Who is the ancestor?
宗
The ancestor can be a leader, grandfather, a person of authority in a family, husband, anyone who has the position to exercise some control.
This is China long ago, feel free to change it to the female version if that fits better.
宀 示
The character consists of 'roof' and 'altar'. It refers to a certain type of thing or person that has a leading role or is the first: sovereign, leader, eldest son, respect, fundamental, ancient emperor temple, an ancient ritual, official title, take charge of the ritual of sacrifice. I think it is a picture of the little altar in a house where the family honors their grandfather/mother and so on.
The fanyao (corresponding line of the relating hexagram)
38.5 Regrets go away. The clan leader bites through skin. Proceed, how can it be faulty.
Trigram Fire turns into Heaven. Controlling but not too much (just skin, not through hard bone or so).
10.5 Decisive treading. Determination: danger.
Trigram Heaven turns into Fire. Decisive but not too much.
38.5 changes into 10.5 if it is 'old yin', 10.5 changes into 38.5 if it is 'old yang': they are each other's fanyao.
What does it mean in an answer?
If one of the two is too strong, they will clash. If it is the one in authority (or thinks he/she is) it will be 'faulty'. If it is the one of 10.5: being decisive is good, but it always involves risk; how much depends on its flexibility.
Concerning the Ancestor of 38.5. I am still curious what version of the YiJing you work from LiSe. Legge has "relative (and minister)", Wilhelm "Der Gefährte" (NL kameraad), Cleary Taoist "ally", Lynn "clansman", Huang NL "clanleden". I collected those books through the years and am only now studying them. Also Slaughnessy's 'unearthing the changes' with the oldest Shanghai museum version:
ReplyDelete38.5 "Regrets gone. At their ancestral temple eating flesh. In going what trouble?"
Anything, any text, can serve as an oracle, so our interest in the original meaning of the hexagrams is mainly historical. You wrote me that the I Ching oracle was often consulted by generals (I think of kings before battle). So the I Ching was meant for people in authority.
What I would like to do, is to adapt the I Ching for consulting by Artificial Intelligence. We humans live in a very dangerous world (though it doesn't appear that way) and soon we will have to replace our inapt politicians by the all seeing eyes of A.I. Or perish. For example, a virologist can any moment release a gentech manipulated bird flu virus that will wipe out human civilisation. There are no controls in place to prevent such an event, and there are thousands of such things, we survive on good faith. So A.I. has to take over as science progresses and we learn exactly how our natural enemies can best destroy us. So I'd like the I Ching to be a tool for A.I. to consult the gods on our behalf.
I made a mistake in my comment here. I gave the translation from the later Yi Jing. The Shanghai Museum version in Slaughnessy 'Unearthing the changes' goes:
ReplyDelete38. Kui = Looking Cross-Eyed
38.5 Regrets gone. Ascend the ancestral temple and eat the meat offering. In going what trouble.
Slaughnessy makes particular mention that this oldest Yi Jing has the verb "deng" (to go up, ascend) and the later copies show a miswriting of the sign there. (page 55 & 106)
I guess it is these little discoveries that also prove the reader that the bamboo sticks are not a forgery. The Shanghai manuscript came from the black market in Hong Kong, and the tomb from which it was robbed is unknown. As an outsider I am not immediately convinced such a welcome discovery is genuine.
“As the most prestigious academic and cultural institutions in Mainland China are now in an arms race to purchase ever more important, more beautiful, and more complete manuscripts on the Hong Kong antiquities market, prices will rise in response to demand, and with them the incentives to create highly sophisticated forgeries.”
http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mkern/files/xi_shuai_and_its_consequences.pdf