Wild Crane Series: ZSBY-2. Ch.3

[duesouth]

Please find attached my pdf-ed translation of Zengshan Buyi?s Chapter 3:
?   [Chapter 3] Eight Palaces? 64 Gu? Names 八宮六十四卦名

Hexagram and trigram names and identifiers
I adopted the hexagram (gu?) and trigram names used by Joey Yap, except I use ?Lake? instead of ?Marsh?.

To assist readers in their search of hexagrams, I inserted hexagram identifiers taking the form of (letter)/(letter) to denote the upper trigram over the lower trigram e.g. X/L = Wind over Lake (see ZSBY-0 pdf on terminology).

The letters are:
[E] ☷ Kun 坤 as Earth 地
[F] ☲ Lu 離 as Fire 火
[H] ☰ Qian 乾 as Heaven 天
[L] ☱ Dui 兑 as Lake 澤
[M] ☶ Gen 艮 as Mountain 山
[T] ☳ Zhen 震 as Thunder 雷
[W] ☵ Kan 坎 as Water 水
[X] ☴ Xun 巽 as Wind 風

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[Random88]

Divining about guarding against anxieties. If obtain Son-Daughter holding Subject, need
not worry. [If] Officer-Ghost holds Subject, doubts are difficult to resolve.

Basically if the Self line is Offspring/Child - nothing much going on, so one doesn't need to worry. If its Officer, then one is clearly worried.

Is this true... In my humble view, its not. If one Self line is Offspring/Child and Officer is clashing him from the Month, the idea there is no need to worry is not very suited to the actual situation.

As far as I'm aware the Self line is our current state in time of asking, the fact one is not worried when asking, doesn't mean he won't be as soon as the situation progresses.

Here we can say that if that change is suppose to happen the Self line should move and change to Officer or something... But if we have very weak Offspring/Child line being clashed with extremly strong Officer or even Parent line, this would provide overall Image of problems/worries etc. even if the Self doesn't change its relation to the situation.

[ren]

Hey Random88,

From what I have read of this section, it sounds like a simplified way of using the Liu Yao setting, with the Self line.
It goes through ?Four Matter? scenarios and uses Offspring, Wealth, Officer, Sibling, or Six Clash to determine auspicious or inauspiciousness.
It does not use the five element interactions, combos, clashes etc. No change lines.
If I am reading this correctly; as described in this method, if either Officer or Offspring, Wealth or Sibling are not on the subject one can divine again (cast a new hexagram).

Interesting stuff.

Ren

[Random88]

Yea, but I don't think the system will adhere to it. If a problem comes from outside, will override the idea we can just look at the relation on the Self line.
Because I used something very similar, only it was strength related, but still wasn't looking much at other stuff and only at Self line... And while in general it works somewhat, its not very reliable, as if there is a lot of the opposite that is going on, one isn't suppose to just ignore it.

So overall, I get the idea, it can be very useful if it worked, but I don't think it will work reliably.

[duesouth]

Hi,

Agree that ?If obtain Son-Daughter holding Subject, need not worry.? is just part of the ?simple and easy method? and not the full method.

From section 3.6, we get the qualifier:
?Moreover, I wrote this part?s simple and easy method, only desiring to teach all those who not know about Five Elements to learn how to divine a gu?. Just follow the Complete Diagram, to label and arrange. Soon will know how to interpret the four major matters. Suppose you know Five Elements principles, you should not use this method. Be sure to carefully read this book?s later volumes.?

I do find it a bit annoying that some parts of ZSBY adopt a proposition-negation argument structure. ZSBY first states a proposition and later negates it, either partially by qualifying it or wholly by refuting it. A person reading the proposition (e.g. ?ancient method says??) might mistake it to be a principle, only for ZSBY to refute it a few sentences or paragraphs later. In this case, the ?simple and easy method? is a proposition which the rest (~95%) of the book 'negates'!

Cheers.

[Random88]

I agree, that is my problem as well. Mostly because at any given time the person practicing will never know how much of what he is using would have been negated later in the system if the teacher knew enough.
Only thing we know is the practitioner will have holes in their method all through the time they are using the system, suggesting at any point on important question the system may fail them...

So its creating a construct that by definition is unstable when done this way. It seems to have resulted in a lot of people thinking WWG is unreliable... Yet that isn't because that is inherit in the system, its because the people that wrote about it(some of them , anyway) wrote in a way where a false methods were given, then much later on parts of them negated... And that continue each step of the way.

How much he never had enough experience to negate and was left in there as a potential trap for the practitioner... All that someday will backfire usually in a small way, leading to people losing faith in the system, but in some cases may actually be in big enough way...

That is one of the  main reasons I really dislike Wild Cranes material. Practicing by this, one takes a compromise, they will adopt not fully working rules, hoping sometime in the future they will "repair" them... If that happens, great, but when there are a lot of those piled on top of each other, at some point its debatable how easy it would be to fix the system, even if fully working system is given. Then they have layers and layers of techniques with holes in them, as that was how they were presented originally...

So better ignore the material, learning by it is just a way of adopting weakness in the approach then piling more on top of that until they become impossible to find later on... And al that could be a real problem later on...

[Random88]

This is interesting:

[SS.3.20.1. Father-Mother Line]
占父母者。以卦中父母爻爲用神。
Divining about parents, consider Father-Mother line as Useful God.
此卦辰戌兩爻。俱是父母。若兩爻俱動。或俱不動。擇其旺者爲用神。如一爻動者。
擇其動者爲用神。
This guas Chen and Xū two lines, both are Father-Mother. If two lines both are moving,
or both not moving, select the more prosperous one as Useful God. Suppose one line is
moving, select the moving one as Useful God.

So lets say ones parent is very ill... For example their father. Lets say the mother is very healthy and well.
They make a hexagram asking about their fathers health, as logically that is the problem in the situation.... And they receive one Parent line that is very prosperous and one that is in very bad state.

Here I have to wonder... If we do assign the more prosperous line to the parent that is in worse state, isn't there a risk of reading the wrong line?

[duesouth]

@Randon88,

I suggest that per your example, we can only take the Parent line as representing the father. For the mother, we may need to do a separate divination.

Per Chapter 41 (translation forthcoming):
[S.41.1. Separate Divining]
凡占祖父。祖母。占父。占母。俱宜分占。
Generally, divining about grandfather or grandmother, divining about father, and divining about mother, all suitable to do separate divining.

[Random88]

Very valid approach.
But my idea was more around the situation when we have 2 lines of what we look for.
So what do one does if they ask for a parent and get 2 Parent lines. Or even more(line changing into Parent in the second hexagram, for example).
We can make 2 castings for both parents yet and again receive 2 Parent lines in each hexagram and have to select one of them to represent what we ask for...

As there are two approaches here. Well, there are more, but for this part we could look at two. One is to look for the line that is grabbing attention. Its stronger, its moving, its doing something etc.
The other is to look for the line that fits the actual situation, if there are 2 parents, weaker line shows the weaker parent. If one of the parents is going through transition, their line will be moving etc.

Logically if we ask for health and we take the stronger, more prosperous line to show the ill parent, then receiving information for that line may become very challenging. As stronger line suggests they are already in good health. Lets say the system wants to introduce the idea the parent will get very well very soon. How can it possible do that, when the line we choose to represent it, already shows they don't have problem with their health?

Similar logic for moving lines... If we choose moving parent to show the parent we are looking for, no matter what is actually happening, we may be risking to end up in a situation where there is change with the other parent, so the need to show that with moving line, the parent we ask about carry no change, yet his line is suppose to be moving, as otherwise we won't know where to look.

So I'm just wondering what do people choose in cases like this. As making another divination for the other parent is also very possible to show 2 or more Parent lines and one may again have to choose one.

And it will always come to - do we align with the real situation or we align with something else specific to show where we want to look.

[duesouth]

@Random88,
You make an interesting point about Twice Appears (兩現).

Alfred Kee in his book When I Ching Has No Text: Wen Wang Gua Coins Divination (ISBN: 978-9-671938-70-6) provides a discussion which seems to overlap your idea of look for the line that fits the actual situation.

In section 4 Example 40 of the book, Kee disagrees with Wild Crane?s selection of the Parents line (Father-Mother line) based on most prosperous in Tientai Quiz 26 - Divination on Father's illness (see https://fivearts.org/index.php?topic=443.0) i.e. Ex.9-10. in ZSBY-3 pdf (chart reproduced below):
Chen month, Wu Shen day. Divining about father recent illness.
Qian as Heaven [H/H] to Wind-Heaven Small Livestock [X/H]
Father-Mother Xu earth 丶 Subject Wife-Wealth Mao wood 丶
Brother-Sister Shen metal 丶 Officer-Ghost Si fire 丶
Officer-Ghost Wu(h) fire ○ Father-Mother Wei earth 丶丶
Father-Mother Chen earth 丶 Object   Father-Mother   Chen earth 丶
Wife-Wealth Yin(t) wood 丶 Wife-Wealth Yin(t) wood 丶
Son-Daughter Zi water 丶 Son-Daughter Zi water 丶

Instead, Kee provides five rules in deciding among two or more possible Useful lines:
1. Choose the line which is moving.
2. Choose the line which is in void, broken or hidden moving (i.e. covertly/secretly moving) if there is a reason for the line being in void, broken or hidden moving.
3. Choose the line whose imagery matches the situation. (This echoes your point)
4. If (3) does not apply, discard the line(s) whose imageries least matches the situation.
5. If still in doubt, cast again.

For the above case study, Kee chose Xu earth rather than the Chen earth by Wild Crane.

Cheers

[Random88]

Sure, yea, I likely have seen it from him, he did point to different problems in Wild Cranes materials and most of them seemed valid.
I don't really remember the specific examples, but it makes sense that same problems would come up when I'm reading same examples...
One of the reasons I avoid commenting on Wild Crane before - as then instead of getting deeper into the system, will have to just point to problems and that is not fun to anyone, also good number of them would be related to AK, as even though I do think I view how it works very differently now, that specific part he did great work in clarifying.

However, at this point I don't think I would agree with this, either:
1. Choose the line which is moving.
As logically, if the system wants to show that there is a change going on with the other parent while noting changing with the parent we ask about, the other parents line would be moving...

So at the end it depends purely on how we view the system working. In my view it works similar to Remote Viewing and all other divination systems out there, it presents map of the situation following specific integrated rules.

That map is the priority, what rules we look for are attempts to read that map. But when in doubt, going back to the idea its just a representation of the actual situation is wise. Using premade stuff, like "line is strong so it shows what we look for"... Well, no, line is very strong - so it shows that aspect of the situation is strong. That is all.

That being said, I do think that could work in important cases. Like if the answer is very important for the system to send, then it would bend this way to provide it... But if we count on that, instead of learning the actual rules, we would be able to ask and read it in a valid way only in very, very rare situations when it is important, we are sincere and all the other stuff... That is not really needed, its only needed if the rules we use are not the real rules, as that is when the whole process around us will make the compromise and shape it in the way we need, instead of providing it how its actually happening.