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Ey up mate, hope you're enjoying your travels.
Yes, it defintely does sound like the I Ching, or I Ching related. It doesn't surprise me at all that the Buddhists there have a related method of divination. (There are several different systems in China that haven't made it to the West). The two most well known methods of consulting the I Ching are the casting of coins and yarrow stalks - sounds rather like the bamboo sticks you were talking of. The former method is the most popular here, as it's simplier. With regards to the latter, you'd cast select sticks from a bundle of 50 and subject them to a series of rules until you get the lines of your hexagram. Sounds like what you've got there is an abbreviated version of this process. The number 78 puzzled me a bit as there's only 64 hexagrams (8x8) but who knows...?
You can find a full text of Richard Wilhelm's I Ching (the original and still the best) here
Water over Fire gives us Heaxagram 63, After Completion. (Quite striking - completion of travel, perhaps. The I Ching's admonitions to attend to details in such a sitution make sense to me here anyway).
Wilhelm's translation:
THE JUDGMENT
AFTER COMPLETION. Success in small matters.
Perseverance furthers.
At the beginning good fortune.
At the end disorder.
The transition from the old to the new time is already accomplished. In principle, everything stands systematized, and it si only in regard to details that success is still to be achieved. In respect to this, however, we must be careful to maintain the right attitude. Everything proceeds as if of its own
accord, and this can all too easily tempt us to relax and let thing take their course without troubling over details. Such indifference is the root of all evil.
Symptoms of decay are bound to be the result. Here we have the rule indicating the usual course of history. But this rule is not an inescapable law. He who understands it is in position to avoid its effects by dint of unremitting
perseverance and caution.
THE IMAGE
Water over fire: the image of the condition
In AFTER COMPLETION.
Thus the superior man
Takes thought of misfortune
And arms himself against it in advance.
When water in a kettle hangs over fire, the two elements stand in relation and thus generate energy (cf. the production of steam). But the resulting tension demands caution. If the water boils over, the fire is extinguished an its energy is lost. If the heat is too great, the water evaporates into the air. These elements here brought in to relation and thus generating energy are by nature hostile to each other. Only the most extreme caution can prevent
damage. In life too there are junctures when all forces are in balance and work in harmony, so that everything seems to be in the best of order. In such times only the sage recognizes the moments that bode danger and knows how
to banish it by means of timely precautions.
They aren't using the method Wilhelm describes as they are gave you a single hexagram rather than making use of the process by which one hexagram (situation) changes into another. This process brings the "changing lines" into play which I always find to be the most interesting aspect of a divination. Hope this helps. If the text appended above confuses you, see it as describling the situation concerned rather than a specic answer to a question. I tend not to ask yes/no queries - I rather look at the consequences of going ahead, then divine again for not going ahead. Would have a go at the rest of your question but I have work to do. Curses.
BTW mate, having met you, I'd say you were eminently suitable to work as a counseller. If you want to look me up for a divination when you get back, drop me a PM sometime. I would do it over the net for you, but I prefer face to face, unless the situation is really dire.
Cheers |
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