Frick you. Not everyone wants to devote years of their life to learning a language just to read one text. Stop discouraging people from reading great books.
Just go with Richard Willhelm's translation. It's not perfect, none of them are, but it's the more well known and it's definitely a great job. There are others like Alfred Huang that I find interesting, but some don't like it, because his interpretation is more personal. Don't read Blofeld or other older translations, they are very outdated, they have historic value, but it's just not true to the text.
[...]
is the following chart a good start?
(im a poet and I didnt even know it)
Yes, the chart is fine, it's just how you get to the hexagram. I think the values for the coins make it more complicated though, I prefer to think this way: Heads is yin (broken) and tails is yang, now either you get 2x1 or 3 of the same side. You always count the odd one out (HHT -> T -> Yang) and when it's 3 (TTT -> changing Yang) you can think of it as "overwhelmingly yang", thus changing.
The best way to get into the I Ching is, I think, to consult in this way periodically, rather than reading from 1 to 64. The hexagrams are connected, each of them can turn into the other. Read about each of the 8 trigrams, if you understand them, it's much easier to grasp what their combination mean. Another tip is to think of the hexagrams from bottom to top and understanding that they mean inside and outside.
When I was researching divination methods I came across a similar problem that people have with the oracle of Delphi. Basically the records we have of ancient use don't say much and leave a lot for us wonder. Some hypothesis include: do they really believe in the magic of it and just follow it? How serious of a matter was it? Did the divination include drugs or change of consciousness? Is the diviner an influential religious figure to the kings, or a wise political figure giving advice? Or perhaps it's the other way around, the king already knows what to do and goes to the diviner just as protocol to confirm his decision. No one really knows how much of it fits each one of those possibilities.
But on daily use, it all feels pretty accurate, sometimes it's spooky how much it fits, but I'm scientific minded and I know it's all confirmation bias, however I claim it has real use and it was designed to be like that, which is incredible. There is no bad or good hexagram, the worst ones on the surface carry great things and vice-versa. It's about changes.
Though I don't think the I Ching serves to ask like "what's going to happen?", trying to foresee the future. That's a modern western interpretation of what divination can be. The best is to ask something more like "how is this situation that is going on?" and take it as poetry.
>But on daily use, it all feels pretty accurate, sometimes it's spooky how much it fits
Examples? Elaborate.
8 months ago
Anonymous
A guy was changing jobs and decided to pursue an acting career he had abandoned 10 years ago. He got The Return (24). A woman I know had a fire in her house that burnt her room down, she got Family (37), which is wood over fire and has everything to do with the concept of home, change, safety, fire that can destroy, but fire that can nurture relationships like a bonfire. It's all very poetic, but for those who are into it, they really leave with food for thought about their current situation. If you have no patience for these sort of metaphors, it will make no sense.
It is vague enough that you will always get a “correct” answer that can fit in some way. I think it’s mostly good for examining yourself, like your character, motives and actions
Probably better than tarot and astrology, no? More extensive, more themes, more possibilities to examine, and a nice little system of elements and change where everything blends into each other. It seems more universal yet also more specific.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Hard to say one is better than the other, they are very different things. Tarot and astrology also function in a similar way, as a regular matrix of opposing and complementary elements and they are also on the margins of various religious and cultural aspects of their time and place. They are both completely banal in the modern world, whereas the I Ching, because it's foreign and less well known, it seems to retain some aura of truth to it in comparison. But, for example, the tarot was originally not made to tell the future, but like the I Ching, to talk about current ongoing situations, astrology is a complex and radially symmetrical arrangement of aspects of the human psyche, a story told with the planets and constellations as placeholder signifiers for these aspects, now reduced to "your life defined by the sky when you were born".
8 months ago
Anonymous
I find the I Ching a lot clearer than Tarot just because it's text instead of images
Not worth reading in translation.
Frick you. Not everyone wants to devote years of their life to learning a language just to read one text. Stop discouraging people from reading great books.
No, it quite literally is absolutely worthless in translation. I'm not bullshitting you or trying to lord my knowledge over you.
Can you explain why? Are all the current translations inadequate, or is it somehow untranslatable?
ASS
I love Sam Hamill’s translations.
I’m a dumbass. I just realized I thought you were asking about the Tao Te Ching. I don’t think Hamill has a translation of the I Ching.
Just go with Richard Willhelm's translation. It's not perfect, none of them are, but it's the more well known and it's definitely a great job. There are others like Alfred Huang that I find interesting, but some don't like it, because his interpretation is more personal. Don't read Blofeld or other older translations, they are very outdated, they have historic value, but it's just not true to the text.
I'm an I Ching expert, ama.
How do I into the I Ching?
Yes, the chart is fine, it's just how you get to the hexagram. I think the values for the coins make it more complicated though, I prefer to think this way: Heads is yin (broken) and tails is yang, now either you get 2x1 or 3 of the same side. You always count the odd one out (HHT -> T -> Yang) and when it's 3 (TTT -> changing Yang) you can think of it as "overwhelmingly yang", thus changing.
The best way to get into the I Ching is, I think, to consult in this way periodically, rather than reading from 1 to 64. The hexagrams are connected, each of them can turn into the other. Read about each of the 8 trigrams, if you understand them, it's much easier to grasp what their combination mean. Another tip is to think of the hexagrams from bottom to top and understanding that they mean inside and outside.
is the following chart a good start?
(im a poet and I didnt even know it)
How accurate is I Ching divination?
Very accurate if you know how to do the right query
No one knows, really.
When I was researching divination methods I came across a similar problem that people have with the oracle of Delphi. Basically the records we have of ancient use don't say much and leave a lot for us wonder. Some hypothesis include: do they really believe in the magic of it and just follow it? How serious of a matter was it? Did the divination include drugs or change of consciousness? Is the diviner an influential religious figure to the kings, or a wise political figure giving advice? Or perhaps it's the other way around, the king already knows what to do and goes to the diviner just as protocol to confirm his decision. No one really knows how much of it fits each one of those possibilities.
But on daily use, it all feels pretty accurate, sometimes it's spooky how much it fits, but I'm scientific minded and I know it's all confirmation bias, however I claim it has real use and it was designed to be like that, which is incredible. There is no bad or good hexagram, the worst ones on the surface carry great things and vice-versa. It's about changes.
Though I don't think the I Ching serves to ask like "what's going to happen?", trying to foresee the future. That's a modern western interpretation of what divination can be. The best is to ask something more like "how is this situation that is going on?" and take it as poetry.
>But on daily use, it all feels pretty accurate, sometimes it's spooky how much it fits
Examples? Elaborate.
A guy was changing jobs and decided to pursue an acting career he had abandoned 10 years ago. He got The Return (24). A woman I know had a fire in her house that burnt her room down, she got Family (37), which is wood over fire and has everything to do with the concept of home, change, safety, fire that can destroy, but fire that can nurture relationships like a bonfire. It's all very poetic, but for those who are into it, they really leave with food for thought about their current situation. If you have no patience for these sort of metaphors, it will make no sense.
It is vague enough that you will always get a “correct” answer that can fit in some way. I think it’s mostly good for examining yourself, like your character, motives and actions
Probably better than tarot and astrology, no? More extensive, more themes, more possibilities to examine, and a nice little system of elements and change where everything blends into each other. It seems more universal yet also more specific.
Hard to say one is better than the other, they are very different things. Tarot and astrology also function in a similar way, as a regular matrix of opposing and complementary elements and they are also on the margins of various religious and cultural aspects of their time and place. They are both completely banal in the modern world, whereas the I Ching, because it's foreign and less well known, it seems to retain some aura of truth to it in comparison. But, for example, the tarot was originally not made to tell the future, but like the I Ching, to talk about current ongoing situations, astrology is a complex and radially symmetrical arrangement of aspects of the human psyche, a story told with the planets and constellations as placeholder signifiers for these aspects, now reduced to "your life defined by the sky when you were born".
I find the I Ching a lot clearer than Tarot just because it's text instead of images
You should use Ritsema-Sabbadini and Wilhelm.
here ya go
Hilarious.
theyre all useful just pick and start consulting it, sit back and revel in its knowledge
>GOOD TO HAVE FORELIMBS
>BETTER TO HAVE HINDLIMBS
>BEST TO HAVE MIDLIMBS TOO
>*CHITINOUS NOISES*