The Great Vessel Blog

Wang Bi - A founder of the modern I Ching

Apologies - The earlier post on this went out in error.

The I Ching does not end with any statement about its perfection or the cursing of anyone who adds or removes from it. It has a long tradition of changing to meet the ideas and times in which it is used. Originally it was probably a divinatory system which existed within shamanistic practices. The central ideas were of influencing the ancestors and spirits who were thought to affect the world in which people lived.

By the 9th Century BCE the Zhouyi had been written down. It was now an instrument to penetrate the nature of the time and to divine what actions would or would not be in accord with it. By this time it was believed that those actions which were in accord with the time would be advantageous and those which were not would not go well. Essentially Daoist in nature this earliest layer consisted of the Hexagram glyph or name; the hexagram or gua; the hexagram statements (Judgement in Wilhelm) and the line statements.

Around about the 5th or 6th century BCE the first and second wings (the Tuan Zuan) were added. These were the Commentary on the Judgements and Line Statements, also called the Images. They were largely Confucian in character. Sometime in the Han Dynasty the 6th and 7th wings, the Dazhuan or Great Commentary was added. This is a profound work, perhaps Daoist in nature, and which is still regarded as a keystone to Chinese Spiritual thought.

Still in the Han dynasty the last of the Ten Wings were added. Together these Wings were the only texts to be included in the Zhouyi to form the I Ching. However by this time it would have been possible to fill a library with scholarly works, essays and commentaries.

The heritage of the commonly used I Ching and its slide across to Confucian values was not an even path. Taking the 2nd layer of developments, the Tuanzhuan (1st and 2nd Wings) and the Xiangzhuan (3rd and 4th Wings): Originally these focussed on divination. Whether those who wrote them down were ignorant of their meaning, or whether they chose to change it, is not known. Whichever way there was a radical change of both syntax and of the meaning of some words to make them conform with Confucian values. Later older texts were added as wings and some of these were nearer to Daoism in their values.

This was the world into which Wang Bi was born. It was also a world of political instability which ensued at the end of the Han Dynasty, one of the key formative periods for the I Ching. Born in 226 Wang Bi died in 249 at 23 years of age. He served in Cao Shuang’s court as a tailing, a Court Gentleman. These were turbulent times and when Cao Shuang was deposed in 249 Wang Bi was dismissed from court service. He died of a pestilence shortly afterwards.

In his short life he wrote a commentary on the Daodejing; the Zhouyi lueli (General Remarks on the Changes of Zhou) and commentaries on the Judgements, Line Statements, Commentary on the Judgements and Commentaries of the Line Statements. “A Confucian rather than a sectarian Daoist, Wang Bi wanted to create an understanding of Daoism that was consistent with Confucianism but which did not fall into what he considered to be the errors of the Celestial Masters and their popular religious practices.” Much of his work was retained by the great neo Confucian reformers, Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, who did much to establish the I Ching as a Confucian classic.

In the 18th Century there was a great redaction of the I Ching. It resulted in the publishing of the Chou-i-che-chung, or Kang Hsi, or Palace Edition of the I Ching. This edition drew heavily on the work of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi and so too included much of Wang Bi’s work.

It is this Palace Edition that is so often used as the basis of modern translations. Wilhelm’s translation is from this edition. Richard Jonn Lynn has published a wonderful translation of Wang Bi’s I Ching which includes his essay and some of the principles which he believed underpinned it. (Columbia University Press 1994).

Wang Bi reported that when a new palace was being constructed the workmen found copies of texts pertaining to the Zhouyi. These were written in an older, unknown, script. It is thought that he had access to a number of older texts which are now lost. This is another reason why his work is so valuable. Ronnie Littlejohn has a web page about Wang Bi and his work which I enjoyed immensely.

Richard Smith’s I Ching Bibliography

Professor Smith of Rice University appears to have updated his I Ching pages  and more recent works are now included.

He has a good list of western language I Ching works which are organised by topic. It is not exhaustive, but it is a useful list nevertheless.

There is also a pdf file of the 64 hexagram names as used by 12 well known translators.

Crossline Omens - New Article

When we put a question to the I Ching the response is, to a large degree, like shining a flashlight on the landscape of Change in which we are situated. The primary, or cast, hexagram represents our situation just as a map shows us the landscape around us. It is the changing line(s) which actually contain the advice, omen, or prognostication.

A changing line, if there is one, is like a pathway through the landscape described by the primary hexagram. It most often has an oracular charge such as, “the way is open” or “this is not a mistake”. The text of the changing lines advise on particular courses of action and their likely outcomes.

Some years ago Stephen Karcher noticed that if the transforming lines were combined with the tradition of fan yao then a circle of changes would be described that went beyond the relating hexagram. It effectively extended the oracular message.

Seeing that these paths were textually coherent he applied them to old readings where the changes and outcomes were known. He found that they gave astonishingly accurate detail, not just about where the changes were leading, but that they accurately mapped the steps through which the changes proceeded.

I have been using this method for some years now and it has consistently given accurate and detailed descriptions which far surpass the simple ‘changing line to relating hexagram’ technique.

For a fuller explanation of Crossline Omens click here.

Does the World's future hang on a cardigan?

Do we imbue objects and perhaps people and events with more meaning than we should? Or is there more meaning than we rationally perceive? Professor Hood developed a number of experiments which he believes demonstrates that even the most rational of us gives greater credibility to ‘superstition’ and intuition than we realise.

I am not too convinced of his cardigan experiment. ‘Disgust’ has long been known to play a deeply functional role in humans. Disgust of a person covered in suppurating sores is thought to be functional insofar as people naturally avoid situations which might expose them to infectious diseases. Similarly bovines avoid the rich sweet grass which grows up from around their fertilizing faeces. Thereby they avoid one opportunity to be infected by parasites.

Disgust, is deeply innate within us. It is thought to have generalised in humans to become socially functional. By being disgusted by those who do things which are socially dysfunctional we both exclude them and reinforce socially acceptable (and functional) bounds. Whether or not the cardigan experiment is confusing the disgust response with some idea that people imbue objects with added meaning is uncertain from this report, but it does raise an important question. Are we humans naturally disposed to imbue things with meanings which they do not possess? Is that cardigan somehow symbolically powerful as an emblem of an unacceptable behaviour? Does wearing it ‘signify’, at some primitive social level, support for the previous owners actions? Or even worse does it carry some psychic taint? I don’t know.

This is one of the difficulties we face. Is our tendency to see meaning and patterns in things some faulty carry over from primitive functionality? Or is it a natural deeper perception of the way energies circulate and persist between people and people and objects? The former position is safe and comfortable. We can all read a psychologists report about some hang over functionality with a slight blush and the comfortable knowledge that our minds have penetrated this self deception and so we still feel in control.

Professor Hood invites us to consider whether we might have outmoded wiring or whether there is something more… Whether it is actually real. People who use divination are already sitting fairly comfortably on one side of this question. To a large degree we have decided our position.

It seems to me that we could divide the human race as being on one side or other of this question. My experience of synchronicity and the effectiveness of the Yijing make me more than a little biased. But when I look at history and at some of the rational decisions we have made in this world, with their obvious deep flaws, I can’t help wondering whether we should give the benefit of the doubt to an extended world complexity view… one where meaning not outcome counts and where the way we perceive and do things is more important than the goal we think is desirable.