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Way back in 1973, when I aquired my first copy of the Yi Jing (Legge 1971, for the curious), I was really proud of it, and showed it to my friend, Leon. After looking through it for a few minutes, he said:
But what is the point of using it? Anybody can interpret what it says, to support what they want to do.I was crushed. He was, in essence, correct.
Adding insult to the injury, I discovered that the text of the Yi Jing had been subject to the same type of "editing", as that of the Holy Bible by King James, or the Papacy.
The 1715 Imperial Edition was edited by the Manchurian invaders, to support their dynasty. That horrified the conservative scholars. In retaliation, they demonstrated that most of the traditional beliefs, etc. relating to the Yi Jing were flat out wrong.
From the late Sung period till 1715, the standard edition was the one published by Chu Hsi circa 1416. His agenda was a return to the ethical values of Kung Fu Tzu.
Wang Bi « 226 - 249 » edited what was to become the standard version of Dao De Jing and Yi Jing for the next millenium. His agenda was showing that Confucianism was a branch of Daoism.
Leon's criticism has remained with me, for all these years. This paper only serves to prove his point --- the exact opposite of my intention, when I first wrote it. As I've edited this paper, his position has only been reinforced.
I was aware of Crowely's material on the Yi Jing, but had generally ignored it, as what I had read, could, at best, be described as:
some thoughts I have about an English translation of this Chinese book I've heard about.Marlene Cornelius (1998) did an excellent job of putting Crowley's material together, in one place. That material demonstrated that Crowley had studied far deeper than implied by the various commentaries on the Yi Jing of Crowely's that had been published.
That was the inspiration for providing the Thelmic Commentary, that this paper includes. I also "borrowed" « stole, is more accurate » the outlines of the hexagrams from Red Flame. True, only one is provided there, but it was enough to create the rest of them.
Appendix A: Yarrow Stalks was written so that I had a convenient place to go to, when I had forgotten how to cast Yarrow Stalks. As I discovered other methods of using stalks, wands, sticks and similar items, I added them to that text.
Appendix B: Seeds, Appendix C: Coins, Appendix D: Dice were written for the same reason. Nearly everytime I read of a new method of casting hexagrams, I added it to the appropriate list.
Appendix E: Other Methods was written so I could track some of the more unusual methods I read about. Or, in some instances, actually used. To this section belongs Plum Blossem Numerology as well as most of the techniques described in The Astrology of the I Ching ( Sherril & Chu: 1976 ) and An Anthology of the I Ching ( Sherril & Chu: 1977 ). This section does not include every method of obtaining hexagrams I have heard of.
Appendix F provides a terse synopsis of how to Interpretate a hexagram.
Appendix G puts all of the attributes of trigrams and bigrams in one place.
Appendix H puts most of the attributes of the Five elements in one place. This section is probably most useful for practioners of Feng Shu.
Appendix J is a historical timeline I constructed, to try to get a sense of who wrote what, and when it was written. From that, I could get a sense of who could have been influenced by whose writing.
Appendix K is a brief history of the Yi Jing, with a dip into other sacred texts of Daoism.
Appendix L is my response to Kahn, Kroeber & Kingsbury (1974) I found that paper to be extremely inspirational, on a number of levels. It also is an attempt to both demonstrate some of the meanings that can be extrapolated from the Yi Jing and provide a practical demonstration of how to use the Yi Jing.
Appendix M provides a graphical layout of the various arrangements of the Yi Jing that have been proposed, or used.
Appendix N exists simply to show an easy way to remember trigram names. Hexagram names will be added later.
Appendix O is a description of various meditation techniques I've come across, that involve the Yi Jing.
Appendix W displays most, if not all of the trigrams that can be associated with a hexagram.
Appendix X displays most of the hexagrams that are permutations of a single hexagram. How those permutations are created is described in the main body of this text.
Appendix Y provides transliterations of most of the Chinese words used in this paper. This was started in a fit of extreme frustration. Between the system of transliteration that Legge used, two versions of Wade-Giles, two versions of Romanov-pinyin, and two versions of Hanyu Pinyin, trying to keep straight who means what is tedious. Especially when the same spelling has completely different meanings in different systems of transliteration.
Appendix Z contains the source code for the program I wrote to print out the various hexagram permutations. This software is released under the GNU General Public Licence.
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