Opening the chapter
Loading the text. Please wait.
Bushi Zhengzong · The Orthodox Tradition of Divination
Refuting Errors · Response, Month Break and Nuclear Hexagrams
Read in English. Switch to Original for word notes, or select text to ask a question.
Distinguishing Errors in Supplement to the Forest of Changes about Taking Response as Another Person
For an ordinary person with whom one's association is distant, take Response as the other person and as Useful Spirit. But for a sworn brother of another surname, a friend of one's father or uncle, or a friend of one's descendants, distinguish the designated relationship and age in choosing the Useful Spirit.
One must not indiscriminately say: I am divining about another person, so Response is the Useful Spirit. Zhang Guoyuan makes no distinction between a father's friend and a child's friend, taking Response for both. He even takes Response indiscriminately for servants, a wife or maidservant, brothers, parents, uncles and a neighborhood elder, saying that all are divinations on another's behalf.
Reading note: This record writes the name 張果元; the neighboring records write 張星元. Their respective supplied names are retained.
Zhang Xingyuan’s chapter on wives, concubines and servants staying or leaving says: Take Wealth as the chief factor and the Response image as evidence.
The illness chapter says:
In divining for another, examine Response.
If it meets Month Break, escape is hardest.
Encountering clash or control, the person is hard to save;
meeting strength or generation, the illness must disappear.
The Source Spirit generating Response should move;
the Avoided image controlling that person is feared when crossing or heavy.
The Hexagram Body having qi is still favorable;
Officer at the Response position must bring calamity.
The chapter on fighting and contention also says: Take Self and Response as the chief factors, with generation and control as evidence.
Suppose a son or nephew fights or contends with someone, and one fears that he will suffer loss. That is why one asks. How could one ignore generation and control of the Descendants line, take Self as the chief factor instead, and rely on generation and control between Self and Response?
The litigation chapter also says: Take Officer as the chief factor and Parents as evidence. When written accusations reach the public court, examine whether Officer and Parents rise.
If Officer and Parents both move to control me, should one say that these moving lines provide both a chief factor and evidence and are therefore favorable, or that what controls and harms me is unfavorable?
Practitioners now take Response as Useful Spirit for every proxy divination without distinguishing seniority, and use Officer alone for every lawsuit. They never examine the Useful Spirit's generation, control, restraint and transformation. I cannot refrain from distinguishing the error.
Refuting Month Break and Cycle Void Errors in Supplement to the Forest of Changes
A Month Break line that moves and flourishes or is supported, or meets generation and combination from a moving line or the day, or changes into generation and combination turning back, merely cannot bring good or ill within the present month. After the month passes, on its own day or through combination and filling, it can bring either good or ill.
Zhang Xingyuan says that Month Break has no resolution and indiscriminately judges it unfavorable.
A Cycle Void line may flourish or be supported while still, rest or be imprisoned while moving, receive generation or combination from the day, be clashed, appear through change, or be hidden but able to be drawn forth. Repeated trials have repeatedly been verified: the response comes when its cycle ends.
Unexpectedly, Zhang Guoyuan says that a Cycle Void line is as though the hexagram did not contain that line at all. Only if the Month Commander occupies it does he say that the Month Commander is not treated as Cycle Void and the day is not treated as Month Break.
This leads later students, whenever they see Month Break, to think there is no rescue; whenever they see Cycle Void, to think there is no such line.
He also says that the Month Commander is not Cycle Void, and speaks of whole emptiness and half emptiness. A yang day meeting a yang line, or a yin day meeting a yin line, is whole emptiness. A yang day meeting a yin line, or a yin day meeting a yang line, is half emptiness.
Suppose someone divines about illness. With whole emptiness, one supposedly knows that the person must die. But with half emptiness, is the patient half dead and half alive? The error reaches this extreme; it must be refuted.
Distinguishing Nuclear Hexagrams
The great sages of antiquity formed a hexagram with yarrow stalks and determined a matter's good or ill through its Substance image, Application image, Nuclear image and line statements. Substance represents oneself and Application the matter. A hexagram has three inner lines and three outer lines: where Self sits is Substance; where Response sits is Application.
For example, in Heaven over Earth, Pi, Self occupies the third line of inner Kun and Response the sixth line of outer Qian. Take inner Kun as the Substance image and outer Qian as the Application image. Inner Kun belongs to Earth and outer Qian to Metal. This is Substance going to generate Application, which is unfavorable.
Reading note: The supplied 耆草 is read as yarrow stalks in this method; the Chinese character is not replaced.
The method of the Nuclear Hexagram likewise uses Pi as an example. Remove the top sixth line, which is single, and the bottom first line, which is divided. From the second through fourth lines one sees divided, divided, single: the inner nuclear trigram is Gen. From the third through fifth one sees divided, single, single: the outer nuclear trigram is Xun.
Gen belongs to Earth and Xun to Wood. Wood is Wealth for Pi in the Qian Palace. If someone seeking a wife or wealth obtains this, it is called Application coming to control Substance, which is favorable.
As for line statements, a single line belongs to yang and is called nine; a divided line belongs to yin and is called six. Thus the Changes calls Qian's first line “First Nine: Hidden dragon; do not act.” Pi's first line is “First Six: Pulling up thatch, its roots entwined with its kind; constancy is favorable and brings success.” Pi's line called Nine in the Fourth is “There is a mandate; no blame. Those of like kind share the blessing.”
The immortal master Guigu, because the principles of the Changes were vast and profound and he feared that uncomprehending people could not penetrate them, replaced yarrow divination with coins. He fixed Wealth, Officer, Parents, Brothers and Descendants, and generation, control, restraint and transformation; distinguished the four Spirits, Source, Useful, Hostile and Avoided; and established methods of penalty, clash, control, harm, generation, support, assistance, combination, movement, stillness, Void and break. Later students could understand more readily and distinguish good or ill more easily.
Thereafter, those who elaborate the Changes with yarrow fail if they do not examine Nuclear, Substance and Application images and line statements. Those who divine with coins fail if they use those methods. Students should know that yarrow and coin divination have different methods of judgment.
Reading note: The anomalous supplied 曰 in the Nine in the Fourth introduction is read through its immediately following 九四 label. No extra line quotation is added.
Use ← / → or swipe left or right to change chapters