Harmen's Dagboek

A speculative yet interesting article by leading Yijing scholar Xing Wen: The Origins of Zhouyi (Book of Changes) Studies: A Perspective on Allogram Order.

Most -if not all- people who use the Yijing are working from a bunch of believes. You believe that the translation that you use is a fair representation of the Chinese original; you believe that the dictionaries you use for your own Yi translation are correct and complete; you believe that transforming a moving line in its counterpart is a valid procedure; you believe that the answer that you get from the Yi is the best answer possible for your situation - you have to believe that, because you cannot check if another answer would be equally meaningful in the exact same situation.

The Yijing works because of these believes. Stronger put: by using these believes you create your own framework wherein the Yijing works. This framework contains everything that you hold meaningful in your relationship with the Yi. If you find value in nuclear trigrams and hexagrams then they work for you. If you find them worthless then they don't fit in your framework and you will not use them. Sounds logical and almost obvious, doesn't it? Yet there is a strong, almost magical power in this. If you believe that something has meaning then it will be meaningful and you can use it. If you have something which is meaningless to you, then you can give it meaning - and from that moment on it will be meaningful to you. This is how you create your own framework in which the Yi works for you on a very personal level. If you have 'discovered' some sort of system in the Yi, a pattern, a rule, a guide or whatever, then you can give it meaning. It never has meaning from its own, you have to give it meaning or inherit the meaning from someone or something else. It never has meaning on its own, meaning is always related to something else. You decide how and how much meaning the Yi has to you. You and nobody else.

We say that Dui, trigram Lake, represents joy, happiness. But that's a believe, based on the Ten Wings. If you skip the Ten Wings, what does Dui mean? If you skip all the existing commentary, what does the Yi mean? Nobody knows. That's why we use believes and assumptions to make the Yi meaningful. But if you have to use believes to make the Yi meaningful, why not create your own believes, instead of working with someone else's? Create your own framework, and build it from whatever you find valuable and/or meaningful. Use line relationships, changing lines, xiangshu tidbits, concordances, whatever you seem fit to make the Yi work for you, and use it in the way you seem fit - but never believe that your way is everybody else's way, and never believe that what you find meaningful must be meaningful to everyone. This is your personal framework. This is how the Yi works, it connects to your framework. It works with what you know, it does not work with what you do not know. You never have too little information to understand the answer of the Yi, the Yi addresses what is in your framework. Many people who do not understand the answer from the Yi think they miss an essential bit of information, a Rosetta Stone which will make it all clear when they have found it. But that is not how it works. What you have is what you need - no less, no more. If you do not understand the answer from the Yi and you never use nuclear hexagrams to interpret the answer, then don't bother looking at them because the diamond will not be found in it - nuclear hexagrams are not in your framework and you do not necessarily need them.

But:

Only if you believe that the Yi addresses your personal framework will the Yi do so. It is true. Believe me.

A few years ago I started a project to translate the Yilin 易林, the 'Forest of Changes'. The Yilin contains intriguing poems, but translating them proved harder than I thought because of difficult expressions, references to historical figures or circumstances, etc. in the text. It became quite time consuming to do it right according to my standards, and gradually the project moved out of sight.

But recently I see an increased interest in the Yilin. Many people like the use of the Yilin as a tool for finding the common denominator with multiple moving lines in a hexagram. In a typical reading with the Yijing you often have multiple moving lines, and a lot of users find many moving lines confusing to work with, especially when the texts of the lines seem to contradict (there is nothing contradictory about them if you take the position of each line into account, but most users are not aware of this). The Yilin condenses all these moving lines to one cryptic poem with rich imagery. For instance, when hexagram 4 changes into 53, you can read this poem:

烏飛無翼
兔走折足
雖欲會同
未得己惑。

A crow flies without wings
A rabbit walks but breaks its foot
Although the desires are the same
You have not yet finished your own uncertainty.

Or something like that. Translating is difficult because you have to find out what a character or phrase meant during the Han dynasty.

However, the use of the Yilin as a reducer of texts is not the original function of the book, even though in China they also use it for this purpose (see Deng Qiubai 邓球柏; "白话焦氏易林", p. 13). Originally the Yilin uses a calendar which is attributed to Meng Xi 孟喜, in which every Chinese month is connected with five hexagrams (see Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 107. Please note that Fung's table contains errors). Four hexagrams are connected with the solstices and equinoxes. If we connect this calendar to the current year 2007, we get the following table:

		Start date		Hexagrams
	立春	Feb	4	62.1, 4, 42.3
	雨水	Feb	19	42.4, 53, 11.6
	啓蟄 (驚蟄)	Mar	6	5.1, 17, 35.3
21 Mar: 51
	春分	Mar	22	35.4, 40, 34.6
	清明	Apr	5	16.1, 6, 18.3
	穀雨	Apr	20	18.4, 49, 43.6
	立夏	May	6	56.1, 7, 8.3
	小滿	May	21	8.4, 9, 1.6
	芒種	Jun	6	14.1, 37, 48.3
22 Jun: 30
	夏至	Jun	23	48.4, 31, 44.6
	小暑	Jul	7	50.1, 55, 59.3
	大暑	Jul	23	59.4, 10, 33.6
	立秋	Aug	8	32.1, 60, 13.3
	處暑	Aug	23	13.4, 41, 12.6
	白露	Sep	8	57.1, 45, 26.3
23 Sep: 58
	秋分	Sep	24	26.4, 22, 20.6
	寒露	Oct	9	54.1, 25, 36.3
	霜降	Oct	24	36.4, 47, 23.6
	立冬	Nov	8	52.1, 63, 21.3
	小雪	Nov	23	21.4, 28, 2.6
	大雪	Dec	7	64.1, 39, 27.3
22 Dec: 29
	冬至	Dec	23	27.4, 61, 24.6
	小寒	Jan	6	3.1, 15, 38.3
	大寒	Jan	20	38.4, 46, 19.6

A little explanation will help. The first Chinese month starts with solar term (jieqi 節氣) lichun 立春, which commences on February 4th. On February 4th hexagram 62 begins, with the first line (62.1 means 'the 1st line of 62, 42.3 means 'the 3rd line of 42, etc.) although this is not really important. Every hexagram governs six days. So 5-Feb is 62 (2nd line), 6-Feb is 62 (3rd line etc.), 7-Feb is 62, 8-Feb is 62, 9-Feb is 62, 10-Feb is 4 (1st line), (...), 19-Feb is 42 (4th line), etc. The days which have a solstice or equinox have the appropriate hexagram: March 21st has 51, June 22nd has 30, etc.

[update 20:00: Data gathered from here, here, here, He Shiqiang 何世強; "京房易占術語詳解", p. 2/8-2/10; Deng Qiubai 邓球柏; "白话焦氏易林", p. 11-13. It is possible that in other calenders some starting dates of jieqi differ one day because if the real start of that jieqi is in the afternoon the starting day will be the next day.]

How do you use this calendar? Suppose that today, February 19th, you cast hexagram 49. Then you look in the Yilin for hexagram 49 under hexagram 42 ('益之革'):

雀行求粒
誤入網罭
賴仁君子
復說歸室

The sparrow moves to seek grain
Mistakes enter the nets
Rely on the benevolence of the junzi
Take back the words and return to the room.

Or something like that. If you want to struggle with the Yilin yourself you can find the complete text here.