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I Ching--

  
 
delacroix
17:30 / 31.05.06
I'm new to the I Ching; but I am puzzled:

I drew Hexagram 10, with a changing line in the third place, transforming it to Hexagram 1... why, how jolly! And yet, the interpretation I have says "Misfortune. The man treads on the tail of the tiger, and the tiger bites him."

I asked it a question about a business decision, a "should I do this?" question, and I would expect to interpret it as a good idea, since I drew "Conduct" becomming "Heaven." (There's only one changing line)

So why does it predict misfortune? Odd.

I'm asking here because i think I would understand the I Ching better if I knew...

More importantly than my specific situation, am I misunderstanding the fundamental logic of the I Ching? Any interpretations of how misfortune could lead to the first Hexagram would illuminate, I think, more than the particulars of one oracular system.

'Course, it might be a crap question, best ignored. If so, can anyone tell me why? Or suggest a less riddlesome interpretation of the Yi?
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
18:47 / 31.05.06
I'm new to the I Ching; but I am puzzled:

It's not a colouring book.

I drew Hexagram 10, with a changing line in the third place, transforming it to Hexagram 1... why, how jolly!

Why do you think this is 'jolly'?

And yet, the interpretation I have says "Misfortune. The man treads on the tail of the tiger, and the tiger bites him."

Each pair of neighbouring yao are either 'carrying' or 'mounting'. The second and third are neighbours. If a yang yao mounts a yin yao, then yang is ruling yin and all is auspicious. On the other hand, when a yang yao is carrying a yin yao, the weak is ruling the strong, and misfortune is indicated. In your Gua, the situation is hard because the yin yao is surrounded by yang, although the the firm at the fifth place is in a supreme position, so overall the Gua carries a cautionary meaning. Proceed step by step. You yourself must determine the correct way to act and how to gain your livelihood. You are walking in the tracks of a tiger - a very powerful and dangerous being. Don't do anything to make it bite you.

You should also look at Hexagram 37, which is the Nuclear or Mutual Gua for this hexagram, and contains the key to unlocking it's pertinence to your present situation.

I asked it a question about a business decision, a "should I do this?" question, and I would expect to interpret it as a good idea, since I drew "Conduct" becomming "Heaven." (There's only one changing line)

Your translation of the I Ching sucks if you believe the Relating Gua is what the Primary Figure 'becomes'.

So why does it predict misfortune? Odd.

Have a good think about it. 'You are presuming on inadequate powers. You are not the Great Chief or leader, but are presuming to be one - The Tiger will bite you'. The Oracle is multi-layered, incredibly subtle and requires more than linear thought to get to the heart of. Make some effort.

I'm asking here because i think I would understand the I Ching better if I knew...

Good luck.

More importantly than my specific situation, am I misunderstanding the fundamental logic of the I Ching? Any interpretations of how misfortune could lead to the first Hexagram would illuminate, I think, more than the particulars of one oracular system.

You seem to completely misunderstand the nature of the Relating Gua. You seem to also misunderstand the nature of Qian. I'm sure you wouldn't want me to explain it to you, since that would be lazy, and therefore in direct contradiction to what the oracle seems to be advising you. Tenacity, endurance, don't be dismayed despite the obstacles - ringing any bells?

'Course, it might be a crap question, best ignored. If so, can anyone tell me why? Or suggest a less riddlesome interpretation of the Yi?

"A less riddlesome interpretationo f the Yi"? WTF?

Howsabout a detailed itinerary with dates and times and specific actions you need to take, people to enlist the aid of, phone numbers and some petty cash to get it all moving? Would that do? What do you think this is, 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'?

You've asked the audience, I'm afraid you only have Phone a Friend left before I'm going to have to ask you to come up with your own answers.

Yikes I'm feeling sarcastic today.
 
 
ghadis
21:27 / 31.05.06
Well, i know next to nothing about the I Ching but i thought this...

Your translation of the I Ching sucks if you believe the Relating Gua is what the Primary Figure 'becomes'.


from Whole was pertinet seeing as there is an abundance of pretty crappy I Ching books about and, from what i can gather, only a handful of decent translations.

What translation are you working with Delacroix?
 
 
illmatic
22:20 / 31.05.06
Yikes I'm feeling sarcastic today.

Yes you are. Naughty Wholeshtick. I might add I don't use the same translation as you (which is? Alfred Wang? Steve Karcher? I'm a Richard Wilhelm fan, plain and simple) so am not familar with the parameters you're working within. But it sound a bit complex - if anything in a reading I try and strip down - focusing entirely in on the changing line. Horses for courses, but I think Delacroix might find this approach best to kick off with - and then add complexity later, when ze feels ze's got a basic grasp.

Anyway, reading the above there was one thing that stood out for me like the sorest of thumbs:

and I would expect to interpret it as a good idea

Dude. This is for me, the reading in a nutshell. I cannot tell you the amount of times I have approached the I Ching with the preconception I would get approval for a course of action that I had already decided was best - and then got an answer contrary to my wishes. Don't ask about the runious results in my sex life when I decided to completely ignore oracles many years back. I think in a sense getting answers contrary to your wishes and preconceptions is fundamental to the I Ching and this is why it's so good.If you just want your ideas confirmed, why bother asking for advice?

Anyway, quickly as I want to go to bed, your reading to me suggests that there's a lot of factors that you haven't seen. Stuff you've not taken into account. So be cautious in proceeding. Not "don't proceed" but more "there's a lot you're missing". It suggests to me you're unprepared for what might come about. More tomorrow.
 
 
grant
13:55 / 01.06.06
Well, here's a bit of synchronicity... I was just writing about #10 in my blog.

Note: I'm not nearly as up on these things as your first respondent (I write the blog things not because I know, but because that's how I learn), but yes... context is indeed everything.

"Heaven," BTW (answering yr general question in the summary) isn't automatically auspicious. It's all-yang, all-rising, all-expansive. A sun that never sets, maybe. Not great for things like growing crops or taking a nap (or, more remotely, finding independence from Empire).
 
 
illmatic
14:44 / 01.06.06
Grant: I wish I'd thought of doing that. What a great way to learn the hexagrams. Still, nothings stopping me, I suppose.

To follow what others have said about the reading - in the way I read, I focus almost entirely on the changing line (note: line - singular, there are methods of pulling out a single changing line when you have more than one). I see the hexagram as your basic situation with the changing line providing a powerful "filter" through which to view the hexagrams concerns. Kind of like coloured lenses on a pair of specs. I take the second hexagram as periphal to whatever message I'm getting. Not to the extent that I'd discard it completely but I see it as a "might be" rather than a "will happen". Something lurking in the future, maybe. And as we're dealing with The Book of Changes an indefinte future at that.

Also, as Grant points out Qian isn't universially positive. Without K'un to ground it, it remains "up in the air". I imagine it as like latent lighting, before a storm. Potentially powerful, but still imprecisely defined. So I wouldn't concern yourself too much with this aspect right now.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
16:01 / 01.06.06
Hey gang.

None of that stuff is really from Huang or Karcher, I was just trying to explain why the third yao in Hex #10 is not auspicious...

When I said You seem to also misunderstand the nature of Qian I was pretty much trying to point out what you guys have said above...That much yang is not automatically a great place to be in spite of what cheapy editions of 'pocket I Ching' translations might say.

The relating Gua is not 'the future'...this is very simplistic. It is...well, relating. It describes an aspect of the situation which may develop, which the situation may have developed from, which is pertinent to someone or something which might affect the situation, etc, etc...you know, relating!

The nuclear Gua (inner situation trigram made from yao 2,3,& 4, outer situation from yao 3,4,& 5) is often far more relevant and reveals huge insight into the nature of your enquiry as it relates to the oracle...do not ignore the nuclear Gua, it is fundamental...if you extract it twice (assuming the first time doesn't lead there) (i.e take the nuclear of the nuclear) you will always end up with either QIAN, KUN, JI JI, or WEI JI...i.e Hex #1, #2, #63 or #64...either the beginning or end of the whole oracle, heaven, earth, not yet fulfilled or already fulfilled.

These are the 'Primary Seed Figures', and reveal loads about the Hidden Possibilities of the entire situation.

There are many other Gua which can be extrapolated from a single cast, if I really want to get a thorough overview of the enquiry I can spend literally hours producing a chart not unlike a full Tarot divination.

Not that that's important or entirely useful to a beginner, but be aware that the I Ching is a huge, multi layered, multi dimensional, mind buggeringly profound lifetime of study. Stick at it and it begins to operate throughout your life in really incredible ways. I sometimes get intensely clear visions of particular Hexagrams, and on investigation they prove to be laugh-out-loud pertinent to my life at the time, whether I am considering consulting the oracle or not.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
16:06 / 01.06.06
Also, apologies for the sarc. It's just that no one can really interpret a personal oracle for you in anything but the most broad and defocused fashion...it seems to occur quite a bit in the Temple that people pop up expecting answers from outside themselves that are only truly able to be discovered within...the whole business of divination, so called 'magic'(k!!!11!23!) and so on is really about a lot of intense, personal hard work...not logging on to the internet and emerging 2 hours later as a Grand Ipississississississmuss of Teh Darque Arts.

On the other hand, asking a simple question is fair enough and you don't need me jumping down your throat and handing out lectures. So, sorry 'bout that, delacroix.
 
 
petunia
19:06 / 01.06.06
$chtick -
Where have you learnt all of this?
I ask because I'm very interested in the I Ching, and have practiced a bit with the yarrow and found a few readings to be very handy indeed. But i really know next-to nothing about the whole thing, and would love to know more.

Did you learn this stuff from books or do you have a teacher? Or do you pick it up as you go along?

I'd love some pointers.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
19:24 / 01.06.06
All three...I have a great friend I met through another practice of mine who is just a phenomenal tai chi / ba gua teacher, and who has lots of advice and stacks of texts.

I found this really interesting, reading a book on DNA this week : The number of possible 'words' formed by the A, G, C, T amino acid 'vocabulary' in DNA (which is of course binary in structure, like the I Ching) is...I'm not even going to finish that, you can guess the rest.

Hardly a revelatory paradigm shattering fact, but an interesting correspondence nonetheless. The number of 'meanings' for these 'words' also happens to be 22, which relates (in my foolish brain, anyway) rather interestingly to the old Etz Chiim.

Still, look hard enough and you can see anything in anything, I guess.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
19:40 / 01.06.06
Just to add to that - the more you understand about Chinese culture, about Confucianism, Daoism and indeed Mencius, Mao and all the other crew vying for cultural heights around the time of the explosion of philosophy in China, and the rituals and magic of the Daoists which informed the I Ching prior to its 'Confucianisation' and 'Zhou-isation' the better, I find. Not that I know loads by any stretch at all, I'm no scholar of these things...but it's easily overlooked that the Chinese world view and the Western world view are (or certainly were) radically different in many aspects...and it doesn't hurt to at least try to understand the spirit in which it was intended rather than just overlaying one's own cultural gloss and that's that.

Back to that old chestnut ;-)
 
 
Ticker
19:52 / 01.06.06
I'm an ignorant on the subject, but I'm very fond of this site:

Joel Biroco's YiJing

on which lives this gem:

After considering lines of the Book of Changes,
I show them to Zheng Dongqing:

Clear thought lodges in the Yi,
But in some lines no-one can find it.
If you don't understand a line,
You interpret it in vain;
May as well paint a picture of the wind.

– Qiu Cheng (12th century)
 
 
c0nstant
01:41 / 02.06.06
being new to the i ching myself I find myself getting slightly vexed that thus far I've only really been able to understand what I'm being told in retrospect.

At the moment I'm assuming that this will change as I get better aquainted with the Oracle, have people better practised found this to be true?
 
 
illmatic
08:18 / 02.06.06
I tend to find it pretty precise and usually very "of the moment". Sometimes it takes me a day or two to get my head around a reading - this is usally when I'm operating under a lot of preconceptions as I mentioned upthread. My ability to understand it's language has defintely improved over the years.

And props to Wholesthtick for this:

it seems to occur quite a bit in the Temple that people pop up expecting answers from outside themselves that are only truly able to be discovered within

I lurk sometimes on a I Ching forum and you get a lot of people turning up asking questions about their divinations - usally, surprise, surprise, when the answers don't fit their preconceptions. The best way round this - I find - is just to "sit" with the answer for a couple of days, keep on thinking about it, and how it fits your life. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear.... "

I also totally agree the I Ching can become an engrossing lifetimes study. I don't think you need to do this to divine successful, it's not a duty to burden yourself with but for me, a degree of fascination has emerged out of my readings of the book. If you want to go down this road, or just get a sense of the books depths, I thoroughly recommend Steve Marshall#s The Mandate of Heaven
 
  
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