Captive, truth, sincerity, inspire confidence.
The tag of hexagram 61 is Zhong Fu, inner truth. The character fu appeares 42 times in the Zhou Yi.
Originally it meant captive. It is a picture of a child and a claw: grasping a (small) person.
When the troops returned home, they had to show their conquests. They did it by showing the captives or the number of killed enemies.
Hauling along corpses for a long journey home is not a good idea, so they only brought the ears.
The ears brought home were proof that they told the truth. So the character started to mean truth, sincerity, inspire confidence.
The number of people is still sometimes counted in ears: six ears: three people.
In hexagram 55 line 2 it says: "To proceed brings doubt and anxiety. With confidence Fa gathers." (Fa is the personal name of Wu, king Wen's son).
Wu 'has the power to inspire', he convinces his people and the allies that the eclipse is not a bad sign, on the contrary. It is an omen of the fall of an empire - the Shang of course...
This week I have a buzz in my ears, it is sizzling on the rhythm of my heartbeat. The doctor is not alarmed. On my request she listened in on my carotid artery and found nothing. Nevertheless I decided to eat less saturated fats, and sit less. I think LiSe, I have to give up my online chess hobby, just when I was playing some magic games.
ReplyDeletehttps://lichess.org/R7MBz8jJfCov
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I have been counting too, LiSe, but not ears. The number is 59, that is 60 minus 1. Those were the number of days in two Chinese lunar months. One month counted 30 days and one month had a day less. Oracle bone fragments show that this lunar calendar was in use under the Shang by 1400BC (Astronomy before the telescope, p.248), centuries before the Shang dynasty fell under kings Wen and Wu of Zhou.
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The odd-even months and the day less reminded me of the yarrow stick method to read the Yi Jing oracle. First we set one stick apart, but the total number of sticks we use is fifty. Suppose the original number of sticks had been sixty, then each yarrow stick would represent a day in a lunar bimonthly. The association is there!
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You know I've created a webform to compare the probability distribution of possible methods to throw I Ching hexagrams. So immediately I filled in the new values. I start with 60 sticks, modulo 4, keeping the primary stick the same 1,1,1,1. Then the outcome is almost exactly opposite to that of the known yarrow method (Wilhelm, I Ging). On average there is a balance of yin as yang lines in the main hexagram, but after changes the number of yang lines are 62.5% and occur more often.
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So after changes the known modulo 4 method with 50 sticks is skewed towards yin lines and the new modulo 4 method with 60 sticks is skewed towards yang lines. Both biases are undesirable, specially because consulting the Yi Jing oracle was considered a "divinatory prayer" by the ancient Chinese (Shaughnessy's Unearthing the Changes, page 33). Yin is needed for stability and yang gives people energy, and society needs both in equal amount, the Tao should be preserved.
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Therefore I tried the modulo 5 method with the 60 sticks. It works the same as the known yarrow method, except that we begin with sixty sticks and reduce them by taking off five sticks at a time. Now in the main hexagram yin and yang are on average about equal, but after changes they remain quite balanced, on average 55% yin lines and 45% yang lines. So this divinatory prayer is much less skewed and more at peace with the Tao. The wonderful thing about this probability distribution is that the proportion of unchanging lines versus changing lines is 3.166, which is surprisingly close to Pi. And Pi times the diameter of the circle gives it circumference.
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It's magic LiSe.
Happy pi approximation day!
ReplyDeleteToday's date, 22 July, can also be written as the fraction 22/7 which is equal to 3.14285714, an approximation of π, correct to two decimal places.
So what I was trying to say last night was, that the ancient Chinese diviners may have used a set of sixty yarrow stalks to throw their hexagram lines. And perhaps they subtracted them by fives. But if you work mod 5, whether you have 50 stalks or 60 stalks, that does not differ much in the resulting probability distribution. So on average the number of unchanging lines will be π times greater than the number of changing lines in both those methods. The old lines form the diameter and the young lines the circumference.
Happy pi day indeed LiSe!
Those last statements I made were estimates, but you must admit it is appealing: the circle of Tao where yin and yang make up both halves. We've seen that pictured before, but then the diameter is not straight. It is a moving line, a wave with a mountain and a valley, drawn as two half circles that divide the big circle. The circumference of that yin yang circle is just twice as big as the wave diameter.
ReplyDeleteNow I just made this absolutely astounding discovery LiSe! We start again with 60 stalks, but take away 3 stalks instead and lay them aside. Then if we subtract three stalks at a time (mod 3) it appears the proportion of young / old lines in the probability distribution is no longer approximately Pi, but EXACTLY TWO!
Here are the exact hexagram line probabilities of that "take three from sixty" yarrow stalks method:
P6 = 0.29629630 = 8/27
P7 = 0.44444444 = 4/9
P8 = 0.22222222 = 2/9
P9 = 0.03703704 = 1/27
Tested today on:
http://allergrootste.com/orakel/biChing/