.

Give me 50 years? I might get there.
happy.gif


--Kevin
 
C

cheiron

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PS

I would love to hear other folks view on this... it has me well intrigued...

--Kevin
 

bradford_h

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Hey folks-
A good book has been written about them, by Charles Ponce, The Nature of the I Ching.
A sixties paperback, long out of print but usually easy to find at ABE.
b

btw, the proper name is Hu Gua or Interlaced / Overlapping Hexagrams. This dimension (from the Han dynasty) developed out of a much older tradition that analyzed Hu Ti or interlaced forms (aka nuclear trigrams).
 

andreas

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Another good reference for nuclear gua is Ed Hacker's "I Ching Handbook" from Paradigm Publications. I not sure if this is still in print, but this has a section exploring the relationships between the nuclear hexagrams and the rest of the hexagrams, and between the nuclear hexagrams themselves. Very interesting, if you're interested in structural relationships.

Andreas
 

bradford_h

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Just to add, for those who don't know this one-
Ed's book is still available-
Both new at Amazon and used at ABE, from US$35
Handy reference to have.
Great bibliography too, but it doesn't top the new one that he did with Lorraine Patsco and Steve Moore.
b
 

pedro

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Just my oppinion, the nuclear hexagram is nothing more than another chance at finding something that rings a bell for that particular question (actually it is mostly with answers of unchanging hexagrams that one is bound to look for something more)

It can mean more than the answer itself, or it can mean... nothing

All rules about the nuclear hex being this or that are bound to be just one individual's understanding of a particularity, and by no means a possible generalization

try makin an hexagram from any other lines - there are many interesting constructions - and you'll see it also can make sense (and cannot as well)
 

hilary

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Post from Stephen Karcher (just while I get him a new password for the board...):

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR SIZE=0><!-Quote-!><FONT SIZE=1>Quote:</FONT>

Maybe I can clarify something of the Counter Indication vs Hidden Possibility theme. The Counterindication was something unique to Mr. Ritsema in the original version of The Classic Oracle of Change. I disagreed with it at the time and changed it in my own later work.
To me, the Hu gua are a very valuable tool, though one I am still exploring. The do seem to represent some sort of hidden structure, and it is interesting in this respect that there are only 16 possible first generation "nuclear figures" and four second generation figures. I see these four (1 and 2, 63 and 64) as landmarks or gates in the landscape of Change, perhaps similar to the Four Directions, or the Four Hidden Lands. In this respect I would certainly agree that the Han development of this tool has much older roots.

Medical thought tends to see the nuclear as the cause of a disease, while philosophical thought seems to see it as a kernal or "hidden possibility." To me they represent a sort of dialogue between cause and telos or goal. I come more and more to see them as Core Themes, particularly when we look at these 16 gua in their mythic dimension. It may be that these 16 figures represent the central concerns of the Change in some hidden way. When seen as a Core Theme, they are, in my experience, almost always relevant to the divination at hand.
While it it true that the matrix of Change seems able to generate an almost infinite series of "systems", seems to me this is one of the more interesting or fertile ones. It is also true that the "tools" are many and that some of them will be more valid or interesting than others in a given situation. Again, this is part of the diviner's job, to smell out and bring forward what "clicks" in a given situation. I tend to use the Nuclear, the Time Cycle associations, the Change Operators and the dynamic of the paired or crosslines to set up a rich enough matrix, allowing what wants to speak to suggest itself rather than trying to come up with an exhaustive interpretation that incorporates everything.

In passing I might add to the discussion on the "derived figure" and the "rules" that govern it. To me it has always been the "Relating Figure", expressing a relation to the central subject. This can be a potential outcome, a desired goal, a warning, even a key experience from the past that is the perspective you are taking on the matter at hand. It is part of the diviner's job to help sort out how the Relating Figure is working in an individual situation. To my mind, it is a great diminution to see it as simply "future," a diminution that locks us into linear time/space.

Again, in passing: I have been using Scott Davis (very complicated)insights into the matrix for a while now and find much of his thought extremely helpful - it takes us into a way of thinking that has great possibilities (though we do not have to agree with EVERYTHING he says). As does the crossover structures it provides to see other texts (such as the Laozi) in these terms. And there are many ways to associate hexagrams with birth process and all, but these definitions do not have to exhaust the possibilities of a hexagram. An interesting way I found to explore this is through Grov's sense of the four stages of birth, which we can see on both individual and cultural levels: as personal birth and as the struggle to be "born into" a culture.

best wishes

Stephen <!-/Quote-!><HR SIZE=0></BLOCKQUOTE>
 

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