Yi lng

translated by

Wu Jing-Nuan
Asian Spirituality, Taoist Studies Series
The Taoist Center • Washington, D.C.

e 1991 byWuJing-Nuan All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-9673272-0-2

Camera ready copy prepared by the author

Acid-free, ph-balanced paper is used in this publication

DEDICATION
To my ancestors my parents my children and the Mantis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many friends andassociates have helped define the character of this book. I thank them all. The list is long, and in my heart. For twenty years the manuscript lay unwieldly and incomplete. The final draft began three years ago with the encouragement and strict but poetic editing of my assistant, Beth McGrath. I wish to express my gra titude to Kate Burton forher graphics, editing' and support. And my thanks to Dr. Long Zhixian for his calligraphy. This book is the result. In addition, I thank Marcia Warrant for her unstinting support, and Dr. Michael Saso for his guidance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR THE SECOND EDITION

My thanks to Elizabeth McGrath, now Elizabeth Oness, who has provided guidance and help on the second edition, to Theresa Welling for her patience and for designing the format, Xiaodong Cai for editing the Chinese i'aracters, and all the others on my staff who have contributed

P~eface to the Second 6dition of the )!i 3i ne

In Daoist belief, second may be more powerful than first. I hope that this, my second edition of the Yi Iing, will substantiate this belief. My first edition was intended to be a primer of language and symbols: the trigrams, hexagrams, and pictographs, which create the oracular poetry of the Yt Jing. In spite of my discomfort with the Confucian instructional and moral cast of the usual Appendices and Commentaries, I also interpreted the Yt Jing as a book of instruction. But the question arises-whom do you instruct? This contemporary world is very different from the world of King Wen and the Duke of Chou, the authors of the Yt Jing. The symbols and titles of feudalism have been supplanted by the democratic process. Transportation and communication are made easy by machine technology. These transformations present a sea change in the outer environs of men and women, but the greater change in the use of the Yt Jing may be in the increasing number of literate people in the world. It is 'this far-reaching inner change that I wish to address. The core of the Yt Jing is in the individual being. The scholarship, learned commentaries and translations are the costumes which clothe something mysterious that speaks to each individual in his or her tongue. In the past, divination was performed for emperors and kings. The Yt Jing was employed as the oracular key. In our world, the paradigm is the same, but the king is within. Thus, all the symbols and language of the Yt Jing remain intact, yet they shift and move to an individual dimension-to an inner hidden time and world whose access leads to the future knowing that is the Yt Jing's heart. The Yt Jing is the key, but entry into this spirit dimension is through extraordinary doors. These openings, guarded by ritual, are impenetrable to ordinary mindsets, which are typically locked into practical space-time and linear causality. Seeming coincidences reflect a momentary glimpse of these inner realms. Coincidences are conjunctions in the ongoing wave patterns of life, with feedback loops that tie all levels of beingcelestial, terrestrial, human, cellular, and atomic-as they move within the Dao.

The set of sixty-four may be one of these eye-opening coincidences. Sixty-four is the number of the )'i ling hexagrams. Sixtyfour is also the number of the codon triplets in our genetic code. A codon is essentially a code which carries individual instructions for future action. It has been customary to throw coins when consulting the )'i Jing. Is there a cast of coins in the codon to meet future needs of our individual genome?' The immediacy of the )'i Jing is that it changes to meet the external conditions of civilization. Words and images evolve to address current fashions. On another level, the environmental, social and human conditions to be found within its pages are images found in the historical genome of the human self. Thus we know about sacrifice, ritual, marriage, lords, great figures and common people, because of our continuity with our ancestors and our children to be. This affords an inner view of the trigrams where they may be used according to the therapeutics and theory ofTraditional Chinese Medicine. In SectionTwo,Chapter Twoof the Great Commentary we find: ,\~ In ancient times, when Bao Xi (the Holder of Sacrifices) ruled all under heaven, he looked up and contemplated the images in the sky, he looked down and contemplated the patterns on earth, he contemplated the markings of birds and beasts and the appropriateness of the soil, from near at hand in his body and at a distance for things in general. From this he invented the eight trigrams in order to communicate with the virtues of the bright spirits and in order to classify the nature of the myriad things. Tothe three lines of the trigrams are attributed:

:X

:1&

Heaven Man Earth

J:.

aft

"'F

Top Middle Bottom

In Chinese medical theory the three lines equal:

tt

Shen Jing Qi2

Spirit Essence Qi energy

" ~

1. Codon. the language of DNA or messenger RNA-Is based on the sequence of three nedeotides which represents the Interacbon for Incorporation of a specific ammo aad mto a growmg (protem) polypeptide chain Of the SIxty-four eodons, slxty-one encode amino aads Three. called stop eodons, signal the termination of translation. 2 Qt In contemporary wntlng is WIthout Its histoncal center of ml" a gram of rice. or seed This I see as a commentary on today's world
N

ii

The inner energies form the triad. Ordinary medical techniques treat the energy and body fluids of qi and jing, but Chinese medicine holds that the superior doctor treats the spirit, shen. In Traditional Chinese Medicine there is a saying: nThe great doctor treats illness before it arises." The best medicine is a form of divination. Insight, or foresight, into shen, jing and qi of life may be one of the gifts to be bestowed by the contemporary Yt ling to both doctor and patient. To divine opens future space-time for knowing. What is time? In Chinese history, the Emperor ruled the terrestrial regions of space. He also ruled the celestial movements of time. He ruled the country by control of the army and government. He ruled time by control of the calendar. Only the Emperor could publish and issue an nOfficial Calendar and Almanac." Throughout history, time has been calculated by star patterns, solar and lunar movements, but also by human calculations based on numbers and imperial whims. Regardless of who occupies the throne, what are these numbers that normally govern our lives? Days, months and years clock our human movements. We believe today that we live in a small corner of a galaxy amidst uncountable galaxies in a vast universe. We talk about light-years and electrons and positrons and neutrons with only the notion of a photon to give us some vision of this immense atomic world. Hopefully, it is true. But the vast clockworks of the universe are only real if there is an observer-a principle that holds true in the physics of quantum mechanics. You are that observer. What you observe is guided by senses, beliefs, and imagination. What I propose is that the wondrous outside world of supernovae, black holes, twin galaxies, neutrinos and quarks are expressions of the Yang that must be mirrored by an equally wondrous inner world of Yin. But whether inside or outside, to perceive is to measure. And, to describe what we perceive in communication, we must have standard rulers and numbers, clocks that measure the day, week, month and year. What are the rulers that measure the progression of life? The sun is the biggest. Darkness and light, yin and yang, are the everpresent, ever-changing duality of the visible. Sundials, whether stick or stone or human shadow, have been used worldwide. The full moon and its repeating thirty-day cycle are known by women and men. The annual cycle of the solar year gives us the names and measure of the seasons as well as the star patterns that give a measure of

iii

the earth and sun's movement through the heavens. These are the rulers known to all. Mankind in its attempt to understand and control has toyed with these measures. Day and month are standard. Years are not. Intercalculary days and months have been devised to take into account the three hundred sixty-five and one-quarter days of the solar year. This in tum has raised the mathematical question of remainders, while science and philosophy must then deal with fractions and eccentricity. To create a better fit between the universal calendar of stars, sun and moon, man created time periods of his own. The second, the minute, the hour, and the week are common now, but other units were used in the past. In the old Chinese calendar, there were twenty-four fifteen day units called the jie qi 'it ~ or energy nodes. This annual cycle of three hundred and sixty days represents the calendar of the spirits of heaven and earth. There are parallels between energy nodes, extraordinary doors, and acupuncture points or dragon holes. All of these are nodes or openings like wells where there is a confluence of qi. These places represent confluences of energy at defined points in space and time, and they are a way of measuring times and places most auspicious for spiritual opening. They also show that the rhythms and cycles of the universe are not exact fits. This manifests as dissimilar time and space zones, which become nothing more and nothing less than a multiplex of dimensions. The universe is large. Heaven, man and earth all belong to the universe of the Dao, but they exist in their own dimension while sharing the entirety. There is a celestial time, a human time, and an earthly time. This is the first lesson of the trigram. I believe this view is supported by a new look at the sexagenary cycle of the Ten Celestial Stems and the 'Iwelve Earthly Branches. Normally we focus on the rotating interlock between stems and branches as they progress to complete a round of sixty. To identify this cycle with simply sixty years we miss the obvious. There is a hidden element to this rotation of heaven and earth. It is the spirit of man. The twelve earthly branches are associated with symbolic animals, signs of the zodiac, compass directions, and twelve onehundred twenty minute hours in the day. The ten celestial stems have individual astrological names, but a major refinement occurs when they are paired into couplets. Then associations are made to the Wu Xing (five actions) and the five closest planets.

iv

My vision is that both earthly branches and heavenly stems, on a hidden level, relate to the months. Twelve is the number of months in an earthly year. Ten is the number of months in a heavenly year.
The Twelve Branches Or Horary Characters
Branches IT
2lJ.

31(

49P

66
7lf

sJ.i

8* 9$
1l.6t
12~ 10M

Symbolical Animals Rat. If: Ox. tA! Tiger. ~Hare. )eDragon. ie Snake. .!b Horse. ~ Sheep. Mit Monkey. ~Cock.

m.

-}tOog.

• Boar.

Zodiacal Signs Aries. Taurus. Gemini. Cancer. Leo. Virgo Libra. Scorpio Sagittarius Capricomus. Aquarius. Pisces.

Conuponding I I-lAM. 1-3

Hours

3-S S-7 7-9

9-11 lI-IPM 1-3

3-S S-7 7-9

9-11

Names and Affinities of The Ten Celestial Stems

Stems.
1

Jft

Dual Combination
1jl2:,

Corresponding Elements

Planets

22:,

*
Jk

*m Jupiter.
Jkm.
Mars

3i'f

4T
sIt
6B
7/J¢

NT
DtS

±
~

±.Il Saturn

8*
9:E
IO~

~*
:E~

•
v

~il Venus.

Jj(

;j(,M Mercury.

By Chinese custom, a child at birth is considered one year old. Gestation was thought to be ten months. This, I propose, is the duration of the celestial year. Twelveearthly months Ten celestial months
= one calendar year

This secret teaching delineates a pre-partum hidden universe and a post-partum open universe. Time and space in the womb are compressed. In this state, we are in the process of being. It is the model for transformation in the mating of yin and yang. It is the hidden present which gives birth to the future. The metaphor is simple. This time and space is that of Celestial being. Clocks, in this inner sanctum, run on spirit time. This is the universe which is the realm of the sage and the diviner, a time when the double helix begins to play. Lao Zi refers to this when he says: "He who is filled with virtue is like a newborn child." (Ch.55) Where and what are the doors to this celestial dimension? In my first introduction I speculated about cracks and gaps in the fabric of normal space-time. I also mentioned the qi xue ";:1(, the energy holes used in acupuncture on the human body. In addition to the major energy holes, which are called acupuncture points, there can be additional or surplus qi holes. The multiple meanings of the word "qi" are very important here. Qi. meaning=strange" and qi ";: meaning "energy" are different words in Chinese, but they have the same romanization: qi. The meaning of this "strange" qi includes two levels that are both important to us. The first is this qi ideogram. ' which means #strange, wonderful, rare, extraordinary in nature." Its second meaning concerns a numerical value; it means "odd, single, surplus, orphan." The first qi is descriptive. We should look for something wonderful, beyond the ordinary. The second meaning gives clues about timing; qi ri • a means the odd days of the month, which by extension involves a mathematical meaning: it may point to a remainder. I see it embodied in the leap year, an oddity which does not fit neatly into the calendar year. As acupuncture points, qi xue were not named. Why? They are of a transitory nature with no fixed abode. They come and go. They manifest with trauma. A punch to any place on the body produces this odd extra energy hole which is outside the normal count. In Daoist practice there are secret practices to calculate and to enter the qi men ,the "wondrous door" to the dun jia it', the "hidden time." Moreover, dun jia also means "simultaneous time." Hidden and yet simultaneous. Perhaps this is an ancient

.7C

.n

vi

acknowledgement of relative simultaneity which fits well with modem physics. "Wondrous" appears again in san qi ling The Three Wondrous Spirits. The first spirit is assigned to the sun, the second to the moon, the third to the stars. The star spirit is the most powerful. In their elaborate calculations to find the Wondrous Door, the twelve earthly branches and the ten celestial stems and their locked rotation give an answer. The shamans sought times of hiatus, yin times of non-action, times of mother and gestation. These unique openings to other dimensions manifest both in physical space and in time. Spatially, they occur naturally on the earth's surface at intersections of qi energy lines to create nodes of power. Juxtaposition of an unusual moment of time opens the Wondrous Door. At least two ways are available to pinpoint this physical space: 1. They may be found by .MJj( feng-shui, the wind and water of geomaney to locate the dragon openings of the earth. Major physical points are well known: Mt. Tai and other sacred mountains of China, the Pyramids and Stonehenge. Over time, these sites have become famous as places where miracles and wonders happen, and many have been endowed with great spiritual significance. 2. A Wondrous Door may also be built. Churches, altars, shrines and temples are human attempts to make physical these nodes of energy. But the physical dimension is only the first level of three. The second level is timing. There has been a rhythm to time, which has been formalized and agreed upon in certain times such as the Sabbath, Halloween, and the days of jie qi energy nodes. These are times when communication with other worlds is more possible. The third dimension is ritual. Whether dance, or song, whether incense or prayer, whether by water or by fire, ritual, like the Yi ling, turns the lock of the Wondrous Door. The architecture of a Wondrous Door can follow the plans of a Daoist altar.

::::.1It,

vii

The sacred area requires three domains The outer altar The middle altar The inner altar The altar for individual or small group use may be drawn and marked as transient, without permanent structure, but should be favorably sited according to Feng Shui principles. The outer altar is divided into twenty-four units representing the twenty-four energy nodes. The nodes are like the joints on a stalk of bamboo. The nodes represent a strong interface and conjunction of heaven and earth energies. Beyond the outer altar, lamps or candles representing the various star constellations are lit. If matches are used, three should be lit serially to follow the Daoist adage: . The Dao gave birth to one. One gave birth to two. Two gave birth to three Three gave birth to the ten thousand things. After this all lamps can be lit. I suggest that consulting the Yi ling be done in the middle altar. In the inner altar, it is believed qi condenses. Those persons given the charge to consult the oracle should enter through the Door of Earth. Yarrow or coins are manipulated, and the response noted. Then one individual who has been chosen beforehand, and who is in the middle altar, enters the inner altar to read the text.

~-----------i'
IIIII
== -viii

south

III

Such an altar may be physical space drawn with lines on the floor or ground, or mental space with an altar image drawn by the imagination. The ritual is the same: the three-fold passage into the inner altar, where there may be the Wondrous Door. What is beyond the Door? Chinese myth abounds with lands of the dun jia, the hidden, yet simultaneous time. These are magical places, hidden from normal sight,. in an alternative time and space where time is often compressed. The traveler journeys to a primeval forest and mountain. He stays in a peaceful, spirit-like village for three months, yet when he returns home, his neighbors have aged many years. These Eden-like worlds occur over and over in myth. The symbols of forest and mountain are a return to innocence. These are the spiritual spaces to which Lao Zi was journeying. The Dao De ling was written in lieu of a ticket for the border crossing from China proper to the forests primeval in the Western mountains. Lao Zi's very name is a metaphor for this transfer and transformation. Lao, the ancient and Zi, the infant. Return to gestation and babyhood, then you can, reenter the inner spiritual sanctum. How can this journey be made in the roads and byways of the body and mind? What map is there to the Wondrous Door in human beings? The journey proceeds simultaneously on three levels. Again, the trigram is the marker. The trigram represents the three levels to be held in the heart and mind: Heaven Man Earth Shen Jing
Qi

Spirit Essence Energy

The maps are the Luo Shu, the Luo River Writing, and the He Tu, the Yellow River Map, which we will come to shortly. The energy dynamics of qi ~have been discussed by many contemporary writers. The many opinions may be reconciled if we consider the idea that a waveform is qi's signature, then limitless names and appearances are possible. Jing and shen were beautifully discussed in the Bai Hu Tong De Lun, the Comprehensive Discussions in the White Tiger Hall circa
BOA.D.

ix

ling, essence, is connected with the idea of quietness. It is the qi of emission and generation under the Major Yin. It corresponds to the transforming power of water, which leads to pregnancy and life. Shen, spirit, is connected to the idea of huang hu, blurred confusion. It is the qi under the Major Yang. In general it may be called the origin of changes and transformations in all the parts of the body. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, therapeutic methodsherbs, acupuncture, moxibustion, diet and massage-all try to balance qi energy, its harmonics and resonances as well as the caloric variations of the jing essence of body fluids. But it is the balance of the qi and jing energy, plus the third, shen, spirit, which leads us to follow the Royal Way when the energies of earth, man and heaven flow in harmony. The RoyalWay is a part of the Celestial Mandates given to Yu the Great, and is recorded in the Classic of History in the chapter liThe Great Plans and Nine Divisions."The following is an excerpt. I have used only the chapter headings and have edited and omitted that which does not seem relevant to the questions at hand. In the thirteenth year the King asked the Count of li3, "Heaven's yin has bestowed its constitution to mankind and mutual hannony to their abiding. I do not know how proper virtues in relationship should be ordered." The Count of Ii replied, I have heard of old that Gun (the father 0fYu) dammed up the inundating waters and thereby threw into disorder the arrangement of the Five Actions (Wu Xing). God was thus aroused to anger and did not give him the Great Plan and Nine Divisions. Gun was imprisoned until his death. Yu arose to continue this work. To him Heaven granted the Great Plan with its Nine Divisions."
1/

The Great Plan and Its Nine Divisions 1. The Wu Xing, Five Actions: Water, Fire, Wood, Metal, Earth (notice a variant arrangement from the usual.) 2. The Five Affairs: Demeanor, Speech, Seeing, Hearing and Thinking.
3 See hexagram #36.

3. The Eight Objects of Government: Food, Commodities, Sacrifices, Minister of Works, Minister of Instruction, Minister of Crime, Hospitality, the Army. 4. The Five Arrangements: the year, the month, the day, the stars and planets and signs of the zodiac, the calendar's calculus. 5. Of Royal Perfection: on the duHes of the Emperor. 6. The Three Virtues: Correctness and being straightforward, Strong government, Mild government. 7. The Examination of Doubts: Having chosen and appointed officers to divine by tortoise and by yarrow, they can be commanded to perform divinaHons which speak of rain, clearing up, covering up, posting and communications. This will be spoken by the upper and lower trigrams. Total seven: five by the tortoise, two by yarrow to correct mistakes. From the time of appointment of these offices, to perform divinaHon with tortoise and yarrow, three men are to obtain and interpret' the indicaHons and symbols, and the words of two men (the majority) are to befollowed. If you have doubts about a great matter, consult your own heart, consult with your nobles and officers, consult with the masses of people, consult the tortoise and yarrow. If you, the tortoise, the yarrow, nobles and officers and the common people all agreed to a course, this is called a great concord, and the result will be the well-being of your person and good fortune to your descendants. If you, the tortoise, and the yarrow all agree, while the nobles and common people oppose, there is good fortune. If the nobles and officers, the tortoise and the yarrow all agree while you and the common people oppose, there is good fortune. If the common people, the tortoise and the yarrow all agree, while you and the officers oppose, there is good fortune. If you and the tortoise agree while the yarrow, the nobles and offices and common people oppose, internal affairs will have good fortune while external affairs will have misfortune. When the tortoise and yarrow are both opposed to the views of men, stillness brings good fortune while the use of action will bring misfortune.

xi

8. The Various Verifications: They are called: Rain, Sunshine, Heat, Cold, Wind in timeliness. When the five come and complete each other in proper order, the various plants will be abundant and luxuriant. Should anyone be excessively abundant or deficient, there will be misfortune. (The essay continues to match human attributes and weather conditions and dictates the duties of being king, nobles, and lesser officers to monitor year, month, and day to propitiate good government and good harvest.) The common people are like the stars. Some stars love the wind, some stars love the rain. 9. The Five Happinesses: The first is long life, the second is riches, the third is good health and serenity, the fourth is that which is good virtue, the fifth is a suitable fate at the end of life. As to the six extremes, the first is misfortune: the shortening of life, the second is sickness, the third is sorrow, the fourth is poverty, the fifth is wickedness, the sixth is weakness." These heaven-given instructions are significant for many reasons. First, they are the earliest literal reference to the Wu Xing (the Five Actions or Elements). They give insight to the rituals of royal divination and indicate that the voice of the tortoise and the voice of the yarrow plant are included in a consortium that included the counsel of the king, nobles and officers, and the common people. The oracle of the tortoise or of yarrow, which in this format includes the Yi ling, is not to be followed blindly, but to be employed in conjunction with wise and appropriate counsel. For the individual, the mind and heart (in Chinese they are one and the same) is king. Your senses and major organs are your nobles and ministers. Your whole body equals the mass of people. In addition, this same pattern holds SOcially with the self. Consulting the Yi ling also takes into account the opinion of persons whom you value. Who was Yu to deserve The Great Plan that held Heaven's Mandates? Gun, Yu'sfather, built dikes and dams in an attempt to control the great floods-to no avail. Yu took another direction. Instead of thwarting the massive power of inundating water, he carved out and dug channels and waterways to carry and to direct the flow of water. Myth has Yuwalking the nine regions of China to personally engineer these waterways.

xii

This grand tour is symbolized in the Dance ofYu, and even today is danced by Daoist masters in the rituals which lead to the hidden time. The dance is strange, forYu was a hemiplegic. It is a limping hop with the good right leg, the unused left leg is dragged behind. Upon examination of the outline of the Dance ofYu, it is none other than the Luo Shu, the Luo River Writing which appeared on a giant tortoise in the time of Yu. Indeed, this is the same diagram which contributes to the Yi ling's origins, and it is the base for the Great Plan and the Nine Divisions.

The sequence of steps in the Dance of Yu

9

The Luo Shu: The Luo River Writing

+000000000,

o
o o

o
000

-:)

o o

The normal progression of time in the Dance ofYu is to flow with the current. But Yu's need was to influence the future-not to go with the current, but to make the floods recede, thus he counts backwards. This is supported by the Yi ling in Chapter Three of the Shuo Gua, The Discussion of the Trigrams. The numbering of the past is flowing with the current. The knowledge of the future is countercurrent. This causes the Yi to count backwards.
xlil

The first outline of the Dance ofYu flows in normal time, in sequence from one to nine. In Daoist ritual, at the point of entering the Central Altar, which I propose to be the inner self, the ninth, eighth and seventh steps are danced backwards. Metaphorically,Yu is dancing the waters backwards so they will recede. The Luo Shu diagram speaks about the geometry of heaven and earth, the numbering of action; it indicates the measurement of movement by vector and sequence, by angle and position. An individual who takes certain extraordinary steps can harmonize the interaction of heaven and earth to influence the future. The lessons are in these diagrams. For earth there is the wellfield system.

•
In ancient times each perimeter field was farmed by an individual family. The field in the middle was farmed for the common good. The dot symbolizes the well which was used by all, and is the dragon hole penetrating the earth.
4 9 2

Five Arrangements Eight Objects of Government Use of the Verifications

8 3

Use of Five Happinesses Use of Six Extremes 5 Royal Perfection

1

Five Affairs
7

Examination of Doubts
6

Five Elements Actions

Cultivation of Three Virtues

The Nine Divisions follow this same grid for man as he resonated to heaven and earth.
xiv

The trigrams are also derived from this same Luo Shu template. These geometrical diagrams form the basis of Chinese philosophy and thought. The trigrams are holistic in nature, with emphasis on dynamic patterns of action; they insist that reality moves on many levels and fronts simultaneously. Interaction is a given. The trigrams are the basis of the Yi Jing. Hou tian Jin tian Xian tian later heaven present former heaven tomorrow today yesterday

The change of trigram positions in Xian tian (Fu Xi's diagram) and Hou tian (King Wen's diagram) indicates a cosmological change in star patterns and thus a shift in perceived reality. This can occur on an everyday level if we reduce the above to the vernacular. Former heaven is yesterday. Later heaven is tomorrow. The gap is Jin tian: present heaven or today. This unvoiced present is the Yi,the changeable, when all is possible. In abbreviated terms: today, the present, is the dun jia, the hidden time. As such, it manifests as Wu Wei, the void of Lao Zi; today is the pregnant synapse between yesterday and tomorrow. This may be the greatest lesson hidden in the motion of the Dao and in the dynamics of the Yi Jing. The center is of special interest in the Great Plan, the fifth division: On Royal Perfection. The King, being established as the highest point of excellence, concentrates in himself the five happinesses and then diffuses them and gives them to his people. On their part, the people resting in this perfection will help the preservation of it. In the individual body, the mind-heart is the king, the organs are the nobles and officers, the rest of the body is the multitude of people. In this metaphor, the same mandates will apply on state and personal levels. Tocomprehend these quantum jumps into other dimensions, I draw upon the Inner Chapters of Chuang Zi.
In the dark northern ocean there is afish called Kun, thou-

sands of kilometers in size. It changes into a bird called Peng whose back is many thousand kilometers in size. When it rises and flies, its wings are like clouds hanging in the sky. When due to this bird the sea chums, it is moving to the dark Southern ocean (The Celestial Lake).
In Qi Xie's record of wonders it says, "When Peng is head-

ing to the dark Southern Ocean, it splashes along water for

xv

three thousand kilometers. It kneads a tornado and wings its way up to ninety thousand kilometers. It flies for six months then rests. Heat shimmers in the air like galloping horses, dust flows like the morning mist and living creatures are blown about in the sky. The sky is blue. Is that really so? Or is it blue because it stretches to infinity? When Peng looks down, it will also look blue. If water is not sufficiently deep it cannot support a large boat. Pour a cup of water into a hollow in the ground and a mustard seed can float there like a little ship. Place the cup in it and it will not move because the water is shallow and the boat is large. In the same way, if the wind is not sufficient, it cannot support such great wings. Only at a height of ninety thousand kilometers is there enough wind to support Pengo Then he mounts the wind and with the blue sky at his back and nothing in his way, he heads south. A cicada and a young dove laugh at this story saying, "When we try hard we can reach the trees, but sometimes we fall short and drop on the ground. How is it possible to rise to ninety thousand kilometers before heading south?"

- Chuang Zi, Chapter 2 The cicada and the young dove represent the small men in the Yi Jing. Bound by physical constraint their imagination cannot take off and soar beyond the norm. Touse the Yi Jing one must get to where everything is blue. The inner altar is reached. Time and space have been broached. What do you find? Emptiness. The act of emptying equals freedom. It allows one to center in the Dao.
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub It is the emptiness that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel It is the emptiness that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room It is the emptiness which makes it useful. Therefore profit from what is there By using what is not.

- Lao Zi Chapter 11

xvl

Where there is no more separation between objective and subjective, it is called the pivot of Dao. At the pivot in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things. Right is infinite. Wrong is infinite. Therefore it is said Behold the light beyond right and wrong. - Chuang Zi Chapter 2 The light beyond right and wrong illumines the images read from the Yt Jing; by reaching the inner altar you become the pivot of the Dao, you can see and become the infinite blue.

xvii

Table

of CoV\teV\ts
1 3

Preface to the Yi ling Translator's Notes The Yi ling: Myth & History Introduction The Yi ling: The Hexagrams The Great Appendix Great Commentary: Section One Great Commentary: Section Two Shuo Gua: Discussion of the Trigrams Index of the Hexagrams Index

5 12

50
219 263 273 282 291 293

Upper Trigram Lower Trigram

- - - - - - - - -- -- - - - - - - -- - - --- - - -- - - - - - - -- Qian Zhen Kan Gen Kun Sun Li Dui

---

-Zhcn Kan

Qian

1 25

34

5 3

26 27

11

9 42

14 21

43 17

----Gen Kun Sun

51

24

40

29

59

64

47

33

62

39

52

15

53

56

31

---

--Li

12

16 32

23

2 46

20

35

45 28

44

48

18

57

50

13

55

63

22

36

37

30

49

Dui --

10

54

60

41

19

61

38

58

To use this chart, find the lower and upper trigrams by tlirotoing the Coin Oracle or sorting the Yarrow Stalks. Then locate the number of the Yi ling hexagram listed above. Turn to the hexagram numberin the book, as found in Wu [ing-Nuan's Yi Jing translation and commentary.found on pages 50-218, and the Great Appendix on pages 219-262. The Great Commentary is included.for reference, on pages 263-289. An index of hexagrams is on pages 291-292.

P~eface to the Yi 3i V\9

When I first began my study of Chinese medicine, one of my instructors told me that to be an Yi, a Chinese Doctor, one must understand the Yi of the Yi ling. At first, this idea seemed absurd. How could a text that supposedly dealt with fortune telling, written 3000years ago, have anything to do with the practicalities of medicine? I was already immersed in reading and translating a medical text, Huang Di Nei ling (The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic), parts of which have an ascribed history even more ancient than the Yi ling. But I considered this instruction to understand the Yiof the Yiling and thought, "why not?" This decision has ruled my life ever since. Etymologically, I traced the meanings of the Chinese characters to the language of ancient China, to the time when the Yiling was written. I lived, albeit intellectually, in the era of King Wen, the Duke of Zhou, and in the legends of the first Emperors of China: Fu Xi, Shen Nong and Huang Di. I worked on the texts every day. I dreamt about the symbols. Visions and instructions came to me from everything I did and read. As I studied, I was led to the ancient literature on divination and healing from both the East and West. I finished my etymological study of the texts a dozen years ago. Throughout this time, I lectured, gave seminars, and offered private consultations on the Yi ling, but my main occupation was practicing Chinese medicine. I have come to believe that, yes, in order to be an Yi, you must understand the Yi ling. After years of doctoring people and thinking about the Yi, the fruit has ripened and it seems time to present this new translation. I was first introduced to the Yi ling thirty-two years ago. As a student at Hong Kong University, I had the good fortune to attend lectures by Professor Dong Zuo-bin. He gave us a vision of Shang and Zhou times through the description and interpretation of pictographs from those periods found on bronze sacrificial vessels and on oracle bones. The oracle bones were libraries of tortoise shells and animal scapulae which had been inscribed with questions and answers to divinatory consultations. It was interesting, but very remote to the flesh and blood of a young man in his twenties, and I promptly forgot most of the lectures. When I seriously began to study the Yi ling fifteen years later, I realized that the pivotal questions of the meaning of the pictographs of the Shang and Zhou periods rested squarely on the scholarship of men like Professor Dong. It is interesting to note that on the title page of the
1

Wilhelm/Baynes version of the Yi ling is calligraphy by Dong Zuo-bin. The two most widely accepted English translations of the Yi ling are by James Legge and Wilhelm/Baynes. Their scholarship is indisputable, but both translations leave me unsatisfied. Legge's translation, which he professes doing without his Chinese translation team, is a great historic document. But the concept of divination was too strange to Victorian academic fashion, and Ibelieve his translation suffers from this lack of belief. Wilhelm/Baynes' Yi ling has profound insights, but it is enormously verbose, and difficult to use as a divinatory text. The translation and accompanying essays have a strong neo-Confucian cast. This imposes a moral sensibility which may not have been intended in the original text, according to my study of the language of the time, and may be too restrictive for the Yi ling. Translations ofkey words like zhen ~ lito divine," which Wilhelm translates as "perseverance," I find unacceptable. The simplicity of a Daoist translation with a ground of shamanistic practice, and the concomitant complex levels of meanings, has been my goal. Oracles and prophecy were real and alive in the ancient world. Great men walked the earth, dragons leapt and flew; men, plants and animals possessed a more visible magic than we commonly acknowledge today. Like poetry, single words and simple phrases had the power to conjure up both personal visions and universal world views. My objective is to bring the poetry of the text to an alphabetic reality. The visual imagery of the Chinese pictographs is supplied. The English translation is positioned, whenever possible, directly beneath the Chinese character. This copies the format of poetry translations, and the effect is calculated. The poetics of the YiJing are the core of its being. For the linear figures of trigrams and hexagrams, the part of the text which is beyond words, I have included personal deductions and speculations. I have illustrated these ideas with characters and pictures as well as words. My hope is to offer a rendition as close to the original as possible, within the confines of contemporary and personal thought. The original Yi Jing is, I believe, an oracle. It is a moving picture show, which sings, which shows the magic and harmonics of a world that is constant! y changing, and of change itself.

T J-AatlslatoJ-A' s Notes
The rendering of a literary work into another language is full of pitfalls. Not only meaning, but rhythm, syntax and sound must be juggled. Translations from Chinese have these problems and more. The Chinese written character, the ideogram, is a picture; it is notation distilled from direct experience. There is no alphabet, just pictures and combinations of pictures. InChinese, the eye is more important than the ear. The cultural differences engendered by the use of such disparate language forms as ideograms and alphabets is vast, so it is important to look at this picture writing as another interpretation of the world. The ideogram for the sun, ri EJ , is easily visualized, as is the character for the moon, yue Fl . The exciting aspect is that 8 is the sun whether it is called ri, nip, sol, or any other vocal name. Thus, any sound can be attached to the picture, but the meaning remains constant - it is a picture of the sun. People in different parts of China speak different dialects, so they may call the sun by various sounds, but the picture stays the same. The Japanese use the same pictures, the same ideograms, with different pronunciations. In fantasy, we could use Chinese writing and affix English sounds or Russian sounds and still understand the symbol El Complexities arise when simple pictures are combined. The sun and the moon together create ming, which means ''bright, clear, intelligent, light, to understand, to clean, to illustrate." The picture of a tree, mu ..if'. , means II a tree," but it also stands for wood. When it is doubled it becomes lin, "a forest, a grove, trees," and by extension "a collection." It is these extended meanings which obscure the original picture. The three pictures above are key ideograms in the Chinese language. As such, they are called radicals. Since the reform of the language under Emperor Kang Xi (16621723 A.D.), dictionaries have listed 214 radicals. Earlier dictionaries listed as many as 540. Recent simplification of Chinese writing under the present government has further reduced the number of radicals to 186, but in this book, we will use the system of Kang Xi. A Chinese ideogram which is not a radical has two parts: the radical and the phonetic. Generally the radical gives an indication of meaning, and the phonetic gives an indication of sound. For instance shen "# ' "spirit," is made up of the radical shi "an omen," and the phonetic shen lfiI • One stylistic problem which complicates any reading of ancient Chinese is that parts of the ideogram were often left out. It was assumed

an '

'* '

by the writers and copyists that anyone educated enough to read the essay in question would understand the abbreviation, simply because of their educational background. This assumption certainly is not valid now. For instance, there is a dropped radical in the name of Hexagram Thirty-one, Xian WZ , "all." The Great Appendix says the actual ideogram is gan t'\ ' lito influence, to move." In this example, xin '~J' , the heart radical has been left out. If the English word "international" was abbreviated to "inter," it would be difficult to find the precise attribution. Luckily, in many of the instances where there is a dropped radical in the Yi ling, there are commentaries to help us. More than three thousand years have passed since the Yi ling was written. Many changes have occurred in the Chinese language over this time, and in some instances, the original ideas behind the individual ideograms have become obscured. In this translation, I have explained the original picture whenever it seems to clarify the oracular instruction. The romanization of the ideograms follows the official Pin Yin latinization which is now used in China. For example, in the popular Wade-Giles system, "Yi ling" was -t Ching." Ming 8_ij , with its multiple meanings, shows us the difference between an ideogram and an alphabetical word. An ideogram is not a word, it is a picture and an idea; so the use of a single word to translate a Chinese ideogram is simplistic. Yetsearching for the proper word, for the essence of the ideogram, brings the seed of understanding; a single word can trigger poetic nuances which give us a larger understanding. The richness is even greater when the ideogram is seen, not as a single thread of meaning, but as a nexus through which many threads pass. It is these multiple strands which I try to unravel in the ideograms with their multiple levels of meaning. By extrapolating this pattern to the Yi ling, we can use the same system to translate the trigrams and hexagrams. Key pictures, the eight trigrams, are rotated in combination to form the sixty-four hexagrams. These gua, or linear figures, are representations of the world beyond ideograms, beyond normal pictures and normal language. The gua are images of archetypal patterns. They portray the harmonic functions and resonances of a constantly changing world. The gua are nascent images which have not become manifest in material reality. It is this translation of the gua that is the most difficult, for it is beyond mere words. The gua, or linear figures, encompass all that you see around you. Each and every item becomes a potential omen, determined by the context of the moment and by your question and need. For this reason Ihave takenspeciaInotice ofthenatural portents found in the Yiling. They form, Ibelieve,universal pictures ofpotential advantage or misfortune, and are as true today and tomorrow as yesterday.
4

The \!i 3i Jt\9

Myth and -I-listory
Once upon a time before words, Fu Xi, the first Emperor of China, wished to communicate with his subjects who were distant in time and space. He looked up at the heavens and contemplated the brilliance of the sun, the moon and the stars. He looked down at the earth and inspected the fecundity and colors of soils. He tasted clear and muddy water. He examined stillness and movement. He marked the differences of plant and animal. He visualized mountains and valleys from afar. Nearby, he inspected his own body and features. In order to instruct his subjects, Fu Xi invented writing. Some say his insight came from bird seratches in the sand or bears' footprints in the snow. In any case, he drew pictures. The picture of a man was a man; a tree, a tree; a bird, a bird. For the Chinese people, these pictographs became the written language of everyday life. In deeper moments, Fu Xi marked the polar star. He mapped stellar mansions and constellations. At dawn and dusk he pondered the horizon. He watched the movements of star groups, the ascent and decline of the sun and moon. He measured shadow and light by hand span and heartbeat. He touched geologic compression lines in rock, the growth rings on cut timbers, the annual accretions on the shells of bivalve and tortoise. He smelled the seared scars of fire. He shook in resonance with the flash lines of lightning and peals of thunder; he was cooled by invading winds. On his own body and on the person of the empress, he inspected the lines on hands, the lines on feet, the crease of belly and joint, the furrow of brow, the coupling of sex. He thought of birth, of growth, and of death. Then Fu Xi invented another language: the language of the line, a language of deeper understanding. The lines are simple: a solid line equals heaven a broken line equals earth Fu Xi drew stacks of three lines to represent the interaction of heaven, man, and earth. He called these linear diagrams II gua." He then rotated the heaven and earth - lines through the three vertical positions to create eight different figures. These became the eight trigrams. The eight trigrams represent reality on its surface, at its depth, and in its interactions. They have ordinary and extraordinary meanings. Each trigram represents many things and many actions - for the eight
5

represent all the forces in the universe. So it was in this way that Fu Xi created the trigrams and their arrangement known as the pa gua. Inancient China, interpretations of the universe were based on the division of all actions and things into different resonant groups. The simplest division is yin and yang. All actions, all things, can be classified as predominantly yin or yang.
Yin dark fennale cold bottom black winter earth water Yang light male warnl top white

summ.er
heaven fire

A more complex division arose when the universe was outlined by the Wu Xing: the Five Dynamic Forces.
Wood green
sour

spring
liver

Fire

red bitter heart

summer

Earth indian sumr.ner yellow sweet spleen

Metal autur.nn white

spicy
lungs

Water winter black salty kidneys

Both of these systems, yin and yang and the Wu Xing, are a part of everyday Chinese life. It is easy for the mind to grasp classes of two or five things. They can be counted on the fingers of one hand. When Fu Xi divided actions and things into eight groups, the eight trigrams, a quantum leap was made. Thinking in terms of eight demands a larger grasp, and this reaching beyond what is easily measurable allows room for extraordinary happenings - spirits and shadows, echoes and premonitions, incantations and talismans, sacrifices and gifts - and above all, vision and divination.
Heaven horse head father strength Earth cow belly mother smooth
Fire

Thunder dragon feet eldest son flowing movement

Wind chicken thigh eldest daughter penetration

Water pig ears 2nd son peril

pheasant eyes 2nd daughter catching

Mountain dog hands youngest son stopping

mouth youngest daughter pleasure

sheep

Lake

This language of the eight trigrams has been used in China since Fu Xi to describe the forces and vibrations which determine stasis, movement, and change in the past, present and future. The eight trigrams represent the interface of the ordinary here and now with the extraordinary realm of what is to be. Four thousand years after Fu Xi, in the year 1143 B.C., "Zhou the Tyrant," the last emperor of the Shang Dynasty, imprisoned a nobleman named Fa, a viceroy from Western China. Fa later became King Wen, the founder of the Zhou Dynasty, which ruled China for seven hundred years. King Wen was a model prisoner. Outwardly he was modest and retiring, inwardly he was bright with creation. His possessions were meager: a change of clothes, a rude bunk, a small bowl for food and drink. His cell opened onto a small courtyard topped with thorns. At night he gazed at the basket of the Big Dipper and marvelled how even the pole star had moved since the time of Fu Xi. He watched the dawn each day and charted the rise and set of the sun. He watched the seasonal progression of star groups and equated them with the seasonal flights of geese and swans. He found a peach-wood stick and used it as a stylus, making scratches on the bare earthen floor to jostle his mind and to record his thoughts and ideas. He felt in his body the chill of night, the cold of winter, the warmth of day and the heat of summer. He was touched by the rain of nimbus clouds and the wind of thunderheads. He cogitated on the rise and fall of human affairs of city and state. He reviewed the capacities of the common people, of nobles, of warrior and thief. He chuckled and marvelled at marriage with its dualityoflossand gain. King Wen heard bird song and remembered the drone of incantations. He saw a flower fall and remembered the rites of sacrifice. He shared his food and drink with heaven and earth as sacrifice and libation. He felt shadows and talked to spirits. He prayed. King Wen took his peach-wood stylus and began to recreate the eight trigrams of Fu Xi with scratches in the courtyard. Because of the positional change of the pole star, he revised the position of the trigrams. From a world cosmogony he invented a new arrangement which incorporated the intricate world of human affairs. The eight trigrams were too innocent to encompass the treachery, generosity and complexity of King Wen's world. He placed one trigram on top of another, to make a six-line figure, a hexagram. He rotated the trigrams with each other in tum, eight times eight, to become the sixty-four hexagrams. This rotation of the eight trigrams represents the change of primal forces as they met and matched, or fought then dissolved, creating the transit of harmony or disharmony between heaven, man and earth. The sixty-four
7

images were devised by King Wen to represent the great scale of human music, where each line can deliver notes of harmony and good fortune, dissonance and misfortune, or neutrality and ambiguity. Each line and each hexagram becomes an image of transformation. This is the legend of the hexagrams. After he was released from prison in 1142 B.C., King Wen wrote down the visions he had recorded in his confinement. He gave each hexagram a title, and appended to each an evocative explanation, later called the gua ci. King Wen discussed these subjects with his son, the Duke of Zhou, who in tum added a pithy commentary and explanation to each line of the sixty-four hexagrams. All of this, the sixty-four hexagrams, sixty-four titles, an evocative explanation of each hexagram by King Wen, plus an explanation of each of the three hundred and eighty-four lines by the Duke of Zhou, was bound into a book called the Yi ling, the "Book of Changes." On one level, the Yi ling is an almanac of answers; answers on how to do, on where to go. It has also been consulted by the Chinese people as a divinatory text and as a book of wisdom. The Yi ling worked so well that six hundred years later in 484 B.C., Confucius said,

"Ifyears were added to my life,fifty would Iuse to study the Yi and then I might come to be without great faults. "
The Confucian Analects, Book 7, Chapter 16 The modem form of the Yi ling, written after the time of Confucius, has Ten Appendixes or The Ten Wings included with the original core. These essays, now referred to as Great Commentary and Great Appendix, attempt to explain the hexagrams and lines of the Yi ling. According to legend, they were written by Confucius. Some are instructive, some are difficult, some are banal. Some passages contain both wisdom and extraordinary beauty.

One yin, one yang is called the Dao. Following this is good. Completing this is the essence. The benevolent see and call it benevolence. The wise see and call it wisdom The common people use it daily, but are unaware, so the Dao of the superior man is rare. It is manifest in benevolence, it is concealed in action.
Great Commentary, Section 1, Chapter 5
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The sphereofheavenand earth transforms but doesnot transgress A lyrical completion of all things with no exceptions. To penetrate the Dao of day and night is to know. Thus, the spirit is not bound to any place, and transformation is not bound to any form. Great Commentary, Section 1, Chapter 4 Most of the literature on the Yi Jing, both Chinese and Western, is derived from the Confucian or neo-Confucian schools. Confucius (circa 551-479B.C.),through his teachings of a moral and ethical code for state, family, and self, had a profound effect on Chinese civilization. The adherents to his philosophy codified structures which became the basis of Chinese government and education for two thousand years. The Confucian hierarchy dominated Chinese letters during these two thousand years. They published books which reflected their views. In each generation, students read their professors' commentaries on the Yi Jing. These commentaries werebasedsolelyonConfucianinterpretations. In turn the students wrote their own criticism of the previous commentaries rather than returning to the original texts, for the myth was propagated by learned commentators that the original text was too difficult to understand without the aid ofthe supplemental commentaries. The Confucian interpretations of the Yi Jing, seen through the glass of the Confucian moral and ethical code, are not wrong. They are simply incomplete. Ibelieve they place masks over a foundation of symbols and images which are far richer than the dictates of this one school of philosophy. Three thousand years after King Wen, in 1899A.D., pieces of bone with incised markings appeared in the curio shops of Beijing. A man named Wang recognized that these incised markings were ancient pictographs. These so-called "dragon bones," were fossils which were normally ground to powder in apothecary shops for use in Chinese medicine. The search for the origins of these strange bones led to the Site of Yin, the remains of the capital of the Shang-Yin Dynasty. There on the plains of Honan, the ripe wheat rippled with the harvest wind. The walls of the ancient Yincapital had fallen into its moat. This had been the capital of Zhou the Tyrant, the last emperor of the Shang-Yin Dynasty, who had imprisoned King Wen. Zhou's lineage had reigned from this place for 270 years. The emperors had gone, but the farmers remained. In time, the farmers' plowshares dug furrows through the grave sites of this once mighty city. In this rich soil,farmers found fragments ofbone more valuable than gold, bones incised with words written by shaman and kingly scribe. The bones record the questions and answers in the act of divination.
9

When the city's remains were excavated, it was found to have been positioned squarely north and south. The foundations indicated buildings of impressive size and scope. In the burial sites of the kings - which included Wu Ding, mentioned in the Yiling as a great warrior and ruler, great riches were unearthed: gems from Central Asia, cinnabar and gold from the south and remains of tortoises from Malaysia, elephants from India, and whale bone from the Pacific. But the most precious find was the library of "oracle bones," the royal records of divinations of the Shang-Yin court. This discovery was an invaluable source of material for students of ancient Chinese history and linguistics. Not only did the bones reveal an older version of the Chinese language, but for students of the Yi ling, the inscriptions were actual recordings of the questions asked in the process of divination by scapullmancy.! The great number of bones -literally a library of oracle bones for each emperor - tells us much about the art and practice of ritual divination. These divinations directly affected the people of the ShangYin and Zhou Dynasties. Other historical documents and literature indicate the importance of divina tion, but the discovery of the oracle bones creates a new level of appreciation of the Yi ling. They show that the Yi ling is a book which may be read for its wisdom, but whose main purpose was as a divinatory oracle. When the language of the oracle bones is superimposed upon the language of the Yiling, the interpretation of the text is startlingly different from the accepted prose of Confucian scholars. The key to a meaningful interpretation of the Yi ling is a correct understanding of its language. The oracle bones show the accepted interpretation of the Confucian scholars is insufficient on the linguistic level, and thus insufficient on the interpretive level as well. How different from the Confucian interpretation does an interpretation based upon the language of the oracle bones make the Yi ling? Let us look at the first four words of the Yiling. These are words which I believe served as an ancient incantation. They are repeated many times throughout the text. , Heng and zhen are key words in the Yi ling. Heng occurs 44 times, zhen occurs 108times. Let us look at two translations of the above four words from the Yiling by two outstanding sinologists. James Legge translates the totality of these four Chinese ideograms as "what is great and originating, penetrating, advantageous, correct and firm." Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes translate them as
10

yuan it.,

heng

*~

zhen ~

"sublime success, furthering through perseverance." Both of these are in accord with neo-Confucian teachings, but they disagree with the language of the oracle bones, which can lead us to what I believe is a more accurate translation of the text. The character heng as part of the above totality, is translated respectively as "penetrating" or "success." But ancient pictographs from the oracle bones show that the character heng evolved from a picture representing a temple in which sacrificial offerings were made. The ancient meaning should be interpreted as "a sacrificial offering." "Success" is an extended meaning of the original character, not the actual meaning. The character zhen ~ the keystone of my interpretation, is translated respectively by the aforementioned authorities as "correct andfirm"or"perseverance." Themodemideogramforzhen ~ ,from which these interpretations derive, is formed from the picture for a cowrie shell liJ. The zhen pictograph incised on the oracle bones appears to represent a ritual vessel or cowrie shell, but its meaning is absolutely clear: "to inquire by divination." It is my belief that in the Yi ling, zhen tl refers to divination. My translation of yuan, heng, li, zhen, basecton the language of oracle bones is "The origin, a sacrificial offering, profit the divination." Obviously, such differences occurring again and again in translations alter the generally accepted meaning of" "The Book of Changes." Thus my goal in this translation has been to reinterpret the Yi ling with the information made available by the discovery of the oracle bones. Beyond this, I have a compelling additional goal: to make the Yi ling a guide for the individual reader to participate in the discoveries which open one to change and transformation in body and spirit. Today, although distant in time from Fu Xi, King Wen and the Duke of Zhou, through the agency of this oracle, the Yi Jing, these ancient rulers are as close as tomorrow. I hope this new interpretation of the Yi ling will assist you in your path to harmony with heaven, man and earth.

t'

-g

1 The heating of bones to produce cracks which are interpreted

11

as oracular signs.

JJt\t~od lActioJt\
The O~i9i~sof the)!i 3i~9
The Yi ling, an oracle in book form, is unique in the world's literature. Its name comes from two Chinese ideograms,

Yi ~ , "change" ling ~ ,''book, classic" thus, "The Book of Changes." The Yi ling has served as an oracle and guide for the three thousand years of its existence. It has been read and consulted by emperors, sages and commoners, and its wisdom and instructions have permeated all aspects of Chinese culture. The verbal text of the Yi ling is very old. Parts of it date from 1150 B.C., older than most parts of the Bible. The nonverbal text, which are diagrams called gua, is even older. The first gua were drawn approximately five thousand years ago. The design of the book begins with the gua, linear figures used for divination. Eachgua isa diagram, an archetypal symbol which represents all objects and situations resonant to itself. In European languages, these gua, made up of three lines, are called trigrams. There are eight trigrams. When the gua are matched with each other and rotated in sequence, they become six-line figures which are known as hexagrams. It is these sixtyfour hexagrams which form the body of the Yi ling. All gua are formed by some combination of the following: a yang line, a simple straight line, which represents light and the male principle. a yin line, a divided line which represents dark, and the female principle. The three lines in each gua stand for the levels of heaven --man earth These three lines represent the forces of the universe and their continuous interaction and change. Fu Xi (circa 3300 B.C.), the legendary first Emperor of China, is considered to be the author of the gua, the linear figures which we call trigrams. King Wen, the founder of the Zhou Dynasty, is thought to have rearranged and combined the linear figures in a different configura tion. The verbal text, called the gua ci or "explanation of the hexagram," is attributed to King Wen. King Wen's son, the Duke of Zhou, who established and stabilized the government of the Zhou Dynasty, is considered to be the author of
12

the yao ci, "the verbal explanation of the individual lines." The Ten Wings or The Great Appendixes to the Yi ling, were written by various unnamed authors over a long span of time. Theywere collected at an early date, near the end of the Zhou Dynasty (1122-255 B.C.), and are now always published. with the central text. My own opinion of the origins of the Yi ling rests on textual analysis, historical fact, and inference. There are many phrases in the text which are similar to aphorisms. To me, this indicates that one origin of the Yi ling is in the accumulated wisdom of the people, a folk wisdom. But another part of the text is arcane and out of the ordinary. This indicates another foundation, a language based on ritual, a secret knowledge exclusively passed on to an inner circle of diviners or shamans. Throughout history, magical formulae have been kept secret; the knowledge of certain rituals was only for an elite. The emperor was part of this elite circle. In the Shang Dynasty, immediately preceding King Wen, there were times when an emperor would take the mantle of the Chief Diviner and perform the divination himself. We can assume that this happened in the Zhou Dynasty as well; King Wen or the Duke of Zhou might assume the mantle of Chief Diviner. I will recognize tradition and honor Fu Xi, King Wen, and the Duke of Zhou as the authors of the Yi ling, with the proviso that their authorship is in turn based on the ancient wisdom of the Chinese people, and upon a long lineage of diviners. Ot"ac~la Divitlatiotl ... In this modern age it is important to ask, what is an oracle? What does it mean to divine? The Yi ling is an oracle; the language and figures of the book itself are an instrument on which one can rely for direction. It is used in the practice of divination, the art of foreknowing the future. The general schema of divination is universal. There must be a seeker, a human supplicant with a question. There must be a listener, usually an extraordinary being such as a god, a spirit, or other entity not bound by the confines of normal space and time. There must be a response which is heard or seen in a variety of ways and forms: words, visions, and common or uncommon phenomena. This response is a sign or omen which indicates the direction of the future. In the Yi ling such signs are called xiang. To understand xiang is to understand the Yi ling. The problem is the cornucopia of meanings attached to the Chinese ideogramxiang ,which strangely enough, comes from the picture of an elephant. Xiang also means" an image, to resemble, omens, portents, stars, constellations, acting, playing, ancient music, Chinese chess, an interpreter, a law, an ordinance," andfinallyxiang alsostandsfor"diagrams"-thehexagramsandtrigramsoftheYilingitself.

.#.t

13

Xiang are the progenitors of the gua, the trigrams and hexagrams, as well as a description of them. Thus the Yi consists of xiang. Xiang as in images. Great Commentary, Section 2, Chapter 3 Thankfully, the definition above points us to the meaning "image" or "resemblance," but other meanings sometimes intrude into the wide ground of image and symbol.
The sages were able to survey all the mysteries under heaven. They compared all their forms and characters, and made symbols (xiang) suitable for all. Thus, these are called xiang. Great Commentary, Section 1, Chapter 8

What can be seen is called an image (xiang). With physical form it is called a vessel. With regulation and use it is called laws. Beneficial in use externally and internally so that men all use it is called spiritual. In heaven are completed the images (xiang). On earth are completed the physical forms. Great Commentary, Section 1, Chapter 1 Xiang are visible, but they also exist before physical form. How can this be? If time is taken into consideration, xiang is a nascent image before physical form, an echo from the future - bound with patterns of design from the past and present. These are visible to the diviner as omens and portents due to the harmonic correspondences between this visible world and the world to be. This linkage forms the time stream of past, present and future, for nothing is isolated within its own existence in time or space. The person who uses the Yi ling with clarity can see the play of this flowing stream. With xiang, all the world's phenomena can be reduced to vibrating forms, the trigrams and hexagrams, which are shuffled and realigned by change in the patterns of heaven, man and earth. The xiang provide the doorway to speculative thought, which can be represented by images and symbols rather than in words. The world of the Yi ling, the trigrams, hexagrams and xiang, all come from the philosophy of the Dao.

14

1:he Dao
The Dao is the underlying principle in all of Chinese culture. It is the seen and the unseen in the Yi Jing.

Something mysteriously formed Born before heaven and earth In the silence and in the void Standing alone and unchanging Ever present in surrounding motion Perhaps it is mother to all under heaven I do not know its name Call it Dao...
I call it great

For lack of a better word

Being great itflows Flows far away Having gone far, it returns Lao Zi, Dao de Jing, Chapter 25
Simplistically, the Dao is the dynamic of the universe, the way of all things: heaven, man, and earth. The meaning is pictured in the ideogram if_ Dao, which means "a road, the Way." The ideogram iscomposedofshou it ,lithe head, first" andzuo L ,"towalk," a symbol of motion- thus Dao is the first, the primary movement in the universe. Inthe symbol below, Dao is the surrounding circle. The Dao, being mysterious and unseen, manifests itself in this world by two agents, the forces of yin and yang. yin is the shadowy side, the dark, the secret, the female principle.

li.t

r~ yang is the sunny

side, bright, light, the male principle.

Yin and yang, the two binary cosmic forces, are in constant, alternating flow. Taken from the circadian rhythm of earth and heaven, they incorporate all dualistic opposites: dark and light, weak and strong, female and male, earth and heaven, even numbers and odd numbers, etc. The classic yin/yang diagram above shows dark yin and light yang, embryonic figures constantly in motion. The opposite colored
1S

eyes symbolize yin in yang and yang in yin, because the seed of one is always in the other. Yin and yang are phases of the same unity. Yin without yang, or yang without yin is impossible and an absurdity. In times past, yin was represented by a dark circle • , and yang was represented by a light circle 0 . Along with the use of dark circles for yin and light circles for yang, was the use of a divided line - for yin and a solid line for yang. These lines in Chinese are called yao.

Therefore in the Yi there is the Great Axis (Tai Ji) which produced the two elemental forms. The two produced the four (xiang) images. The four images produced the eight trigrams.
Great Commentary, Section 1, Chapter 11

Tai Ji or the Great Axis, is another name for the Dao. Its symbol is
the polar star around which everything revolves. This motion creates darkness and light, yin and yang. The Dao begins the genealogy of the yao, which evolve into the trigrams and hexagrams. From two came four, where the solid yang line and the divided yin line -, were placed over themselves, and then over each other, forming the four xiang or images. The major or old yang (with a numerical value of 9) The minor or young yang (with a numerical value of 7) _- _ _ The major or old yin (with a numerical value of 6) The minor or young yin (with a numerical value of 8)

=--

Placing a yin and a yang line in succession over each of the four xiang gives us the eight trigrams. qian kun zhen heaven earth thunder fire marsh wind water mountain
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li
dui sun kan gen

---

--

Lao Zi is even more succinct.

One brought forth two Two brought forth three Three brought forth ten thousand things Dao de Jing, Chapter 2
The progression:
_ _ yin

The Dao brought forth one

=== major yang

-= -

major yin minor yang minor yin

== == kun

--- =kun -

___

yang __

This progression from the Dao, from its manifestations of yin and yang, is a movement from silence to symbols to words. The concepts of yin and yang do not change, but their linear symbols are broadened and transformed until they are represented by the first two hexagrams and their word names of Qian and Kun. Yinand yang may be used as notations for time since yin (darkness) and yang (light) first and foremostdescn"be the circadian passage of time. Compressed into the symbolic pictures of a dark circle (yin, no) and a light circle (yang, yes), they can be used to express a digital binary set, suitable to define the moment. Expanded to symbolize the four seasons- major yang, major yin, minor yang and minor yin- they bring us a second equation with time. This second set presents not a digital yes/ no, but a seasonal analog wave of rising and falling, of heating up and cooling down. A material symbol could be a string which represents the wave of the four seasons, with knots in it which represent the discrete moment. If the string moves, the knot moves, but the knots will cause irregularities in the motion of the string. Consequently both notations, the digital for the moment and the analog for the seasons, influence each other. Note the four yin/yang of the seasons are called the four xiangthe very same word used for the images of the Yi Jing. Foreknowledge, as in divination, rests on understanding xiang. Therefore, knowing the future is knowing the seasonal wave. The analog computes the predictable, the digital pinpoints the moment of decision. Problems arise because there are many analog waves - solar, lunar, Jovian, the great eclectic from heaven which intercepts and modifies the waves of earth and man. The YiJing represents these waves by the stacking of lines.
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""CheLil'les of the )!i 3il'l9 What is a line? How may lines be used and interpreted? Lines were used as a primal language, before ideograms or alphabets. They are notations of reality as it unfolds. The Great Commentary to the Yi ling says: The Yi is in accord with the zhun, the water levels of heaven and earth. Therefore, it is able to complete the silken threads of the dao of heaven and earth. Looking up we see the (wen), the stripes of heaven. Looking down we examine the (li), the veins of earth. Section 1, Chapter 4 Docks on the seashore have line markers to show water depth so boats can proceed normally or with caution. On riverbanks there are gouged holes and flood lines showing levels the river water had previously reached. This may have been the first reason to draw lines, as symbols of limits and boundaries. They were records of past levels and portents of future levels. Stripes and veins are also lines. One use of the lines of the trigrams and hexagrams may have been to measure water levels. This may be why the lines of the hexagrams are drawn in ascending order and numbered accordingly from one to six, from bottom to top. The Chinese clepsydra, one of the earliest timing devices, was a water clock which told time by changes in water levels. The clepsydra divided the day into fifty units. In the method of divination which employs yarrow stalks, fifty yarrow stalks are used, and one stalk is always set aside so there will never be a completion to time. Another ancient divinatorymethod was scapulimancy. No precise instructions have survived on this practice, but a grasp of its basic principles sheds valuable light on the use of lines in divination. Scapulimancy employs the scapula of a bull or the plastron of a tortoise. Carefully chiseled circles or ovals were carved or drilled into bone, then heat was applied with a heated probe. The drilled circles represent dragon holes, whirlpool points of power and force where energy flows and accumulates. The heat would cause the bone to crack in lines, usually radiating from the holes. Scapulimancy symbolizes the interaction between heaven, man and earth. Heat, representing heaven, in the form of flame or a heated probe, was introduced by man, the diviner, to flat plates of bone representing earth. From these points, cracks emerge, lines of energy manifest, like animal trails leading to and from a spring. They are like racks of atoms in a cloud chamber, or lines on a person's face. These lines
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or cracks give us an image of what has been, and the outline of what is to come. Thus lines are not only markers or symbols, lines may also be cracks. A crack is a gap that has two sides. Geometrically, a single crack creates three lines: c:: > the two sides of the crack and the open gap in between. The practice of scapulimancy creates a visual image of divination. The combination of lines are meant to be images of ideas that are extraordinary - they are beyond words. The linear cracks on the shell are analogous to the linear patterns of the gua. Normal space-time is a series of repeating units: minutes, days, months and years - a continuum. Lines may be used as markers to measure this continuum. The magic and power of the Yi Jingis that when used with the proper external and internal rituals, it presents cracks in the fabric of normal time, openings in the continuum which allow for foreknowing. Ordinary lines can symbolize the boundaries of space-time, but we must also penetrate the gaps, the cracks between the lines. I propose that between the normal continuum of heaven, man, and earth, there appear cracks. These are cracks in space, gaps in time. These gaps represent energy which is seen, palpable, but without form. This energy is symbolized by the space between and around the lines of the trigrams and hexagrams. Included in this proposition is the idea that the passage of space and time is not constant. Whenever cracks occur you can perform extraordinary actions-like seeing the future. But you have to know and be conscious of when these times occur, and you must be an active participant. They occur every day. For a millisecond or for hours, there may be a gap in the fabric of the universe as it unfolds. At these times it is possible to see the silken threads of the Dao of heaven and earth. If we can incorporate this phenomena into our lives, then we have begun to use the method of the Yi Jing. The use of the Yi ling creates the possibility of transit from the normal sight of everyday life to the paranormal seeing of divination. The counting out of the fifty yarrow stalks, as well as the tossing of coins by hand, creates the real and symbolic manipulative force to part the fabric of time. Transformations of time and space are subtly illustrated by the arrangement of the trigrams. Two circular patterns are presented in the Yi Jing. The pattern of Earlier Heaven, according to Fu Xi, and the pattern of Later Heaven according to King Wen.

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/
1:1 ~~

south

--

,
~

--

III II

Earlier Heaven FuXi

-/south

II "I
~~

II:

Later Heaven King Wen

--

The trigrams in the pattern of Fu Xiare bound by direction: north, south, east and west. As markers on maps they would signal which way to move, and the question of direction - especially as it rela ted to action - has always been a key question in divination. The trigrams in the pattern of King Wen are related to time: spring, summer, autumn and winter. The sequence of seasons introduces the element of time - when to act is as important as which direction to go. The circular arrangement represents 'a clock; the clock of heaven which rotates in an orderly sequence of activity. Together the two patterns symbolize and comprise the totality of our world: space and time. The attributes associated with heaven, Earlier and Later, may refer to the transformation of birth - Earlier Heaven being the prenascent template which is molded by its passage into Later Heaven, the postpartum world of sequence and time. The circular arrangements show the rotation of the trigrams, and due to the idea of yin and yang, rotation is in two directions. Thus there are two sequences of time: normal time represented by a clockwise rotation of the trigrams, and retrograde time represented by a counterclockwise rotation. Because the Yi ling can divine the future, it means that there may be a future which looks to the past as its future.

The numbering of the past is going with the current. Therefore the Yi numbers counter to the current.

Shuo Gua, Discussion of the Trigrams, Chapter 3

The linear flow of time is described by two ideograms: shun J'~ , lito go with the current," and ni:jJ:_ , "to go against the current." The world in such a configuration is turned front to back, and for the diviner, the future is as clear as the past. In practice we must take into account the movement of the Dao, yin and yang, and the rotations of the trigrams and hexagrams, but any discussion of time must also involve the sun. Sunlight is at once the giver of life and the cause of aging. The passage of time forms the primal clock. In the Yi Jing one hexagram in particular is concerned with the sun.
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Feng, Hexagram Fifty-five, means" Abundance." The gua ci starts, "Feng: A sacrificial offering. The king bestows! No sadness. Right as the sun at noon." The explanation of the hexagram in the Great Appendix interprets King Wen's words as "Feng. Abundance, means great. Brilliance in movement causes abundance. The king bestows, emphasizing greatness. No sadness. Be like the sun at noon. It is appropriate to shine on all under heaven. At midday the sun begins to set. After the moon is full, it begins to wane. Heaven and earth are full or empty according to the flow of time." The king and sun bestow their light to all under heaven. This equation of king and sun pinpoints a specific time, noon, as the focus of the hexagram. The explanation of the second line says, "Thick, his screens. At midday, see the Dipper." How is it possible to see the stars, the Big Dipper, at noon? The answer to this question has occupied the commentators of the Yi ling for its entire existence. I propose that the sun at noon symbolizes the present. The present is so bright and busy that it blinds us to the future, in the same way the noonday sun blinds us to the stars. But there is a way to see the stars and the future. You can see the future if a screen is available. For the sun, an eclipse is a natural screen, a time of occult wonder. But "screen" in this line has two modifiers, "thick" and "his." What are "thick" screens? It could mean that these are screens with many layers, layers of spiritual reality (inner world) and physical reality (outer world), with polarization between the two, which block or open specific spectrums of illumination. Then what are "his" screens? Can the shaman devise and call upon a thick screen of his own making? Yes! The screen is fashioned from layers of ritual. A screen can be formed by the manipulation of yarrow stalks, ritual libations such as wine, by the drawing of the double trigram, but most of all by sacrifice. Heng if ,"a sacrificial offering," occurs forty times in the gua ci, the explanation of the hexagrams by King Wen. Many times heng starts or ends the essay. Heng's etymology shows the ancient pictograph ~ evolved into two modem ideograms: heng '"'!! ' to sacrifice, success," and xiang ~ , "to present offerings in sacrifice, to accept sacrificial offerings, to receive, to enjoy." The rituals of sacrifice connect man and spirit; they connect the visible with the invisible, material reality and the evanescent possible.
II

21

Sact<ifice To sacrifice meant to kill. The moment of death provides a passage into the spirit world. The sacrificial victim is cooked and eaten, and the subtle aromas of food were literally the food of the gods. Spirits would come to feast, drawn by the aromatic qi energy of food and wine. Man would feast on the material remains. Man and spirit are both nourished. Placed within ritual, this offering is called sacrifice, but in secular times we have forgotten that this is exactly the format of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Man, and all life, is nourished by the death of others. Whether those others are plants or animals, all have the qi energy of life before they become food. Rituals are performed to honor heaven, our father, and earth, our mother. They are performed to respect the immutable, the constancy of the Dao and its ever-moving manifestations of yin and yang. Rituals are a ceremonial return to origins, to nourish one's primal ancestors and those progenitors dear to oneself in one's lineage.

hollow, to mark the distinction between dark and light and to show the difference between high and low. They sacrificed to the sun in the east and to the moon in the west to mark the distinction between exoteric and esoteric and to show the correctness of their positions. The sun comesforth in the east, the moon appears in the west. Yin darkness and yang light are now long, now short. When one ends, the other begins in regularsuccession, thus producing harmony ofall under heaven.
Li Ji (Book of Rites), Scroll 8, Chapter 24, The Meaning of Sacrifice

They sacrificed to the sun on the altar and to the moon in the

Certain propriety is part of sacrifice and sacrificial offering; the place where a sacrifice is performed is important. Holy locations, ancestral temples, and private shrines may be used. The material offering may be large or small. A bull is mentioned in Ji Ji, Hexagram Sixty-three, while only two baskets of rice are mentioned in Sun, Hexagram Forty-one. But whether the offering is large or small, what is important is its sincerity, that it is an offering from one's heart.

Sacrifice is not a thing coming to a man from outside. It issues from his central being and has its birth in his heart.
Li Ji (Book of Rites), Scroll 8, Chapter 25 The Summary of Sacrifices
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The eastern neighbor sacrifices an ox. Not equal to the western neighbor's summer sacrifice. Genuineness receivesits blessing.
Ji Ji, Hexagram Sixty-three, Line 9-5 This inner quality is an essential element in both sacrifice and divination. Sacrificeopens the door to prophecy. It is no coincidence tha t the word usually associated with heng "sacrifice," in the gua ci is yuan f'u , "the origin." Go to the source, to the origin inside. The primal mother and father can help you. When the inner self is in harmony with the Dao, the resonance with the external symbols of yin and yang are clear in their correspondences, and reality may be laid out like a book and read. To go back to the origin follows the motion of the Yi Jing. To return to our primal beginnings we must go counter-clockwise, we must tum back the clock. Sacrifice, like divination, takes us out of normal spacetime so we may communicate with beginnings, with spirits, and with xiang, the nascent beings which will influence our future. The drama of sacrifice and sacrificial offerings provides a stage to capture the attention and assistance of the spirits. In Chinese culture the ritual of sacrifice is not for the expiation or atonement of sin. It is to honor heaven and earth. It is to nourish the spirits of one's ancestors, and those who have gone before, so that the living can have life. Sacrificial rituals are calls to the spiritual domain. In divination, sacrifice is performed to open the door to prophetic response. In our contemporary world, the lessons are the same - vision to see the future begins in the heart, in one's inner being. Who can focus these cosmic lines of space and time to join together at the axis of divination? In ancient China, a consortium of ministers or wise men consulted oracles and then advised the emperor. The emperor sought guidance both for favorable action and to avoid misfortune - these are also our goals as individuals today. In the modem world, there is no Emperor of China, but just as the emperor could assume the mantle of the Chief Diviner, each of us can be an emperor in our own right. Our questions are much the same, whether we are governing a company, a family, or ourselves. But assuming the position of an emperor carries with it a grea t responsibility.

-t '

Without partiality, without unevenness Pursue the ruyal righteousness, Without selfish loves Pursue the ruyal way Without se~fishhates
23

Pursue the royal path Without partiality without henchmen The royal way is peaceful and broad. Without henchmen without partiality The royal way is peaceful and easy Without perversity without one-sidedness The royal way is right and straight To acquire the axis Return to the axis Shu ling (The Book of History), Part 5, Book 4
This song, which celebrates the royal way, gives each of us the path to follow. The axis is represented by the ideogram ji;f:i , the polar star around which everything turns. Tai Ii the Great Axis (another name for the Dao), is the method of movement in this royal way. To be as centered as the North Star is the vision. To act like an emperor is the method. The pictograph for emperor is made up of three horizontal lines .;E. representing heaven, man and earth, with one vertical line representing the king, who in our ca: e is the individual, the one who attempts to unify the three levels of our universe. When used with ritual and respect, the Yi ling serves as an instrument for each king, each individual, to unite the forces of heaven, man and earth and perform the miracle of divination.

*~ ,

Spi~its For divination to take place there must be change from normal sight to future vision, but whatis there to see? We have discussed xiang, the images of nascent things, but what of the xiang of persons? Thisbelief in spirits is essential to a shamanistic use of the Yi Jing. In our industrial age of Cartesian causality and hard science, imagining the spiritual plane is a strain on our vision. Nonetheless, the spirit world does exist. The acts of sacrifice which initiate consultation with the Yi ling are calls to the spiritual domain. Offerings are given so that one may receive guidance from the spirits. To give is to receive. When manifest in ordinary reality, these configura tions of spiritual qi are considered guests. When honored and benevolent they can bring good fortune. When malicious or capricious, they promote mischief and misfortune. The ideogram shen:if; ,meaning "spirit," does not appear in the literate core of the Yi ling, but it appears more than twenty times in the Great Appendix. The left radical shi 1ft means an "omen, to manifest." It shows, metaphorically, three beams of light, three luminous presences, streaming down from above. The right picture uses
24

shen as a phonetic, but the ancient writing '4c:. of it shows a picture of movement, of lightning, of the yin energy of the moon. The Master said, "For qi (vital energy), spirit is its most complete nature. For po (the animal soul), ghost is its most complete nature. The union of ghost and spirit forms the epitome of this teaching.All living things must die. In death all must return to earth. This is the ghostly nature. Bones and flesh molder below and hidden away become the earth of the fields. But qi issuesforth and is displayed on high in glorious brightness. The fumes of sacrifice and wormwood produce a feelingofsadness. These are thesubtle essencesofall things and are the manifestation of the spirit. Li Ii (Book of Rites), Scro118,Chapter 24, Meaning of Sacrifice

The unfathomable in yin and yang is called the spirit. Great Commentary, Section I, Chapter 5 Shen, "spirit," may be biological xiang, "images," either terrestrial or extraterrestrial. The configuration of the qi energy of some spirits may be equated with the ancestral qi discussed in Chinese medicine. This genetic energy, which is manifested in every genera tion, is theoretically available to each individual asa repository of historical genetic memory. Brought forth by certain rituals, or through crises, this genetic code of action contains the memories of successful response, and is a link to our forebearers no less than the linkage of RNA and DNA on the cellular level. The sacrificial ritual accompanying a divination must reflect the extraordinary nature of this occurrence. Spirits may be summoned by the sacrifice of a living thing, since at death there is a passing over. Spirits can also be summoned by rituals imitating copulation, like scapulimaney, because conception and birth are passages between the spirit world and the world as we know it. Finally, spirits may be summoned by spiritual agents such as the Yi ling. Animals have long been considered potential agents of the spiritual force. The Yi ling is replete with animals of every type and description - dragons and phoenixes, elephants and tigers, deer and sheep, pheasants and pigs, and foxes and cranes. But animals are not the only spiritual agents, almost anything may be cast into the role of spiritual proxy. Each culture and age has devised its own agencies. Astrological signs, tarot cards, computer projections, knuckle bones or dice - all have been, or presently are, popular spiritual
25

agents. They are attempts to go beyond. Shamanistic practice uses the personae of these spiritual agents to alter human perception and response. The multitude of spirit symbols and masks provided in the Yi ling give the inquirer entry into an altered state of mind, close enough to human so as not to be frightening, but different enough to instruct through surprise.

Qi
Qi as energy is protean in form. Its purest state may be spirit, but many different modalities course through the body in resonance with the qi of different environments, such as the qi of the seasons, or the qi of different locations. Studying the flow of qi energy within the human body gives us a mirror of the energy of the universe. The Yi Jing is filled with omens expressed by body parts and body movements. Its images show the mutual correspondence between the large universe of heaven and earth, and the small universe of the human body - all the phenomena of one are reflected in the other. The Yi ling provides us with an instrument to interpret the correspondences between the individual and the larger world. The human body is an oracular instrument. First, because macrocosm, the world, and microcosm, the body, mirror each other. Second, because the body is a divinatory image of itself. The body of the past and the present divines the body to be.

Anciently, when Fu Hsi ruled all under heaven, he looked up and contemplated the images (xiang) of heaven, then he looked down and contemplated the patterns on earth. He contemplated the markings of birds and beasts to the appropriateness of the earth. Nearby he proceededfrom his own body at a distance from things in general. Thus he invented the eight trigrams to correspond to the virtues of the bright spirits and to classify the essences of the myriads of things.
Great Commentary, Section 2, Chapter 2 Movements of the body, of limbs, of muscles, sometimes involuntary tics or spasms, even the manner in which we groom or dress parts of the body, can manifest as oracular signs. Certain hexagrams, and many of the individual lines, refer to body movements as omens and symbols. It may help to understand these references by examining traditional Chinese theories of the body. Anatomical structure was learned through the use of animals for food and human injuries in warfare. The unique vision of the human body came from Chinese theories of body dynamics. Flowing through
-;»

26

the body at all times were blood and qi. Qi is an energy which has no exact counterpart inWestern thought, although "pneuma" of ancient Greece may be close. In medieval times, the idea of ether is also similar. The ideogram for qi is a picture of air with a rice seed in it. Qi is energy without physical form, like air, but with essence and potential within. There are many forms of qi: some nourish, some protect, some are good, some are neutral, some are injurious. Quantity is important. Balance is good. Excess and insufficiency are bad. Most important in our study of the Yi Jing, is prenatal qi, which is identified with the same words used for the Earlier Heaven arrangement of the trigrams by Fu Xi. Postnatal qi corresponds to the Later Heaven arrangement of the trigrams according to King Wen. On a larger scale, there are qi of heaven, of earth, and of all things animate and inanimate. Qi is in patterns before it coalesces into structure, so it parallels the idea of xiang, of nascent image. Qi changes with the seasons - hot in summer, cold in winter - thus it is the essence of climatic conditions. Qi is the essential modifier of the eight trigrams. For example, Gen is not only mountain, but the essential energy of mountain. Li is not only fire, but the essential energy of fire. This energy is always present in the live human body. It has been mapped and it can be measured. Nourishing qi follows routes which go hand in hand with the flow of blood. These channels are called Jing Luo. In popular translations they are called meridians, but their definition is a pathway, a channe1." Protective qi has no set abode; it is omnipresent in the body. At certain points qi wells up to the body surface, just as springs of water appear on earth. These points are called xue 'k , "holes." They occur at points of discontinuity where muscle, tendon and bone make depressions and gaps. These are the acupuncture points. Esoterically they are called dragon holes, gaps where intervention of movement or action can change the entire universe of the body. They are dials to adjust the rhythms of the body, to promote harmony and health. In like manner, acts of sacrifice and divination are the openings by which we can adjust the inner harmony of ourselves, or adjust ourselves to be in harmony with the universe. (_Thenames of the Jing Luo channels and the names of the acupuncture points further illuminate the correspondences of the world and the human body. There are twelve major channels and their names are divided into three parts: the limb through which the channel flows; a modality of yin or yang which describes the type of qi energy in the channel; and the body organ to which the channel is linked.

iL

II

27

The twelve Jing Luo are bilateral and are named: 1. Arm Major Yin Lung Channel 2. Arm Bright Yang Large Intestine Channel 3. Leg Bright Yang Stomach Channel 4. Leg Major Yin Spleen Channel 5. Arm Minor Yin Heart Channel 6. Arm Major Yang Small Intestine Channel 7. Leg Major Yang Bladder Channel 8. Leg Minor Yin Kidney Channel 9. Arm Shrinking Yin Pericardium Channel 10. Arm Minor Yang Three Heater's Channel 11. Leg Minor Yang Gallbladder Channel 12. Leg Shrinking Yin Liver Channel The anatomical notations of limb and organ are easy to understand. They are the places through which the channels flow. The yin and yang descriptions are the notations of an energy force modified by time. Besides major and minor modes, yang is modified by the word ''bright'' or ''brightens'' because yang or light advances in movement. Yin is modified by the word "shrinking" because yin or darkness retreats in movement. The energy in these channels flows like water in a river. Going with the current is normal and healthy behavior. When energy backs up and causes a retrograde flow, the orderly sequence of time is disrupted and there is dissonance and stress. When energy becomes blocked, the disturbance of yin and yang causes illness. Also, injury to the qi in one season, winter for example, even if no symptoms are immediately observed, may cause illness in the spring. This system may also be compared to the previous symbol of time and reality represented by a string. The meridians are strings which manifest wavelike seasonal energies. The acupuncture holes are like knots on the string. Certain tension is normal, but if lax, the knot is too open and cannot hold; if it is too tight, it constricts the wave of qi. Thus patterns are set with the rotation of yin and yang for health or illness. These patterns may be learned and understood by Chinese diagnostic measures which parallel Western medicine, but Chinese medicine also uses ideas similar to the xiang and the symbols of the Yi ling, because these images deal with qi, a force both seen and unseen. In addition to the twelve major channels, there are eight collateral channels. Of these eight, two are most important because they are considered to be the seas of yin and yang qi in the body. One which appears on the front midline of the body is called the Conception Vessel. The other which is on the back midline of the body is called the Governing Vessel. Both of these channels have many acupuncture points of grea t power. The sixother collateralchannels share acupuncture
28

points with the twelve major channels, but have no points of their own. Names of acupuncture points are consonant with the three levels of trigrams: heaven, man, and earth. Heaven names: Upper Star, on the front of the scalp; Penetrating Heaven, near the top of the scalp; Celestial Vessel, on the side of the neck; Celestial Pivot, on the abdomen. Man names: Level Bone, on the side of the foot; Smooth Flesh Door, on the abdomen; Eyes Bright, at the inner aspect of the eye. Earth names: Gushing Spring, on the bottom of the foot; Earth Five Assembly, on top of the foot behind the little toe; Kun Lun Mountain, in the front of the Achilles tendon; Crooked Pond, at the elbow. Three hundred and sixty acupuncture points were named in ancient times, corresponding to the number of days in a lunar year. To work with this system of energy flow, omens of potential harmony must be recognized. A quiet state of meditation or contemplation prepares the body. Then movement or tightness, jerks or tensions will be the diagnostic signs. The prophetic twinge in the back after lifting a heavy suitcase certainly tells of future back problems. In Chinese medicine, psychology/spirituality and physiology/ material reality were never split into different disciplines. Problems encountered in one area would be reflected in the other. Thus, psychosomatic problems could be portents of greater illness to come. In ancient times, pulse readings were taken at the carotid pulse and measured in ratio to inhalation and exhalation. This gave way to using the radial pulses at the wrists to monitor qi flow. Each wrist has six pulses, twelve in all for each meridian channel. When pressed by the doctor, they exhibit different tactile sensations. Like designs and wave forms on a modem oscilloscope, their relative harmony or disharmony gives a picture of the qi flow in its pathways. From these pictures, the doctor can prescribe therapy to keep the patient in good health. I began my study of the Yi Jing because a professor told me that in order to bean Yi,aChinesedoctor,Imustunderstand the Yi of the Yi Jing. The wisdom of his instruction has proved its value over the years. Chinese medicine seeks to do more than remedy existing problems - it is preventive medicine, and to practice preventive medicine is to divine the future. So it is incumbent upon the Vi,the Chinese doctor, to examine each individual and promote a greater harmony between the forces of heaven, man and earth. The study of the Yi Jing helps the doctor, or individual, to .understand forces both seen and unseen by taking the pulse of the universe through the hexagrams.

29

A single ideogram gua ~t ,which stands for the linear figures of the Yi ling, can be translated into two words: trigram and hexagram. By definition, a trigram is made up of three lines and a hexagram six lines. But in the Yi ling, each hexagram, a single entity of six discrete lines, is secondary to its personae as two trigrams. This geometric splitting is not by chance. A hexagram is created by rotating the eight trigrams over and under each other. Eight trigrams to the second power equal the sixtyfour hexagrams. For me, the number sixty-four is similar to the seventysix Tarot cards, or the ninety-two atomic elements of the periodic table. These finite numbers are attempts to reduce the world to a comprehensible size for human manipulation. The gua are mysterious and difficult because they are simple diagrams which embody a complex world view. Few anthropomorphic features are evident in a stack of straight lines. They look as if they are thrown together by chance rather than by design - and so they are. But this chance is not haphazard; chance allows for surprising juxtapositions which can help us to achieve a new vision. Chance as arbiter of action between heaven, man, and earth seems a novel idea in our contemporary deterministic world, but in the Yi ling it allows us to divine good fortune or misfortune. Hexagrams and trigrams, the gua, are the visible omens of the world that might be. They are reflections of the laws of correspondence and resonance. The symbolic value of these linear figures is much more complex than a simple one-to-one representation. The images are interpreted by reasoning and analogy rather than a strict, linear causality. That is why the hexagrams, trigrams, and individual lines can represent many different ideas and processes. The world view of the Yi Jing may be understood by the passage describing line 9-5 of Qian, Hexagram One in the tuan.

Similar tones resonate with each other. Similar (qi) energies will seek each other. Water flows to the moist. Fire rises to the dry. Clouds follow the dragon. Wind follows the tiger. The myriad creatures look to the workings of the sage. Things from heaven are related to above. Things from earth are related to below. Thus eachfollows his kind.
.30

The Yi ling reflects the worlds of heaven, man and earth. It extends far beyond a universe of Newtonian determinism, or a twentieth century theory of thermodynamic entropic degeneration. The Yi ling's model of the universe encompasses the following: 1) A global resonance, "similar tones resonate with each other." This resonance of vibrations occurs within all levels, and between all levels of heaven, man and earth. 2) Everything has a definite proclivity or a predisposition because of its vibratory self and physical structure. "Similar (qi) energies will seek each other." This idea of specific tendency gives rise to more complex patterns and forms. 3) These patterns can be identified by observation and put into human language. "Water flows to the moist." 4) A new creative direction can come from synthesis and transformation. "The myriad creatures look to the workings of the sage." 5) The work of the sage is to consider and to fit actions and entities into their appropriate place. "Things from heaven are related to above. Things from earth are related to below." When all the items above are in harmony, we are following the Dao. This complexity makes the Yi Jing mysterious and difficult, but it allows for a richness of possibility and a specificity that does not become fully apparent until the oracle is consulted with specific questions. Here, the symbolic value of the images are distilled into words because that is our medium of communication, but ultimately, the meaning of gua and xiang goes beyond words. Let's begin by examining the first trigram, zhen.

Zhen is thunder, the dragon, azure and yellow, development, a great road, the eldest son, decision and vehemence, green young bamboo, sedges and rushes. When zhen is used in connection with horses, it means those which neigh well, those with white hind legs, those which gallop, and those with a star on the forehead. In agriculture zhen is that which returns to life; and that which in the end becomes the strongest, of that which is the most luxuriant.
Shuo Gua, Discussion of the Trigrams, Chapter 11 Each of the eight trigrams is defined in the same broad manner. In turn, each hexagram, because it is made up of two trigrams, assumes their respective correspondences and creates resonances of its own. There are lessons and advice in the trigrams, but the images 'are easily obscured because of our individual visual education and prejudices. Let us examine the construction of the double trigram.
31

In each hexagram there is an upper and a lower trigram.

In turn, other attributes are given the two positions:

upper is outer and posterior lower is inner and anterior meaning that position must be taken into account before action. In the Great Commentary it says,

===
-

= _ hui =w
zhen

1n_J ""-1'

upper lower

Thus the .ri counts backwards.

Section 2, Chapter 3

In modern linear terms, backwards is usually right to left because modern teaching materials are written with a left to right bias. Reading goes from top to bottom. Traditional Chinese was written in vertical columns, from top to bottom, and read column by column from right to left. So in Chinese culture, "backwards" would be from bottom to top. This is exactly how the hexagrams are formed and read. This verticality demands of you, a participant in the universe of the Yi Jing, a recognition of a different world geometry. This vertical world view is spelled out immediately in the Great Commentary whose first words are, "Heaven is high (honorable), Earth is low." This tells you to look up to heaven (time) to see yourself in relation to time and down to earth (space) to see yourself in relation to spacea metaphysical instruction to look left and right before crossing the street These axioms of proper position dominate the instructions of the YiJing.
The six lines of a hexagram are numbered bypositionand sequence, and each of these positions has unique characteristics. The first and sixth positions are often unfavorable; they are the extremes. The second and fifth positions are favorable; they are the centers of the constituent trigrams, The fifth position is usually the position of great power. Third and fourth positions are indeterminate; they are in-between energies. A wave forms an apt picture of the dynamics of the lines.
4
3 6 5

7
/

S S
\

Inthe yao ci, the verbal explanation of the lines written by the Duke of Zhou, a general pattern emerges. In the first position there is often difficulty due to the energy required to start. The fifth position frequently has the strongest upward energy. The sixth is already cresting and moving towards a fall.
32

Inspiration for the original gua came to Fu Xi from He ru, "The Yellow River Map."
0000000

The Luo Shu, "The Luo River Writing," is relevant to the placement and direction of the gua.
.~. 000000000

• • • • • • • •

••

0 0 0

0 000 0

• • • •

••••••

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0

• •••• •••

0 000 0 0 •

•••• •

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Both diagrams attempt to mirror the universe with the placement of simple numerical symbols. Our solar system, or ourselves as individuals, are placed as the fundament of a star map. Yin and yang are the guides. All dark groups are yin and even. All light groups are yang and odd. Legend has it that the Yellow River Map first appeared on a dragon horse which arose from the Yellow River with this design on its back. The Luo River Writing appeared on the back of a giant tortoise in the Luo River. The last sighting was attributed to the GreatYu, Emperor of China (circa 2255 B.C.). The sequence of trigrams according to Fu Xi or King Wen, the sixtyfour hexagrams, The Yellow River Map and The Luo River Writing, form the nonverbal base for the Yi Jing. This base arises from numbers and geometry, and is modified by the music of rhythm and time, to embrace the global resonance of our worlds.

The Jdeogr-ams as XiaV\g,Jmages

Esteem for Esteem for Esteem for Esteem for
The Yi hasfour ways for sage men.

its explanation in words. its changes in movements. its symbols in the fashioning of vessels. the oracle in the practice of divination.
Section 1, Chapter 10

Great Commentary,

The Chinese ideogram represents an idea or ideas rather than a single word. Thus ideograms are also xiang, "images." They are symbols of the world in process. Every language evolves and changes over time. Just as Chaucer's English was different from the English we use today, Chinese ideograms have changed since ancient times.
33

This etymological essay will delineate key ideograms and phrases in the Yi Jing, to draw out their meanings as they were used indivinatory rituals around 1100B.C. The oracle bone inscriptions are the oldest known source of Chinese ideograms. Divination through scapulimancy in the Shang Dynasty (1766-1122B.C.)used the scapulae of bulls and the plastron of tortoises in divinatory rituals. Many times the questions and outcomes of these oracular consultations were inscribed on bones. Libraries of these oracle bones were discovered in 1899A.D. and scholars began to study and interpret them. Bronze sacrificial vessels cast at the time of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties are another important source of ideograms. Some of these vessels had inscriptions cast into them. Most of the inscriptions were very short, but some were longer, describing the events which lead to the fabrication of the vessel. Narratives about King Wen and the Duke of Zhou are found on certain bronzes, and items from this period are of special interest to scholars. Ancient Chinese dictionaries are also fine sources of information about the development of the ideograms. Most classical dictionaries follow the lead of Shuo Wen Jie Zi compiled by Xu Shen -$lf ~ around 200A.D. The characters from this period, the Han Dynasty, are called the xiao zhuan I~" ,the small seal characters. By examining the development of certain key ideograms, we can begin to understand the Yi of the Yi Jing.

*-

The central theme is encompassed by the ideogram yi Jb ,which means "ease, easy, to change." Yi has two lines of origin. The first shows that the ideogram may represent an animal - a lizard or perhaps a chameleon. The second shows the sun over the moon, indicating periods or times of change. In both images change is natural and easy.

Vi

Change thus is easily understood.

oracle bone

Great Commentary, Section I, Chapter 1

4 \-, -;. p
1'/

bronze inscriptions:;'J

0,

The usual etymology of the small seal character is a pictograph showing a lizard, possibly a chameleon. The head is on top, and the bottom represents the feet and tail. The bronze inscriptions show two forms which substantiate another derivation. They show the sun ri a , on top, over a negative wu 1Q •
34

<) small seal

';;')

.G

The oracle bones reveal something else. The or ~ is a picture of the moon. In the compound ming sr-i ' the oracle bones have 48 which shows the moon, as being ~, p . Certainly the phases of the moon are a universal symbol of change. The three lines to the side of the pictograph may represent the rays of the sun. On the bronze vessels in the period of King Wen, yi Jb was used as the standard abbreviation for xi 4~ , meaning "a gift, to grant, to confer," and many times xi was used for an imperial gift. The Yi ling then might mean, "The Book of Gifts."

,e~ ,

ft

3ing ~ Jing, "book, classic, a channel, to pass through, to manage, to plan, the warp of a fabric, constant, a standard of conduct." ~ro~e . small mscnptions )f. seal R--;s:.. The picture is clearly a 100m with a bobbin or skein of thread next to it, a poetic reference to Fu Xi who taught the people the use of string to make records and to make nets. Combined with Yi, this would mean "The Loom of Changes."

~f ~l

om

the changes.

The iuan ~

speak of symbols. The individual lines speak of

Section I, Chapter 3

Great Commentary,

Within the Yi ling, tuan is an esoteric name given to the gua ci, the explanation of the entire hexagram as attributed to King Wen. The word tuan shares parallels to xiang which means "symbol, image." As a pictograph, tuan depicts an animal; today it would be a hedgehog or porcupine. Anciently it represented the head of a boar with protruding tusks. I believe this was a shaman's mask. Tuan is a melding of a shamanistic image and verbal instruction of the hexagram. At first the tuan seem very simple. A handful of words are used over and over. The repetition of these words gives them a ritual function. The repeated words become xiang in their own right, they are images and omens spoken by the oracle. The text of the Yi ling begins with four evocative words. These words appear in various combinations in many tuan._

e:

yuan

ic..J

heng

When cracking open the cosmic forces to allow for divination, the primal power must be approached with care. The diviner is like a tuning fork, vibrating to the resonances emitted from heaven, man, and earth. An oracular utterance should placate the spirits and praise the power of
35

Ii

-J!.l

zhen ~

the oracle in order to be propitious for the act of divination. This utterance should be simple, for easy recall in order to avert mistakes. In the Yi Jing, I believe these four words: yuan, heng, li, zhen, which appear in many gua ci, are a formula for incantantion. The first revelation making a link with the cosmos starts with the origin.
yL\OI'\

Yuan, "the first cause, the head, thechlef, great, good, large." oracle bronze small 7:,bone inscriptions 7) seal rc, The pictograph shows that which is on top ,uponaman JL • The number associated with yuan is one. This first ideogram reaches out to the universal consciousness of the number one and the first position in any continuum of space/time. "In the beginning ..." - what other books have started in this way? The pictograph has other connotations which are readily apparent. The strokes rt: represent a man's legs, his method of movement. The lines .=: on top are the ancient character meaning "above," or "on top" and also the number two. Thus, in a character which represents the number one, we also have the movement to the next symboltwo.

itJ

7f

Heng, lito pervade, success, fortunate, to persevere." oracle A ~ bronze ~ t3' small 1>- /t;.. bone ~ 0 inscriptions t) ® seal The etymology of heng shows that the ancient character evolved into two modem ideograms - heng ,with the meanings listed above, and xiang ~ ,meaning lito receive, to enjoy, to present offering in sacrifice, to accept a sacrificial offering." Inancient times, the same pictograph stood for all these meanings. The picture was probably a representation of the temple in which the sacrifice was made. The bottom symbol 0 , 0 , ~ may represent the gift used as the offering. The number associated with heng is two. When we consider heng within the framework of incantation, the ideogram of heng ,couldbeheng'1 withthekou C ,"mouth," radical added. This means a moaning or a grunting sound. The character doubled - heng, heng - represents a hum, and humming brings to mind the idea of a chanted incantation. These connotations of humming or chanted utterances underscore the idea of sacrifice, since a primary meaning ofheng is "success." My opinion is thathengmust be translated on its primary level of "sacrifice" or "sacrificial offering."

Hel'\9

e~

if

36

Li, "profit, advantage, gain; sharp, cutting." oracle ~1 bronze J small :)II, bone ~ inscriptions fJ seal - tf'1 The picture is Ii ~, a knife used to cut he ,"grain." The pictograph of grain is a mu plant with a ripe ear. The meaning of Ii ~~ is well established. The ideas of gain and advantage, especially in relation to reaping a harvest, are clear notions to all peoples. As in heng, the addition of kou t:l' ,"a mouth," in front of the ideogram gives us a symbol of Ii t4~ ,with a non-verbal sound or noise. This is another possible reference to the sounds of incantation. The image of li ~ ,"a reaping knife or scythe, a cutting down," is an opposite notion to yuan 7L ,"the beginning." Yet the death of one creature, the grain plant, will sustain and nourish another creature, man. The idea of nourishment is a motif which runs throughout the Yi Jing. On another level, the grain reaped in harvest also becomes the seed. The number associated with li is three.

~d

Li

t.

'*-

;:t...

Zhett
~ Zhen, "to inquire by divination, the lower trigram in the hexagrams of the Yi Jing, virtuous, chaste, lucky, upright, correct, pure." oracle ~ bronze r:!1 small ... bone R inscriptions ~ seal ~ The picture is of a bei ~ ,"a cowrie shell," which was used for money, and pu ~ meaning "divination by scapulimancy." Their combination may be a reference to the payment or "offerings" given for a divination. The ideogram pu ~ ,represents the cracks which occurred when a bone or shell was heated in the process of divination. The meanings of"lucky, correct, upright," maybe expansions of the idea of paying for your fortune, reiterating the idea of sacrificial offering. The humor implicit in the double entendre "you are virtuous when you pay for your divination," is the same today, as when Christians, or any church-goers, put money into offering baskets. The number associated with zhen is four. These 'four words, singly and in combination, are predominant in the gua ci throughout the Yi Jing. Their repetition reinforces their use as liturgy - since this is the text which begins each hexagram. This start provides a propitious shelter and umbrella for the remainder of the ritual and divination. How can these four words be translated? On the primary level, I propose the following meaning.

37

yuan -fu
the origin

hengy
a sacrificial offering

u -*~
to profit

zhen ~
the divination

Two other words which appear many times in the gua ci are you andfu ~ ,which always appear together. Theyapparentlyshare the same design, that of a formula incantation, and personal instruction to the diviner.

1f

i§"

You, lito have, to exist, to be, there is, there are, there were."

l!OI-i

bronze inscriptions

/j l

PJ

small seal

fI. L

The picture may be interpreted in two ways. The first is the yue il ,lImoon,"initsmonthlydarkeningasiftherewerea ~t ,T , shou.hand over it The second isahand ~ holding a sacrificial offering of rou.R ' "meat," or a hand holding an object, showing possession.
~ ~ sincere."

Fu, "to hatch, to brood upon, to trust in, to have confidence in,

bronze inscriptions

1.

small seal

cr
7- , "her
young," with her

zhao d, ," claws." The simple translation would seem to be "have confidence, be sincere." The imagery suggests a conscious extrapolation in the combination of a hand shadowing the moon, and a brooding hen's claws covering her young. Inkeeping with the Daoist philosophy of yin/yang, this image is fraught with opposites. What can be a more ephemeral symbol of possession than holding the moon in one's hand? The time of nestling is a fragile time of confidence and security. I believe this phrase includes not just the simple meaning of "have confidence, be sincere" but also is one of caution and a pointed statement to take the frailty of things or actions into account. The time of hatching is the climax of waiting, but it is also a time of danger. Twenty-three of the first thirty hexagrams open the gua ci with one or more of these six words: yuan f't..J , heng Ii ~~, zhen ~ , yu.fj , fu ~. Twenty-three of the latter thirty-four hexagrams repeat the formula in the gua d. Moreover, the remaining gua ci have many of these formula words in the middle or end of their composition. What other levels of meaning are evident? Besides the first level of

This shows a bir

covering her zi

t'

38

primitive societies, this shell has been prized for its own beauty as well as a totemistic emblem of the visible female sex. The levels of meaning juxtaposed in zhen, the cowrie, female, and vessel seem appropriate. In its utility as a vessel, the ding (or is it the zhen?) gives us a third stage of interpretation. The clue is the number four. The four words of the gua ci have been used to represent the numbers one, two, three and four, as well as the four seasons in Chinese literary allusion. The following diagram shows that allusion to be founded on a base which is specific.
heng south flourishing summer
2

west harvesting autumn

Ii

3 zhen north storing winter

4

yuan east ori~ina ting sprmg

The four seasons and their respective qualities, originating, flourishing, harvesting and storing, are interdependent. Their relationship is evoked when any of these images are used, singly or in combination. Within the structure of a hexagram there are two trigrams. Throughout the history of the Yi Jing, the lower of these trigrams has been known as zhen ~ , the same zhen we have just explored. The upper trigram has been known as hui t.$f . Why they have named them as such has been a puzzle and mystery: I propose the following speculation. The major drive of ancient shamanistic ritual was to influence fecundity. The worldwide use of talismans depicting genitalia, both male and female, as good luck charms is both ancient and contemporary. What picture can be pieced together from the evidence? The carefully chiselled grooves in the bones used for scapulimancy looked like this: ® ' ® ' 0 ' (!) . For one looking for correspondences, the female genitals and the opening of the cowrie shells may well be represented by the same pictures. Then fire, the penetrating male element, was introduced. Pu ~ , lito divine," may represent the male organ. The bone was cracked. Moreover, the heat could have been applied in the form of a heated probe, a sequence imitating copulation. The Promethean aspects of the above should be clear to anyone who has ever tried to make fire using a board and spindle. Such an answer responds well to zhen ~ , but how about hui tJJ- ?
40

The picture for hui is similar. The ancient character was written not with the heart radical in front, but as follows with the pu lito divine," radical on the right side. We have no earlier source for the character than the small seal characters, but perhaps this is enough. The ideogram, mei is written as a compound of plants ~ or grasses tJ1 ' and female, a mother. In contemporary Chinese, mei means "all, every," but the root meanings s~m to say a female who produces prolifically, like grass. The picture, if taken to read grass-like, hairy growth on a female, could also mean the luxuriant head of hair on a healthy woman, or the hair of a woman ready and able to conceive, the pubic hair. The } pu, "to divine", serves again the yin/yang symbol of male and female togetherness in reproduction. The phrase you hui 1r ~ , when it occurs in the Yi Jing is usually interpreted "to have regrets," but it might be replaced with "be fecund" or something close to this more primal image. Why has there been such a change in the character hui, lito regret and repent"? Perhaps it echoes the Latin phrase, "post coitum triste."

4Ji- '

4-

'RespoV\ses

f... the om

O ... acle

Oracular answers in the process of divination have been known to be ambiguous and obscure. Luckily, in the Yi Jing, certain ideograms representing good fortune and misfortune seem to be clear. Their etymologies lead to strange and powerful images.

if Ji, "good fortune, lucky, fortunate, auspicious, happy, favorable, propitious." oracle bronze ~::t: small ± /' bone ~ inscriptions 1:7 seal t:1 • This response occurs twenty-four times in the gua ci, the explanation of the hexagram, and 114 times in the yao ci, the explanation of the lines. The earliest dictionaries say the picture is of speech from the gou, "mouth" of shi, "sages," Two other interpretations are that the symbol shi '±- ,is an altered picture of tu .±. , "earth, ground," which in turn was a phallic symbol of fecundity represented by a totem planted on the earth. Another speculation is that the -r or 'tr- symbol means that the "mouth, vessel, or dish," ~ was full, meaning "abundance," and consequently, "good fortune."

3i

41

Xiotl9 Xiong, "unfortunate, unlucky, cruel, evil, sad."

small seal

00

The picture represents a hole in the earth, a pitfall. The ideogram occurs eight times in the gua ci, explanation of the hexagram, and fifty times in the yao ci, explanation of the lines.

-:7t.,

Wt.t
Wu, "no, without, a negative."
.:f

""l The pictograph is of a man an obstacle in vain. ~

small seal

small seal

:k.
3it.t

who exerts;t;

himself against

]iu,"inauspicious omen, calamity, a fault, error."

The Han dictionaries say the pictograph is of a man and the word ge ~ ,meaning "each, all." The oracle bone character for ge is ~ , showingafootandamouth tJ . Bronze inscriptions show ~ ,M!E ' a foot, a mouth and the symbol zhi :1 ,"to walk." If the Ideogram means "error" or "inauspicious omens," then the classic unfortunate with his foot in his mouth seems apt. The problem is the symbol ~ on the right side which looks like pu ~ ,"to divine." The extended meaning might be the man who walks without listening to the instruction of the divination. Wu jiu could be translated, "May there be no inauspicious omens ... It appears in most instances as another ritualistic saying, meaning" to " forestall calamity." On another level, when understood as "no error" or "no inauspicious omens," it provides a neutral ground between fortune and misfortune.

Numbe ... as XiaV\9 s

Numbers can serve as xiang, images and symbols, in the same way that trigrams, hexagrams, and words are xiang. Simplistically, words are names; numbers are measures. Time is also a measure. Words can describe different periods of time such as dawn, noon or evening, but most words which concern time have numbers built into them: week (7), month (3~),year (365).These number attributes are built into the mechanism of the Yi Jing. The trigram is a
42

picture of the number three. The ancient ideograms for the first four numbers were lines stacked on top of one another. ___ one two three four Inmodem times the number four has been changed, but the one, two and three remain the same. The trigram embodies a world structure based on the triad of heaven, man and earth. These units of three are expanded to the eight trigrams, which are multiplied by eight (eight to the second power) to result in the sixty-four hexagrams. The idea of using eight as a set, as a number multipliedbyitselfto get sixty-four, throws us into a new system of measurement. Putting the world into a system where the base denominator is eight conjures up a very different world view. We have no language to describe such a world view - and that is precisely the point. To use the Yi Jing, we must measure the world differently. It is the same world, but our yard stick is of a different length than everyday reality, so normal functions must be remembered and reinterpreted. InChinese culture, simple numbers and what they represent may help us to more fully interpret the use of numbers in the Yi Jing. 1. The Dao, Unity. 2. Yin and yang. 3. The triad of heaven, man and earth. 4. The four seasons or the four xiang. 5. Wu Xing, the Five Dynamic Forces of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. 6. The six directions: east, south, west, north, zenith and nadir. The four seasons, also named the four xiang, define a time continuum of predictable, wavelike actions. Numbers are thus an integral code in the space and time of the Yi Jing. In the Great Commentary, the first section of Chapter Nine is an essay on numerology and how to build a hexagram through the use of yarrow stalks. Employed are simple counting measures: subtraction and addition, the division of physical counters (the yarrow stalks) and most importantly, the substitution of numbers according to a set standard. Subtraction, addition and division are ordinary manipulations, but the process of substitution may have been the secret to unlocking the numerical code of the Yi Jing. Certaindivinatory techniques were known only by an inner circle. Let us follow the language of Chapter Nine. Odd numbers are yang and correspond to heaven. Even numbers are yin and correspond to earth. Fifty is the number of the "Great Flow," the circadian cycle of the day. The ancient Chinese used a water clock called a clepsydra, which
43

divided the day into fifty time units. Two daily measures were used: a 12-hour day with each time unit equal to two hours of our time, and the water clock which divided the day into fifty equal units of 28.3 minutes each. I believe that the use of fifty yarrow stalks in the divination process comes from this analogy. One yarrow stalk is always put aside at the beginning of a divination. I propose that one yarrow stalk equals one unit of time, and putting aside one stalk symbolizes that human manipulation can never encompass the totality of time, that the universe of the one Dao is never-ending. The remaining forty-nine stalks. are divided into two piles, one representing heaven, the second representing earth. One pile will always have an odd number of stalks, the other will always have an even number. Implied in these two piles are two sequences of time: yang or celestial time, and yin or earth time. Another single yarrow stalk is taken from the right-hand pile and placed in between the fingers of the left hand. This single yarrow stalk, I believe, represents the human factor. It is the vertical line in the ideogram wang .:E. , liking," the one who unites the triad of heaven, man and earth. Four yarrow stalks, representing the four seasons, the four xiang, are subtracted as a unit from one pile and then from the other until the remaining stalks of the left pile are placed between the ring and middle fingers, and the remainder of the right pile is placed between the middle and forefinger - all on the left hand. The number of stalks in the hand will always be either nine or five. I believe this ritual subtraction by fours from the celestial pile and from the earth pile symbolizes an attempt to reconcile the differences between earth time, the lunar earth year of 360 days, and the solar celestial year of 365 days. Then the first yarrow stalk between the ring finger and little finger is discarded, I believe, to put aside the influences of man. Thus nine becomes eight and five becomes four. Eight yarrow stalks is considered a double unit and assigned the number two. Four yarrow stalks is considered a complete unit and assigned the number three. This substitution of numbers -two for eight and three for fourimplies distilled logical thought and possibly magic as the basis of substitution. Four is a complete unit. Four seasons make a year. Also, four units on the water clock approximate an ancient hour, thus the day was divided into twelve instead of twenty-four hour-like units. Finally, four equalling three - does this mean four xiang equals a trigram of three lines? Thus eight, as a double unit represented by the number two, also represents two times three equalling six, possibly the lines of a hexagram.
44

From the manipulations of the yarrow stalks which leave us with ..:.remainders, substitutions and totals, we arrive at the numbers 6 major yin, equal to a changing line _ _ 7 minor yang, equal to a unchanging line 8 minor yin, equal to a unchanging line __ 9 major yang, equal to a changing line -_ which create the character of the individual yao lines and subsequently the character of the total hexagram. In every culture, one of the first shamanistic controls was the naming of objects. Identifying and naming a creature or object was a means of controlling it. Naming something categorized it and bestowed fortune or misfortune, even life or death. Is it the viper or garden snake? Is it Death Angel or edible amanita? In magical procedures, the nameword itself becomes imbued with the physical reality. I propose that numbers in the Yi ling enjoy the same potential as do words, especially in reference to time. If this control of time with numbers is true, then the manipulation of numbers allows one to manipulate time. In this way, the Yi and the user of the Yi ling can bypass and infiltrate standard sequences of time through the manipulation of yarrow stalks which represent units of time. Divit'latiot'l There are three possible ways to divine with the Yi ling: 1. Throwing coins 2. Manipulation of yarrow stalks 3. Scapulimancy Each of these methods has as its goal the discovery of the appropriate hexagram. The format of inquiry may be simple or formal. If simple, I suggest these procedures: Wear loose, comfortable clothing. Meditate in either a standing or sitting position, for five to twenty minutes, facing south, until the entire body is relaxed. Write your question on a blank piece of paper. Use no more than nine words. Use this same piece of paper to draw the hexagram. The Coit'l Ot"ade In ancient China cowrie shells were used for money. Originally, cowrie shells may have been tossed in the ritual of divination. Todaywe simply take three coins of like denomination and toss them onto a mat of coarse, white paper. Each toss determines a line, so six tosses are necessary to form a hexagram. Old Chinese coins are best, but coins of
45

any denomination or shape may be used. Heads are yin and have a value of two. Tails are yang and have a value of three. Adding the values of the three coins with each toss will give you the character of the line as follows: Three heads equals six, a changing yin line. Three tails equals nine, a changing yang line. One head and two tails equals eight, an unchanging yin line. Two heads and one tail equals seven, an unchanging yang line. The hexagram is drawn from the bottom up, with the position of the lines being numbered one to six. The first toss of the coins will give line one, drawn as the bottom of the hexagram, and the sixth toss will yield line six at the top. (See page 45for lines.) If a hexagram consists of all unchanging lines, i.e., all sevens and eights, then the titleofthe hexagram, the names, attributes and interactions of the two constituent trigrams, and King Wen's explanation of the hexagram, the gua ci, form the Yi Jing's response and instruction. When the value of a line is either six or nine, it is used to draw a secondary hexagram. A changing line is one which changes to its opposite (yin becomes yang, or yang becomes yin) in the making of this second hexagram. The unchanging lines continue in the same spaces in the secondary hexagram. If a hexagram has changing lines, i.e., either sixes or nines, the explanation of each changing line by the Duke ofZhou, the yao ci, must be considered. Because the changing lines give rise to a secondary hexagram, the title, the constituent trigrams, and the gua ci of the second hexagram should also be considered. The text regarding the changing lines in the second hexagram is not considered. A formal inquiry of the Yi Jing requires the use of fifty dried yarrow stalks. In ancient China, the yarrow plant grew on graves, so using the yarrow for divination, for communicating with the ancestral spirits, was a natural choice. The yarrow stalks can be used with either a short or an extensive ritual. The short ritual is similar to the one for the coins. The more elaborate ritual begins the night before the oracular seance. Cleansing the whole body, refraining from the loss of qi energy or the emission of seminal essence, means the evening and the night before should be spent in meditation or quietude. Consulting the Yi Jing takes place in the morning shortly after sunrise. Ablutions are made by washing the hands and face. Libations are given by pouring wine onto the earth. Incense is burned to communicate with heaven. A sacrificial offering is pledged and given to heaven,
46

The \!a .... w Stalk O .. de o o

- man, and earth. Your question is written on a blank piece of paper. Using either a mat on the floor, or a table facing south, take up fifty yarrow stalks. Put one aside. The remaining forty-nine stalks are divided randomly into two piles. One stalk is taken from the right pile and placed between the ring finger and the little finger of the left hand, then the left pile is also placed in the left hand. The right hand takes bundles of four stalks from it until there are four stalks or less remaining. These remaining stalks are placed between the ring finger and the middle finger of the left hand. Now the right pile is counted off by four in the same manner and the remaining stalks are placed between the middle finger and forefinger of the left hand. The number of stalks between the fingers of the left hand will be either nine or five. The possible permutations are 1+4+4,1+3+1,1+2+2, or 1+1+3. At this first counting, the first stalk held between the ring finger and the little finger is subtracted. Thus, 9 becomes 8, or 5 becomes 4. The number 4 is considered a complete cycle and unit and is assigned the numerical value of 3. The number 8 is considered a double unit and is assigned a numerical value of2. So if at this first counting, there are 2 stalks between the fingers of the left hand, they count as 2; if there are ~ stalks between the fingers of the left hand, they count as l. These stalks are now put aside. The remaining stalks are gathered together and divided into two piles again. One stalk is taken from the right pile and placed between the ring finger and little finger of the left hand. Then the same procedure as above is carried out. This time the number of stalks between the fingers of the left hand is either 8 or 4. The possibilities are 1+4+3, or 1+3+4, 1+1+2,or 1+2+1. The counts as~. The i counts asJ.. These stalks are now put aside. The remaining stalks are gathered, divided, and counted a third time. The stalks between the fingers of the left hand will be either 8 or 4, with the numerical values of 2 or 3. The sum of the three numerical values gives us the nature of the line.

When the sum equals 9: 5 stalks = 4 4stalks=4 4 stalks= 4

value 3 value 3 value a

9

The nature of the line is 9, yang, positive, a changing line, and must be considered in the consultation with the oracle. The explanation of the individual lines, the yao ci, becomes part of the instruction. The line is written -e-.

47

When the sum equals 6: 9 stalks = 8 8 stalks = 2 8stalks=2

value 2 value 2 value 2

6

The nature of the line is 6, yin, negative, a changing line, and the explanation of the individual lines, the yao ci, becomes part of the instruction and must be considered. The line is written

*.

Possible permutations when the sum is 7: 9 stalks = 8 value 2 or 5 stalks = 4 value 3 or 9 stalks = 8 value 2 4 stalks = 3 value 3 8 stalks = 2 value 2 8 stalks = 2 value 2 8 stalks = 2 value 2 4 stalks = 3 value a 8 stalks = 2 value 2
7 7
7

The nature of the line is 7, yang, unchanging, positive, at rest, and not considered in the instruction. The line is written -. Possible permutations when the sum is 8: 9 stalks = 8 value 2 or 5 stalks = 4 value 3 or 5 stalks = 4 value 3 4 stalks = 3 value 3 4 stalks = 4 value 3 8 stalks = 2 value 2 4 stalks = 3 value a 4 stalks = 3 value a 8 stalks = 2 value 2 The nature of the line is 8,yin, unchanging, negative, at rest and not considered in the instruction. The line is written - - . This procedure is repeated sixtimes todetennine the nature of the sixlines of the hexagram as it is built from the base to the top. O.-ade b~ Scapl-\lil1'\at'\c~ This method was employed by the ancient diviners who used the Yi Jing. No precise instructions have survived on the proper use of this practice, but a grasp of itsbasic principles sheds valuable light on the use of linear images in divination. Scapulimancyemploys the scapula of a bull or the plastron of a tortoise. Carefully chiseled circles or ovals were carved or drilled into the bone and heat was applied. The drilled circles represent dragon holes, points of power and force where energy flows and accumulates. The heat caused the bone to crack, usually radiating from the cuts. Scapulimancy symbolizes the interaction between heaven, man and earth. Heat, representing heaven, in the form of flame or a heated probe, was introduced by man, the diviner, to flat plates of bone which represented earth. From these points, cracks emerged, lines of energy manifest. They are like animal trails leading to and from a spring, tracks of atoms in a cloud chamber, or lines on a person's face. These lines or
48

cracks give us an image of what has been, and the outline of what is to come. The practice of scapulimancy creates a visual image of divination. The combination of lines are meant to be images of ideas that are extraordinary- they are beyond words. So we see by analogy that the linear cracks on the shell may equal the linear patterns of the gua. This is one way of using linear patterns in divination. In totality, the Yi ling is a mirror and a reflection of the myriad configurations of the universe. Angle, position and time can change its focus. Certain perceptions and events may be blurred or clear, depending on the insight of the user. The oracle takes the person who petitions it, and their intention, into account. The Yi ling has been used with great success and advantage in divination, but remember it is a mirror and reflects backwards.

49

Heaven Heaven

,HexaSl"am One
.:!;~ .

~'-' Qian:

Heaven, Male, The CI"eative

Gua C;:

jt yuan rc..J heng ~ Ii:4-D zhen ~ QIAN: The origin, a sacrificial offering, profit the divination.
qian

Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines):

9-1

yong It) Lying hidden, the dragon. No useful action. 9-2 jian ~ long 1L zai i{f tian ~ See the dragon in the field. u ~U jian L da A ren i/«: Advantageous to see the Great Man. 9-3 jun ):, zi 'f" zhong ~ ri r:J qian:lt qian The superior man to the end of the day is creative and active. xi;' ti ruo ~ li ~ wu 7t. jiu ~ In the evening, apprehensive. Danger. No inauspicious omens. 9-4 huo ~ yue ~ zai -ti yuan i1ffl wu -1L jiu t} Someone jumping in the abyss. No inauspicious omens. 9-5 fei ~ long zai {! tian:;"" Flying dragons in the heavens.
-IzJ

~tt long 1t wu

~t

If'

it

9-6

li .:1-'1 jian L da *.. ren "'Advantageous to see the Great Man. kang iu long you ~ hui ~ The high dragon has regrets.

it

All lines are 9: jian;{. qun)Zf Jong1t wu 1~shou ii ji :!! Behold the company of dragons without a head. Good fortune. Qian represents the yang force of yin and yang, the primordial energies which make up the binary manifestation of the Dao. Composed
50

of six solid yang lines, its character includes all yang attributes and correspondences: heaven, light, male, being creative, being firm, and the movement of opening. The ideogram qian shows the qi energy of air -L, of ethers ascending towards and descending from the sun a ,which in this symbol is bracketed by plants .::: . This presents a picture strikingly similar to photosynthesis, the energy cycle which is the basis for all life on earth. For the recipient of this hexagram, qian means action ascendant, a time for doing. The gua ci is a magical invocation, "Qian: The origin, a sacrificial offering, profit the divination." These four ideograms correspond to the four seasons, and this correspondence draws attention to the importance of appropriate timing in our actions. The four ideograms in sequence also provide an outline of the ritual of divination. The first ideogram, yuan 7G, means" the first, the head, the origin, the principal, good, great and large." Symbolically, yuan can stand for the whole of the Yi Jing. It may seem strange that the first word in a book of divination should be yuan, yet the origins of an action, or a person, often reveal the future. When asking the oracle a question, it is important to have some understanding of its antecedents. The first step in divination is to look at the immediate situation, and then to look back to the origin of that situation. The son is to the father as the father is to the son. The second step is heng it ' "a sacrificial offering." In divination it is necessary to offer ritual sacrifices to heaven, earth, and benevolent spirits. The spirits are nourished by the qi of well-cooked food, by incense, by aromas which rise to entice assistance from the spirit plane. But most important is the commitment to honor the spiritual world, to honor the relationship between heaven, man and earth. This brings us to the third step li;:f.~ , lito profit." The ideogram also means "toharvest," or"to cut stalks of grain with a scythe." To profit you must reap a harvest, you must cut what is ripe to nourish the continuation of life. Li shows that death and life form an organic whole. The ritual completion is zhen ~ , "to divine, lucky, pure." Divination is the fourth step, the goal of the Yi Jing. 9-1 The first line, "Lying hidden, the dragon. No useful action." Chinese dragons are diametrically opposite to European dragons. The Chinese dragon is not a fire dragon; it is a wa ter dragon. It represents thunder, the electric charge of lightning, and the creative explosion of light, water and air. Chinese dragons are qi, the qi of water and ether rising, exactly the same as the picture nascent in qian it 'the title of this hexagram. Here the dragon is hidden. This ideogram qian shows a pool

51

of water, shui -1 ' having swallowed the sun a. This dragon forms a fecund image of hidden energy, of deep potential, of waiting, of possible photolysis. The instruction is clearly to be patient. 9-2 The second line, "See the dragon in the field. Advantageous to see the Great Man." The dragon is in the field. Action has started, but before definitive goals and direction have been established, it is advantageous to seek advice. The phrase" Advantageous to see the Great Man" occurs many times in the lines of the Yi Jing. I believe the Great Man is another name for the Chief Diviner who performs the rituals for divination. Divine for me my dreams. What dreams are of good fortune? They have been of bears and grisly bears. They have been of cobras and serpents. The Chief Diviner will divine them. The Are The Are bears and grisly bears auspicious omens of the sons. cobras and serpents auspicious omens of daughters. Shi ling (The Classic of Poetry), Part 2, Book 4, Ode 6

The references to the Great Man in the Yi ling and the Shi ling are the two ideograms for great A. , and man ",,-. The references are identical in each text. In contemporary life, the instruction would be to seek outside advice from an experienced adult, someone who has experience with the Yi Jing or with divination. 9-3 The third line, "The superior man to the end of the day is creative and active. Inthe evening, apprehensive. Danger. No inauspicious omens." The superior man is another major actor in the Yi Jing. His attributes are that of a prince, a man of action. The use of qian to explain the actions of the superior man draws attention to the active value of yang. Daylight is the time of yang, the time for action. Light and intelligence are essential to clear action. Obversely, the coming of darkness will obscure actions. Twilight or evening mandates wariness and non-action. If this caution is followed, even if there is a danger in the dark, no problems will ensue. 9-4 The fourth line, "Someone jumping in the abyss. No inauspicious omens." Who is jumping? Is it man or dragon or both? The ideogram yue
52

shows afoot li- ,abird l ,andfeathers i1~ . Thisisashamanistic picture ofleaping about and dancing, a ritual to promote creativity. The abyss ideogram, yuan, is fashioned from the symbols for water and vortex, the whirlpool of constant, overwhelming phenomena. The recipient of this line must jump free of the whirlpool of everyday life. 9-5 The fifth line, "Flying dragons in the heavens. Advantageous to see the Great Man." . The dragon is in the sky. Everything is in its proper place. But even when things seem to be in place, it is important to seek wise counsel. 9-6 The sixth line, "The high dragon has regrets." All life is cyclical. The vapors of the dragon have reached the upper line of the hexagram, the sky, and now the vapor precipitates into tears, into rain falling back to earth, to begin again the cycle of ascent and descent. So it iswith men, high position is temporal, descent from the top is a natural movement. "Alllines are 9. Behold the company of dragons without a head. Good fortune." Only the first and second hexagrams have this extra yao d. In the first hexagram, all yang lines are changing, so they become the second hexagram, and vice versa. This is a perfect expression of the yin/yang motif. In this last line we see a general movement, a community action without a head, perhaps even a democracy. In this instance, it is good fortune. Innature, this last line might represent cumulus clouds moving across the sky, but without thunderheads. Inany case, it is time for group action and transformation of the whole. XuShen's dictionary defines long, "dragon," as the archetype of all animals that swim or crawl. It is able to be visible or invisible, tiny or huge, short or long. Inspringtime it can ascend to the heavens; in autumn it lies hidden in the watery abyss. The ideogram follows the pictograph for flesh and a flying form.

53

__

----__

Gal'th Cal'th

t-Iexae.. am Two Kw'\ I 6a..t~ Female, The Receptive

Gua Ci: ~ yuan 1L heng u 1:I! pin tit rna \ffo KUN: The origin, a sacrificial offering, profitable, like a mare zhi ;(.. zhen ~ jun.,g zi of you 1j you ~~ wang il !, the divination. The superior man has a place to go to. xian ~ mi 3t. hou ~~ de ~ zhu ';1:.. u ~IJ If first, confusion. Following obtains mastery. Advantage in xi ~ nan \fl de ~ peng dong jf!.. bei-J.I:.. the west and south, obtains friends. To the east and north, sang ~ peng nij an ~ zhen JA ji ~ loses friends. Be peaceful. The divination: good fortune.

nn

Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 6-1 lu 1t shuang ~ jian bing >:K zhi ~ Walking the hoarfrost, solid ice is reached. 6-2 zhi jL fang '7j da j( bu l' xi Straight, square and great. No regrets. wu ~I-J bu ~ li 4~ Without doubt advantageous. 6-3 han 1;- zhang ke ~ zhen Hidden excellence is in the divination. huo ~\ cong 1Jt. wang 3:.. shi Perhaps pursue the king's business. wu cheng ~ you 1f zhong ~ No accomplishment has an end. 6-4 kuo:M; nang wu ~L.J jiu # wu 16 yu ~ Enveloped and bagged. No blame, no praise.

w-

1¥

-t

-A

ru

54

6-5 6-6

huang

it

shang

$..
~

yuan -1'L.J yu

ji ~ ye ~ huang ~ ~

Yellow lower garments.

long
Dragons

it zhan
warring

The origin of good fortune.

in the wilderness.

qi ~ All lines are 6:

xue .Jfrz. xuan

is black

Their blood

u i~ yong 7k.

and yellow.

zhen

Profit everflowing the divination. Kun represents the yin of yin and yang, the two manifestations of the Dao. The six broken lines symbolize the correspondences of earth, darkness, female, being receptive, being soft, the movement of closing, and all other yin attributes. The ideogram kun tf ,has two parts. On the left tu ~ ,is the character for earth. Originally drawn ]_, to show a shrine where sacrifice and reverence could be proffered, it suggests the meeting of earth and spirit. To the right is shen " . In ancient writings, its pictograph ~ portrayed lightning. Another meaning of shen is the seventh lunar mdJ1th, which begins the yin half of the year. For the recipient of Kun: be like the earth, be receptive as a mother. The instruction of this hexagram is that the second position is equally important as the first. Action and timing must be in the yin mode, for most importantly, kun means "two," the number two. The gua ci, "The origin, a sacrificial offering, profitable, like a mare !, the divination. The superior man has a place to go to. If first, confusion. Following obtains mastery. Advantage in the west and south obtains friends. To the east and north, loses friends. Be peaceful. The divination: good fortune." The gua ci resembles the gua ci of the first hexagram. The first three characters are part of the same ritual invocation, but in between li and zhen, there is pin rna zhi. Pin is the ideogram for a female animal. In this instance it modifies the following character, rna, "horse," thus meaning "mare." There is also a pun on the word rna. The word for "mother" in Chinese is rna, and the word for "horse" is rna. An echo of this pun and imagery of horses occurs in the Dao de Jing of Lao Zi.

The softest thing in the universe J~ chi .. ~ overcomes the hardest thing in the unioerse.
Chapter 43
55

cheng

Chi and cheng, translated together as "overcomes," both include the pictograph of a horse. The image is of yin galloping through yang. The Zhou Dynasty originated in the western part of China where horses were used extensively. Tribes were nomadic and horses were very important. In the Great Commentary to the Yi ling, there are different lists of correspondences for the trigrams (Chapter 11). Inone list the trigrams are likened to different breeds and different colors of horses. The gua ci continues, "The superior man has a place to go to." This hexagram represents the quality of being receptive, but it does not necessarily mean that one is passive. There can be activity in receptivity. "If first, confusion." The Yi ling is saying that you should remain in the second place. The first position will mean confusion. The next sentence has normally been interpreted as, "Following, obtains a master." However it can also mean, "Following obtains mastery." So in fact, the second place controls. I think the second interpretation is more in keeping with the devices of Kun. "Advantage in the west and south (southwest) obtains friends. To t~east and north (northeast), loses friends." Peng was anciently written . Besides meaning" friends" it can also stand for money, so in this sen ence there are two archaic explanations and two levels of meaning. The first is that you and your friend are as close as two strings of coins, two strings of cash, or in this case, two strings of cowrie shells. Cowries are shells which in ancient times were used as money. People wore their money on their belts, so friends were as "close as two strings of cowries." Cowrie shells also bear a likeness to the female genitalia, reinforcing the kun symbol, the female. The second level shows that this same archaic pictograph of peng also meant the phoenix. The phoenix is a yin symbol; it is coupled and in opposition to the dragon in the first hexagram. In Chinese myth, the phoenix is associated with song, so peng may also be an allusion to music. The ideogram peng encapsulates yin images and notations central to this hexagram. "Be peaceful. The divination: good fortune." Inthis last instruction of the gua ci, "peaceful" shows the figure of a woman under a roof. Clearly, the instruction is to be number two. The second position can be the controlling one. The prime minister can control the emperor, the wife can control the husband. The constraint of being in the second position is that one must assume the mask and mantle of the female. This is a time for subtle action, to act behind the scenes, rather than taking the stance of being up front and number one. In the lines we find yin images, images which are slightly hidden. 6-1 The first line, "Walking the hoarfrost, solid ice is reached." Water is the primary symbol of the Dao, an easily observed,

flowing, changing elemental force. It exists in many different forms. Water can become ice in autumn or winter, the yin, female part of the year. Solid water or ice is bound to earth; water vapor or clouds are part of heaven. Water unites heaven and earth with the flow of the Dao. Hoarfrost is slippery like ice,so caution and careful initial steps are indicated. But solid ice has a deep internal core; the energy of water has crystallized and will support new undertakings. 6-2 The second line, "Straight, square and great. No regrets. Without doubt advantageous." The boundaries and limits of earthly form can be great and beautiful, but we must be confident enough in our vision to stop and appreciate things as they are. When a thing or action is straight, when it has reached a perfected form, it needs no further modification. 6-3 The third line, "Hidden excellence is in the divination. Perhaps pursue the king's business. No accomplishment has an end." Han i' , "hidden," shows something held in the mouth, perhaps something unvoiced and unspoken. So something is kept hidden until the right time for exposure. "The king's business" would be important business. "No accomplishment has an end," means that if an accomplishment is true and real, good will flow from it without ceasing. 6-4 The fourth line, "Enveloped and bagged. No blame. No praise." Female, uterine, protective pictures make up this statement. Like "straight, square, and large," the phrase describes a certain functional reality. Boxes and bags contain things which are hidden. Intent and action are concealed, but pregnant with possibility. 6-5 The fifth line, "Yellow lower garments. The origin of good fortune." In Chinese culture, yellow is associated with earth; it is also the color of the center. So these are yin or inner garments. The quality of your inner, earthly self, when in harmony with the center, is the beginning of good fortune. 6-6 The sixth line, "Dragons warring in the wilderness. Their blood is black and yellow." This is the horizon, where heaven meets earth when dragons' energies are warring. Dragons represent thunder, lightning and rain. Yellow is earth. Purple-black is heaven. Contention comes because Kun, "earth," has overreached into the realm of heaven. This is a time of conflict and overexposure. II All lines are 6." The first and second hexagrams have an extra instruction at the end, and in the second hexagram it is, "Profit everflowing the divination." These instructions are very important because they set
57

the scene for the rest of the hexagrams. They are the yin and the yang, the light and the dark motif that we must keep in mind as we go through the Yi Jing. When all lines are six, they are poised to transform into yang, to light, to profit.

---__

Wate ..

t-Jexagl"'am Thl"'ee

;£.J
Gua Ci:
~

T L-I.n: SpI"'oL-l.ting

TUN:

yuan :ru heng ~ u ~'J zhen ~ The origin, a sacrificial offering, profit the divination. wu 1JJ yong)¥J you 1j you i~ wang it No use in having a place to go to. li ~j jian;t hou 1~ Advantage to establish feudal princes.

Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 9-1 pan huan ~ Ii ~~ ju A A huge rock and a white barked willow. Advantageous to stay, zhen ;jt li ~~ jian hou 1~ the divination. Advantage to establish feudal princes. 6-2 tun ~ ru ~'C chan ru --tc Breaking through is like turning around ....

-!

Jt

it

cheng ~ rna:rb ban It! ru-to A team of four horses of variegated colors....

fei fi kou hun .d~ gou ~ nu"* zi Not a highwayman, but a bridegroom to love the maiden. zhen ~ bu..::r\ zi ~ shi -r nian Jf- nai Jj zi The divination: no betrothal. Ten years, then betrothal.

~l

6-3

ji ~p lu wu 10 yu ~ To approach the stag without the forester. wei !ftt ru >; yu t lin #-. 'zhong Think. To enter into the forests' center.
58

Jl

"f'

jun~

zi of- ji ~. wang

bu;:1" ru ~ lin ~

she ~

The superior man is astute and sets it aside;

4i

6-4

qin .i.

for to go forward, regrets. cheng:t rna ,,~ ban Jjf. ru -ka A team of four horses of variegated colors....

hun ~~

gou ~

wang.#.

ji

Pray for a marriage and love. Go forward. Good fortune.

wu fu, bu l'
9-5

u ~~
xiao ~,

Without doubt advantageous.

tun ~

qi

-:Jt.

gao

zhen ~

,The sprouting of his riches. For the small, the divination: ji ~ da 1<.... zhen ~ xiong \2tI good fortune; for the large, the divination: misfortune.
6-6

cheng
A team

i.

rna ,1D

ban..
of variegated

ru ru-*a

of four horses

colors ....

"'*'"

qi ~

xue:lst.. lian ~

To weep blood, flowing water-like. Tun, "Sprouting," shows a sprout or a seed coming through the earth. It is a logical continuation of the first and second hexagrams - the first is male, the second female, and third is the sprout. The fragility of any being or action newly born is the concern of Tun. The first four words of the gua ci are the same as the invocation of the first hexagram. "Tun: The origin, a sacrificial offering, profit the divination. No use in having a place to go to. Advantage to establish feudal princes." In this fragile time, when things are just starting to grow, you should not move around - you should stay in one place. In planting, it is important to consider where a seed will be planted. The concept of territoriality is addressed in the Yi Jing. The phrase, Advantage to establish feudal princes," refers to the idea of territorial imperative. At the time of sprouting, you must define and protect your territory. This can be done by establishing princes who owe their fiefdom to you. The image of the growing sprout, whose roots reach out to nourish and establish itself, provides a natural metaphor for territoriality. For the recipient of Tun, the instruction is clear - perform the
59

-II

proper actions in a timely manner; stay centered in one place; and establish helpers and territory around yourself. 9-1 The first line, "A huge rock and a white barked willow. Advantageous to stay, the divination. Advantage to establish feudal princes." Pan is a rock that is as big as a boat. Huan is a white-barked willow or a white tree. Together they are territorial markers, signposts of home and familiar lands. Ju ,i shows an abode, or a place to remain, and finally there is a reiteration of "advantage to establish feudal princes." 6-2 The second line, "Breaking through is like turning around .... A team of four horses of variegated colors .... Not a highwayman, but a bridegroom to love the maiden. The divination: no betrothal. Ten years, then betrothal." "Breaking through" is growth, and turning around is a reference to the motion of the Dao, Growth, even the growth of a small plant breaking through the earth toward the sun, is part of the turning motion of the Dao. Cheng ma ban may be translated as "Mounted on a horse of variegated colors," that is, on a dappled or piebald horse. However, cheng can also mean "a team of four" - a configuration mentioned many times in ancient Chinese literature. A man riding a single dappled horse was an everyday occurrence, but a team of four horses of different colors would be a dramatic symbol to a bridal or marriage ceremony. In many cultures there was a ritual of stealing the bride. In this line we are told, "not a highwayman, but a bridegroom ...." You could tell he was not a highwayman because he came with this unusual team of horses. The ideogram ban~, shows the variegation in gemstones, like the lines of color in jade. Ten years between the agreement on a match and the actual betrothal might seem to be a long wait, but in ancient times, children were given in marriage by their parents. If a child was engaged at four years old, it would be at least ten years before the actual marriage took place. The use of the word zi ~ reinforces this; zi means "infant." When modifying nu "woman," it means a very young girl or maiden, and the title of the hexagram, Tun, shows a young seedling, a very young person. This hexagram gives us one method of establishing territory; young girl children were betrothed to adjacent nobility to establish familial roots of territory. Today, this yao ci may refer to planning for the long term. It depicts an alliance ten years in the making, where the outward appearance, the highwayman, disguises the true intent. 6-3 The third line, "To approach the stag without the forester. Think. To enter into the forests' center. The superior man is astute and

*,

60

sets it aside; for to go forward, regrets." Would you go into the middle of the forest without a guide? Would you approach a dangerous animal or a dangerous situation alone? The instruction is that the thinking man would not, for to proceed blindly will result in regret. 6-4 The fourth line, A team of four horses of variegated colors .... Pray for a marriage and love. Go forward. Good fortune. Without doubt advantageous. " This is the time to act for union and marriage. 9-5 The fifth line, "The sprouting of his riches. For the small, the divination: good fortune; for the large, the divination: misfortune." There is a proper time, a proper position, and a proper ratio for all things. For the time of sprou ting, the divina tion is good. Since this is the time for the young and the small, it is untimely for the large. 6-6 The sixth line, "A team of four horses of variegated colors .... To weep blood, flowing, water-like." The sixth line is the line of denouement. It is beyond the crest of the wave. This team is left isolated, meaning that whatever action was intended did not go through. A thwarted marriage, or even death might account for grief equated with weeping blood. The primal image in Tun is a seedling, but the team of four horses of different colors is also important. The number four implies that the horses are from different regions, all compass points are covered. Tun is the center. The horses represent the four directions: north, east, south and west, all pulling to help Tun grow. The establishment of feudal princes builds on this idea, that diversity can be assembled to start something growing.
II

-__
__

-1"
tong lei

Mo", ...tai ...

Watel'

K
GuaCi:

t-Iexas ..am Fou .. Me",s: Cove ..inSI A Callow Youth heng meng

t
and ignorant;

&

wo~'

qiu.;j(

tong

MENG: A sacrificial offering.

f:.

i,

Not

I to seek

meng

it

the young

qiu ;j.l wo ;(\\

seek me.

the young and ignorant

61

du The first divination explained; a second and third, profanity.

ZQZ ~

ehu"*ll du ~

'.J.

shi.it

gao ~

san .3-

Ji
,j-

ze.~
needs

bu l' gao ~
no explanation.

ll ~
Profit

zhen ~
in the divination.

Profanity

Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 6-1 fa ~ meng '~ ren

u ,:4.'1 yong
zhi ..g lin ~

ffl

xing jJ~

Let loose the energy of callow youth. Profit to use punishments

.c.

yong yi~)..

lfJ

shuo ~

gu ~

for adulthood.

Useful to take off manacles and fetters;

wang k!

9-2
na ~

bao E meng ji tff To protect youth, good fortune.

for in going that way, regrets.

It-

fu ~
wu 1:0 yong
No

ji ~

zi

+ ke 5t

jia

fR.
~5

To impregnate a wife, good fortune. A son sustains the family.

6-3 jian ~
for, seeing

qu JK nu"*, use to marry the woman; jin ~ fu *'.. bu~, you ~

her

gong
body.

the moneyed man, wi1llose

wu ?-u you 6-4 6-5 9-6 ji' kun ~

Surrounded A virgin

1''''
meng

u~

No place is

advantageous.

't

lin ~

by ignorance, regrets. • youth, good fortune.

tong ~ meng ~ meng ~~ Ii ~~

ji ~

Ii ..f ~ wei ,),b kou ~ Strike the callow youth. No advantage being a robber;

bu ::F

w,~

kou ~

advantage is in opposing robbers. Meng by definition means lito cover, to conceal, the occult, to cheat," but on another level it stands for an ignorant or callow youth. The ideogram shows a house with plants growing on top ofit, covering it. Thismengplant, the dodder, is parasitic. It does not work for nourishment, it cheats, it grows without roots. It is an apt image for an ignorant or callow youth.
62

The symbol of the dodder plant provides a door to the shamanistic elements of the Yi Jing. In ancient times, the dodder was considered a magic plant because of its parasitic nature. Its source of nourishment was mysterious. Its magical attributes are echoed in Druidic lore by references to mistletoe, which is also a parasitic plant. Following Tun, which graphically represents a sprouting plant and its territory, Meng brings forward the next stage. The person has grown from a sprout to a youth. Meng's concerns are the rites of passage for one who is young or uneducated - the entry into adulthood. It shows the transformations which are possible when sensitivity and discipline are coupled with youthful enthusiasm. The gua ci, "Meng: A sacrificial offering. Not I to seek the young and ignorant; the young and ignorant seek me. The first divination explained; a second and third, profanity. Profanity needs no explanation. Profit in the divination." The gua cibegins with a disclaimer. In ancient shamanistic rituals, the oracle used a disclaimer to protect him or herself. The responsibility of divining the future could make the oracle subject to anger or petty rivalries, so the oracle would protect herself by denying her power. "Not I" is an oracular denial of the self. Meng has several symbolic levels of meaning, and these are juxtaposed in the gua ci. "The young and ignorant" person is represented by the virginal Meng. But on a magical level, the meng plant represents the oracular capacities for concealment and guile. Thus, "Not I to seek the (spirits) of the virginal meng plant, but the (spirits) of the virginal meng plant seek me!" Holding in mind both images - the meng plant in its oracular posture, and a young and ignorant person - allows for learning and teaching at the same moment. The oracle acts as a gobetween: taking from the magic plant of nature, giving to the young and ignorant person. The gua ci reveals some of the key elements of the hexagram, and of the Yi Jing itself. "The first divination explained. A second and third, profanity. Profanity needs no explanation. Profit in the divination." The oracle, in speaking for itself and revealing itself, follows shamanistic ritual and is self-protective. It is also a little bit testy. These are not the words of a calm, wise sage, but a being who can be irritated. The irritation is caused by the repetitive requests of humans who don't just want a message, they want a message repeated over and over again. The ideogram du, "profanity," also means a "sewer." The Dao is frequently represented as water, and here is wa ter which is polluted and muddied. So if you continue to ask the same question over and over again, the response will eventually come back distorted and muddy. Spiritualguidance should be sought in a respectfulway, when eyes,ears and
63

other senses are open. Otherwise, you willnothearwhat the oracle is saying. 6-1 The first line, "Let loose the energy of callow youth. Profit to use punishments for adulthood. Useful to take off manacles and fetters; for in going that way, regrets." At times it is important to let loose the energy of the meng plant or of callow youth. This releases the sophomoric energy of exuberance and irresponsibility. But if this energy is going to be disciplined into adulthood, it is also necessary to use punishments from time to time. This yao ci reminds us that youthful enthusiasm should be disciplined, but not be shackled with manacles and fetters. 9-2 The second line, "To protect youth, good fortune. To impregnate a wife, good fortune. A son sustains the family." These values are important in any society, but especially in a culture rooted in filial piety and filial care. These are straightforward expressions about the value of family, marriage, conception, and the old form of social security. 6-3 The third line, "No use to marry the woman; for, seeing the moneyed man, will lose her body. No place is advantageous." Every culture has negative things to say about the gold digger. Here is an ancient warning to be careful about with whom you become involved, and with whom you have intercourse. Following the second line, it is a dire caution. It is good to get a son to sustain a family, but you must choose the right woman-otherwise, no place will be advantageous. 6-4 The fourth line, "Surrounded by ignorance, regrets." The key word here is "surrounded." It shows an enclosure surrounding a tree. If we return to the idea that Meng is not only a callow youth, but also a magic plant, then we have a specific image of an oracular sign. A thing or person surrounded by parasites or ignorance will mean regrets. 6-5 The fifth line, "A virgin youth, good fortune." A simple line, to be interpreted simply. 9-6 The sixth line, "Strike the callow youth. No advantage being a robber; advantage is in opposing robbers." Transgressions must be punished. If you don't discipline the callow youth, he may become a thief. Meng says that if you are in the situation of a callow youth, your understanding is enthusiastic but undisciplined. This is a general warning for anyone seeking instruction from the Yi ling. Enthusiasm is fine, but it must be disciplined. The gua ci asks: Can you really use the Yi ling by yourself? The Yi ling says it is possible, but it is better to use it in conjunction with an experienced person. An experienced person can take into account instructions from other hexagrams. They can add other interpretations
64

and meanings. Until you reach a point where you are confident with your own interpretation, you may have insights, but they will not be consistent. Meng reminds us that the Yi ling is a powerful oracle, and it must be consulted in a respectful way. The oracular message will be clear only if certain forms are followed. A sacrificial offering, respect, and clarity are emphasized. There is a grea t responsibility in listening to the oracle. This is difficult because oracles say things which are not always clear. We color answers with what we know, and sometimes what we know is insufficient. We color meanings because we are a doctor, or a lawyer, or a chimney sweep. Our vision is bounded by who we are. Many times we don't see things because of this; we don't see that something is square when in fact it is square. The Yi ling instructs us to seek out the Great Man, a person who has a different viewpoint, and possibly a clearer vision. The use of an oracle is not an everyday event. You don't meet oracles openly on the street. You do meet them walking in the way of the Dao. I look upon the first four hexagrams as a quartet. They form a complete set of seasons, a cycle of events. The first four show a fa ther and mother, a young sprout, and a callow youth. This is a familial cycle, with symbols of progressive growth. Meng shifts between the education of an adolescent into adulthood, and the image of a plant that grows without roots. It is something which is formed and yet unformed. On one level it is magical, yet within that magic there are straightforward instructions about raising a young person. There is magic in the callow youth because of his inexperience. A young person has more energy than an older, experienced person, and at this time, the energy within us is magic. It is magic because it has little life experience, because it hasn't been blunted.

-__

Wate .. Heavetl

t-Iexagt"am Five

~ X",:
Gua Ci:

Stopped b~ Raitll Waititl9

t
XU:

you ~

fu

Have confidence. A brilliant sacrificial offering.

'*

guang

fv

heng

zhen ~

ji ~

The divination: good fortune.

6S

Ii

JIJ

she,y.

da A chuan

III

Advantageous

to cross the great stream.

Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 9-1 xu 1; yu -! jiao ~f wu

9-2

u 1- J
I

yong l{J heng ~

Waiting at the frontiers. Advantage to use perseverence.

-r._.

jiu

r:t-

No inauspicious omens.

xu ~
Waiting

yu

-r sha ;jI,

xiao IJ \

you.lm

yan ~
speech.

in the sand.

zhang ... ji ~ #..

The small will have

9-3 6-4 9-5 6-6

xu
Waiting

'1" yu

In the end, good fortune.

:f

ni ~tLzhi ~
will cause
_jJL.,

kou

92

zhi ~
to arrive.

in the mud

robbers from

xu Ii; yu
Waiting Waiting with
7'..

xue shi

chu 1fl. zi ~ zhen ~

xue )/,
the hole.

in blood, wine

xu '~ yu -j- jiu.:m ru

Enter

.1;::

get out

ji ~

and food, the divination: good fortune. There are uninvited guests.

yu

f
lai

xue J1i? you 1j bu /j\ su .If:_ zhi Z ke ~

into the cave.

san .E- ren «:

-*--

jing ~

zhi ~ zhong ~

ji ~

Three people are coming. Show respect

! In the end, good fortune.

Xu denotes waiting. It has come to mean "waiting" as an extension of its ancient meaning, "stopped by rain." In the ideogram, the radical on top, yu I~ ,is "rain." The radical on the bottom, er \'fQ ,leads us into Xu's magic personae. Er's ancient pictograph showed facial hair, whiskers or a beard. The third, fourth, and fifth hexagrams follow a sequence of growth from an infant, to youth, to an adult. A bearded and whiskered shaman's mask could symbolize the mature person able to perform the rites of rain making and rain stopping. It also symbolizes an individual who is mature enough to have the patience to wait. To wait is a positive act in the time of Xu. Patience and perception are essential, because in times of emergency, waiting will change to movement. The gua ci, "Xu: Have confidence. A brilliant sacrificial offering. The divination: good fortune. Advantageous to cross the great stream."
66

Stylistically, "have confidence" or "have sincerity" belongs to the group of phrases which begin the Yi ling, such as "the origin, a sacrificial offering, profit the divination." "Have confidence" reassures, it promotes a state of mind. "Advantageous to cross the great stream" occurs many times in the Yi Jing. What is the great stream? Is it a river? Is it a highway? Is it the Milky Way? Is it internal or external? The great stream fixes the boundaries of life; it may represent the conscious mind. Across the flowing waters are secrets of lands unknown, "terra incognita," whose features, only guessed at in the conscious mind, are already sketched and mapped in the subconscious. The crossing into the unconscious may be perilous; familiarity is left behind. In the material world the great stream looms as a barrier to great achievement. If the great stream forms the river of consciousness, is it also the life flow? Can you have a directional flow of life - and cross it? This question brings forth a concept similar to the idea of finding gaps in space/time. If we live our lives in a time frame which we perceive to be linear, how do we get outside of ourselves, outside the flow of life so we can cross our own stream? This brings in the problem of perspective - from what vantage point are we looking? Can you cross your own lifeperpendicularly? Can you double up on yourself to reverse the flow? Can you change and hop off, one side to the other? These are the questions which may be directed to oneself, or addressed to the Yi Jing. Perhaps they are the questions and also the answers. , Geographically, there are many great rivers in China. Now is a propitious time to cross one, but timing and intent must be in harmony. This is a period of waiting, of building confidence, a sacrificial offering and divination, then the crossing. 9-1 The first line, "Waiting at the frontiers. Advantage to use perseverance. No inauspicious omens." Heng ~ shows a heart which is constant from dawn to dusk; in other words, "perseverance." You can wait in safety and patience, within your own limits and boundaries, for an auspicious moment. 9-2 The second line, "Waiting in the sand. The small will have speech. In the end, good fortune." There is a Chinese pun on the characters for "sand" and "small," just as there are sometimes pictorial elements in modem poetry, like anaphora. The left side of the ideogram sha shows shui -3, "water," but a variantusesshi Ai ,"stone,rock." The right part of the ideogram sha j" means "lesser or small", so we have small bits of rock. Small is xiao I J, . To then see ~')J ~,implies some type of relationship. Here it means people who are common as sand.
67

In this line, advice from common people will be helpful; but waiting on sand, or being supported by common people, can be treacherous. It is important to listen to the common people and move accordingly - then the end result will be good. 9-3 The third line, "Waiting in the mud will cause robbers to arrive." When you are stuck in the mud you are vulnerable to attack and thieves. 6-4 The fourth line, "Waiting in blood, get out from the hole." The imagery is very dramatic. Blood is explicit; its connotation in all cultures is of wounds and possible injury. In this case it is an image of danger, so get out of the hole. 9-5 The fifth line, ''Waiting with wine and food, the divination: good fortune." Good food and wine is always auspicious. 6-6 The sixth line, "Enter into the cave. There are uninvited guests. Three men are coming. Show respect! In the end, good fortune." The first five lines are short and pithy; they are proverbial in style. The last line tells a complete story. Enter a cave: this may be the underworld, or Plato's cave where shadow and substance play games. The important question is, "Who, or wha t, are the uninvited guests 1" In all ancient cultures, the rules of etiquette were very rigid. Certain forms and rituals were followed to insure safety and peace. Who are the three men? Uninvited guests were unusual. Whoever they are, as guests, they should be treated with respect. The conjunction of strangers in a cave is an interesting situation. If the people who enter the cave are guests, then by implication, the cave is your territory. Xue I~ ,"cave ," is the same ideogram translated as "hole" in line four, so empty space can be both a trap and domicile. On this stage, a good outcome is possible with politeness and circumspection.

-__

Heavet\ Wate ..

~ GuaCi:
~

Hexaet"am Six SOl'\g: Disp""te

fu zhi Ii ti 1& SONG: Having confidence obstructs. Be apprehensive.

you

1i

68

zhong 'Y ji ~ zhong ~ xiong .;JJ At midpoint, good fortune; at the end, misfortune. Ii 4~ jian ~ da 1<.. ren J.... Advantageous to see the Great Man. bu;f. she ~. da -A. chuan No advantage to cross the great stream.

Ii"*~

III

Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 6-1 bu ~ yong 7i<.. suo ~ shi Do not perpetuate the affair. xiao )~\ you ;ff yan 1f zhong ~ ji ~ The small have speech, in the end, good fortune. 9-2 bu ~ ke ~ song ~\ gui er \'fil buJ(. qi ~yi ~ Unable to support the dispute. Return and flee to his town ren .l..... san s: bai 1i hu wu sheng 11 peopled by three hundred households. No mistake. 6-3 shi -t-jiu de ftt. Nourished by the old virtues. zhen f;j_ u ,~ zhong ~ ji ~ The divination: danger. In the end, good fortune. huo i"~ cong Nt wang.3!.. slti' WU 7'1...1 cheng ~\ Someone who follows the king's business. No end to it.

j,

rw

l.t

~~

b~

~~~

Unable to support the dispute. fu ~~ ji ~p ming 4jtyu ~)ft an 4 Return immediately to heaven's ordinances. Change to peace. zhen ~ ji ~ The divination: good fortune. 9-5 song -1.1;; yuan 7L ji ~ Contention, great good fortune. 9-6 huo ;V: xi ~ zhi it._ pan ~1J:. dai , If granted possession of the leather belt, zhong 1~ zhao ~ san 2. chi ~l. zhi a: by the end of the morning, three times stripped of it !
69

Song, "to dispute, litigation, to demand justice," is the first title primarily concerned with worldly affairs between men. The ideogram song combines yan t; ,"words, speech," and gong ~ ,"official." The meaning derived from this is "to speak officially in the courts of contention." An argument between men, like contention between the forces of yin and yang, does not result in a clear winner. Circumspection and willingness to compromise are valued in the process of settling disputes. The gua ci is very cautious. "Song: Having confidence obstructs. Be apprehensive. At midpoint, good fortune. At the end, misfortune. Advantageous to see the Great Man. No advantage to cross the great stream." The reference to the midpoint is the key to settling a dispute. To compromise is to come to terms with your opponent in the middle of a conflict. Pursuing a disagreement to the bitter end will lead to misfortune. In times of dispu te you should seek ou tside, objective advice - go see the Great Man. This is not the time to attempt major actions. 6-1 The first line, "00 not perpetuate the affair. The small have speech, in the end, good fortune." The common denominator, the common people, can give wise counsel. Stop the dispute. 9-2 The second line, "Unable to support the dispute. Return and flee to his town peopled by three hundred households. No mistake." Retreat, you are unable to support the dispute. When you are in danger, or losing an argument, you should retreat to your home base. Go back to a place where your friends and family will support you. "Flee" is important, the instruction is to go quickly; don't hesitate, otherwise it will be too late. 6-3 The third line, "Nourished by the old virtues. The divination: danger. In the end, good fortune. Someone who follows the king's business. No end to it." If you are going to retain the old, conservative virtues, you must be consistent and persist with them. There is danger in holding to these old virtues because others will attack and dispute them. But in the end, with perseverance, there will be good fortune. Today, "the king's business" would be government business. The comment that there is "no end to it," is certainly as true of our present administrations as it was back then. The entire line calls for ethics and honesty, for valuing the old virtues in any business, but especially in government affairs. 9-4 The fourth line, "Unable to support the dispute. Return immediately to fate's ordinances. Change to peace. The divination: good fortune."
70

Ming 4f means "the ordinances of heaven." This is the way of the Dao, where harmony supersedes contention. The pictograph for yu ;lIf.t- r "to change," shows zhou -tt , "a boat," crossing shui -1 , "water," or chuan III , "a stream." This is an echo of "crossing the great stream," a symbol of a major change. When a dispute cannot be supported, the instruction is to change "immediately." 9-5 The fifth line, "Contention, great good fortune." Sometimes a dispute will lead to great rewards. 9-6 The sixth line, "If granted possession of the leather belt, by the end of the morning, three times stripped of it!" The leather belt, as an insignia of office or a symbol of gain, demonstrates that material possessions, rank and honors, are fleeting and transitory.

--__
__

-~
Gua Ci:

earlh
Wate ..

Hexae"am Seve", Shi: The M",ltit",de, The A"my, The Host

zhen j zhang";:_ ren :«; ji 11" wu ~ jiu ~

Fif

SHI: The divination: responsible men. Good fortune. No error.

Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 6-1 shi ~~ chu ~ yi)'J... 9-2 zai

lu;it

lou ~ zang ji ~ ming

The army goes out according to the rules.

Not good. Misfortune.

®: xiong

\,:{J

1£ shi ~if1 zllOng'f

wang
_;E.

wu ~ jiu ~

Placed in the host's center, good fortune, no

san'=:" xi ,j8J yu~

4r

error.

The king thrice confers commands.

6-3 6-4

shi

~1huo ~\
-t

shi lJ

xiong ~

The army perhaps carries corpses, misfortune.

shi ~1i zuo",~ ci

-* wu.:fG jiu g

No error. 6-5 tian ~ you qin ,~ Ii~.!l zhi ~Jt, yan The fields have game. Profit by catching them is the word.
71

The army retreats.

-t

jiu g" zhang ~ zi ~ shuai ~~ shi No error. The eldest son captains the host; di ~ zi ~ yu J.ll. shi zhen ~ xiong -J5.J the younger son carries corpses. The divination: misfortune. 6-6 da *-. jun $" you .if=j ming ~ The great prince has commands,
WU

fI..J

Wf

kai ~1 quo J!1 cheng jia ~ .... founds states, and supports the dans. xiao JJ ' ren .L.._ wu -w yong lfJ Small men should not be employed.

*-

Shi, "the multitude, the people, the army, the host," are all represented by the title of Hexagram Seven. Two features are present in the ideogram - dui g , "a pile, a mass, a crowd," and za rp , "to go around, to make a circuit." Shi shows a crowd of people milling around a pivot. This symbolizes the potential energy inherent in any large group of people. In ancient dictionaries shi was defined as "an army of two thousand five hundred men." The gua ci, "Shi: The divination: responsible men. Good fortune. No error." When a situation requires change, senior and responsible persons should guide the group. The result will be good fortune. 6-1 The first line, "The army goes out according to the rules. Not good. Misfortune." This idea may be the basis for some of Sun Zi's writing. Sun Zi, a famous war historian and tactician in the fifth century, B.C.,wrote The Art of War, which has become the bible of guerilla warfare in modem times. This line is a commentary on war strategy. The Yi ling says that when an army or a group of people are advancing for a confrontation, they should not follow a rigid set of rules. Sun Zi writes, Accordingly if the situation is advantageous, one should modify one's rules. All warfare is based on the way of deception. Thus when able to attack, seem unable; when actively using forces, seem inactive; when near, seem to be far away; when faraway, seem to be near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. Sun Zi, The Art of War, Essay I, Lines 17-20,Laying Plans
72

The first line of the yao ci can have different meanings depending on how it is punctuated. At first glance, "Not good," refers to the rules themselves, implying that the correct rules would lead to success. However a deeper meaning is evident when the phrase "Not good" is applied to the entire sentence - "The army goes out according to the rules." Then, the army's use of rules is "Not good." The ideogram lu is the key. Lu means "rules," but in ancient times it also meant "pitch pipes." In ancient times, it was thought the humour (qi) of an army could be measured by the sounds emanating from it. If these sounds were regular, like a musical scale, it meant the army had set and fixed rules. This would allow the opposition to anticipate the army's movement, a serious error which could lead to misfortune. 9-2 The second line, "Placed in the host's center, good fortune, no error. The king thrice confers commands." Whether you are a general, a captain, or even a private, if you are at the pivotal center next to the king, you are the one who will be given command. 6-3 The third line, "The army perhaps carries corpses, misfortune." Corpses are a symbol of disaster. What is dead should be buried. Carrying the appurtenances of defeat will only lead to continuing misfortune. 6-4 The fourth line, "The army retreats. No error." As a tactic of guerilla warfare, or of life, it is imperative to retreat when faced with a superior force, or when you find yourself in an exposed position. 6-5 The fifth line brings forward activities of the Zhou and Shang Dynasties. ''The fields have game. Profit by catching them is the word. No error. The eldest son captains the host; the younger son carries corpses. The divination: misfortune." "Game" may also stand for a human enemy. In this situation the enemy is in the field, exposed. This may be a signal of a baited trap. If you can seize the enemy it's good, but if you don't catch them, they will escape and return to kill some of your own. Here the host falls into a trap. The younger son is forced to carry corpses because the eldest brother has been derelict in command. 6-6 The sixth line, "The grea t prince has commands, founds states, and supports the clans. Small men should not be employed." Certain duties and actions require noblesse oblige. Small men with small vision and small power cannot do great things.

41'

73

--tt
Gua Ci:

Hexa91"am ti9ht Bi: Ut\iot\, Lo Follow, Lo ,Associate With

---

Wate~

ji ~ yuan I~ shi ~ HI: Good fortune. The source of divination with yarrow. yuan -fLJ yong ¥ zhen ~ wu 7L jiu g_. Great and everflowing the divination. No inauspicious omens. bu ~, ning ~ fang 71 lai _*,hou ~~fu ~ xiong ~ Do not rest; it is correct to come. The late man, misfortune. Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 6-1 you;:f[ fu 'fJ. bi ~t" zhi d!... wu I'u jiu f:t. Have sincerity in associations! No error. you 1i fu #ying ~ fou -tfr Have confidence like a full earthenware vessel. zhong ~ lai ~ you 1r ta -1t!?.J ji ~ In the end, coming will have its good fortune. 6-2 bi ~ zhi ~ zi tI nei ljg Union proceeds from the self, internally. zhen ~ ji W The divination: good fortune. 6-3 bi ~ zhi ~ fei l![ ren ~ To follow negative persons. 6-4 wai;rr bi!::t zhi ~ zhen ~ ji -is An external association ! The divination: good fortune. 9-5 xian.~ bi ~b wang.£. yong I~ san .:. chu \!~ A glorious union. The king uses three mounted beaters shi ~ qian ~ qin ~ to lose the front game.

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yi ~ ren s: bu:J'
The city folk,

jie ~ shou

ji ~

no warning. Good fortune.

6-6

bi

~t:.

zhi i;:_

wu ~

-tf

xiong ~
Misfortune.

Union proceeding without a head.

Bi,meaning "union, to follow, to associate with," was represented in the ancient pictograph by two persons yf, one following the other. A social structure of first and second place is implied, as well as cooperation between the two. This togetherness, or association, is the theme of Hexagram Eight. The gua ci combines incantation and instruction. "Bi: Good fortune. The source of divination with yarrow. Great and everflowing the divination. No inauspicious omens. Donotrest;itiscorrecttocome. The late man, misfortune." After beginning with "Bi: good fortune," yuan is repeated in two phrases: yuan shi J,t, ~ yuan yong zhen i"", ~ ~ , incanting the source and power of divination. Two different ideograms are used. They have the same pronunciation, but are written differently. Yuan ~ ,"the source," was a picture of springs of water flowing from a hill. Bi is formed from the trigrams of water above earth. Shi f! means divination using yarrow stalks. The second yuan is our more frequently used.5t . The horizontal lines stand for "top" while the bottom is a man. Together they mean "great, the head, the first." Here it is modified with yong ~ , which shows the everflowing waters of earth's subterranean streams and their confluence and union. This water image qualifies the second repeat: divination. Zhen means divination in general. Divination is like everflowing water springing from the earth. These images are a statement of power and incant the petition, "no inauspicious omens." The second section of the gua ci is concerned with timing, "Do not rest; it is correct to come. The late man, misfortune." Cooperation is useful only if it is timely, so the late man is equated with misfortune. "To cooperate, good fortune" accentuates the obvious, yet the last word of the gua ci is "misfortune." The very position of the words in the gua ci reinforces the instruction that good fortune depends on one's timing. If you cooperate from the start, it is fortunate. If you decide to cooperate too late, the result is misfortune. 6-1 The first line, "Have sincerity in associations! No error. Have confidence like a full earthenware vessel. In the end, coming will have its good fortune." For the alchemist, there is the crucible; for a priest, there is the chalice which holds the Corpus of Christ. Earthenware vessels play the
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same role in Chinese myth as they do in European myth. In China, the neolithic earthenware jars used for holding food evolved into sacrificial bronze vessels which were used in making offerings to the spirit world. The jar is also an equation for the human body. The first vessels were made out of clay, and in both the East and the West, there is the legend that men were originally made of clay, that we are all like water held in vessels of earth. In this line we are full of sincerity, full of confidence. 6-2 The second line, "Union proceeds from the self, internally. The divination: good fortune." Although the ideogram bi shows two men united, or two men walking together, the instruction is that union must come from within. 6-3 The third line, "To follow negative persons." The instruction is explicit. The people with whom you are associating are not good people. 6-4 The fourth line, "An external union! The divination: good fortune." The use of wai J} ,"external," forms a counterpoint to nei, the "internal" union referred to in the second line. On an esoteric level, wai can also mean pu ,.. ,"to divine," in xi 11 ,"the evening." 9-5 The fifth line, "A glorious union. The king uses three mounted beaters to lose the front game. The city folk, no warning. Good fortune." "Glorious" shows the sun shining its rays down upon you - a radiant union. The second image portrays Zhou times. "Three mounted beaters to lose the front game" is an early attempt at conservation. When hunting, the king used mounted beaters on three sides leaving one side open so the fastest and strongest animals could escape to reproduce and continue. But not everyone practiced conservation. The city folk, who were more needful, would close off the front escape and capture all the game. Game animals which were caught were thought to have done so willingly - they were cooperating to honor the king and spirits. 6-6 The sixth line, "Union proceeding without a head. Misfortune." An aphorism. If people come together without a leader, the group reverts to demagoguery.

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+-leaven

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t-Iexagt"am Nitle Xiao ChLtI A Small Offet"itlg

Qua Ci: 1.3, .$ xiao IJ' chu ~ heng"j mi ~ yun't XIAO CHU: A small animal offering the sacrifice. Thick clouds bu ~ yu ~ zi 1?J wo t\ xi jtij jiao i¥ but no rain commencing from our western regions. Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 9-1 fu ~l zi ~ dao ~ To return to one's own Dao, he 1~ qi ~ jiu ~ ji 1J how can this be inauspicious? Good fortune. 9-2 qian fu ~l ji ~ Pulled to return, good fortune. 9-3 yu ~ shuo 1..t fu ti A carriage stopped by the spokes of a wheel; fu k qi -l- fan A mu 19} husband and wife turning their eyes. 6-4 you:f fu ~ xue ss: chu-!Have sincerity, blood goes, ti chu iA wu iU jiu g-_ and apprehension departs. No error. 9-5 you ~ fu luan ru-k» fu /-i yi)-.l.. qi Jt. lin Having confidence binds. (For) wealth, use his neighbors .. 9-6 \ ji ~-iJ yu )~ ji ~!11.J chu ~ Finished is the rain; finished is the place. shang \~ de ~t,zai t{' fu ~ zhen ~ li ~ Esteem and virtue contained. The wife's divination: danger.

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ji~. wang The moon almost full.

yue}~

~l

jun g zi ~

zheng

~J1.

xiong ~

If the superior man goes forward, misfortune. While Xiao in the title of Hexagram Nine means small, Chu has several meanings, "domesticated animals," "to feed, to nourish," "to restrain." All these meanings have relevance in the interpretation of this hexagram. The extension from domestic animals to the idea of nourishment is logical because domestic animals are used for food. "To restrain" can arise from the idea of domestication, for the character of domestication is restraint. Pictorially, chu ,presents xuan "i ,which means ,''black, purple, profound, mysterious," and tian tf1 ,which means "fields,land." This is a poetic allusion to the colors of dragons' blood in Hexagram Two, a reprise of the images of heaven above and earth below. Following these ideas, Xiao Chu is a time when small necessary actions are required to fulfill and to complete programs. The gua ci, "A small animal offering the sacrifice. Thick clouds but no rain commencing from our western regions." The portents, "thick clouds," are visible, but the climax has not been reached, "no rain." Thus Xiao Chu, "a small offering," is needed. 9-1 The first line, "To return to one's own Dao, how can this be inauspicious? Good fortune." This first mention ofDao in the Yi ling begins with" to return." The movement of the Dao is always circular, always a returning movement. 9-2 The second line, "Pulled to return; good fortune." The ideogram qian shows an ox being pulled; perhaps there is some stubbornness in this return. . 9-3 The third line, "A carriage stopped by the spokes of a wheel; husband and wife turning their eyes." The carriage cannot move, the wheel spokes are entangled or broken. The broken spokes symbolize trouble in movement or relationships. Husband and wife are unwilling to look at each other directly and confront their problems honestly. 6-4 The fourth line, "Have sincerity, blood goes, and apprehension departs. No error." With sincerity, emotional problems are solved. 9-5 The fifth line, "Having confidence binds. (For) wealth, use his neighbors." This phrase may be one of the first suggestions of capital exchange or borrowing. But if you are going to use your neighbor'S wealth or

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money, you must have enough confidenceto bind yourself to an obligation. 9-6 The sixth line, "Finished is the rain; finished is the place. Esteem and virtue contained. The wife's divination: danger. The moon almost full. If the superior man goes forward, misfortune." Inthis lengthy instruction there has been a great completion. Much has been finished - the rain, the place, virtue is contained. The divination made by the wife is a reference to the legendary wu!£:. , shamans who most probably were women. The time when the moon is almost full is a sign of danger. On a bright night, it is dangerous to go forward because you can be seen, yet it is not bright enough to see clearly. This represents a time to make adjustments, a time for restraint.

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Gua Ci:
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Heave", Lake Te,",

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L" (Li): To Walk, Actio,",

lu ,t_ hu It wei 9_, bu 4' xi -at ren A; LU (LI): Treading on the tiger's tail. Does not bite the man. heng 1 A sacrificial offering.

At.

Yao Ci (Explanation of the lines): 9-1 su of: lu 4l. wang~:i. wu fw jiu t}. Simply walking forward. No error. 9-2 lu .!.fl. dao :il_ tan tSl. tan p§. Walking the Dao smoothly and openly. you tlii ren A zhen ~ ji ~ The hermit's divination: good fortune. 6-3 miao ljj. neng 11!. shi ;ilL bo ~ neng ~~ lu-4i The one-eyed man can see and the lame can walk. lu J1_ hu wei !L xi ,,~ ren .t._ xiong ~ Treading on the tiger's tail bites (this) man. Misfortune.

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