I Ching sequences over time

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After a few months of generating hexagrams, roughly once every few weeks, I've started looking for long-term patterns in the sequence by plotting them in a dated line.

 

There are some 'strange' (ie. less than random) patterns in places I've noticed; generally I'm a fairly critical person who tries to understand the probabilities of the world, but here I'm left wondering.

 

Is this something anyone else has done or could offer any advice/pointers on, in terms of divination across readings? Happy to discuss specifics too, although I'm always a bit wary of breaking the 'personal' connection with it.

 

[Michael Sternbach]

That sounds interesting. Could you give some examples?

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For instance - the sequence at the start of the year has been very influential on me. Not sure the best way to put this down, but I generally use a 0 for yin and 1 for yang:

 

010 101 (water | fire = not yet fulfilled, 64) moving to 110 101 (lake | fire = diversity, 38)

101 110 (fire | lake = abolishing the old, 49) moving to 101 111 (fire | heaven = seeking harmony, 13)

101 010 (fire | water = already fulfilled, 63). No moving lines.

 

These were the readings in order, with no others in between, with each reading around 10 days apart.

 

The links between the upper guas and lower guas stand out to me. Diversity (38) swaps upper and lower to become Abolishing the Old (49). Already Fulfilled (63) seems to be the counterpart to Not Yet Fulfilled before it. The whole sequence talks of a new cycle, things reaching a turning point.

 

More recently, my last two readings (about a week apart) have been pretty consistent too:

 

000 000 = (2) Responding, lowest 2 lines moving.

010 000 = (7) The Army/Multitude, lowest 2 lines and 5th line moving.

 

More generally, I've had a run of several months of the first, lowest line following the moon - a yang line generated when the moon is waxing, and a yin line when it's waning. This happened for 10 readings in a row.

 

I've come round to accepting coincidences as something more, it's a useful thing to believe in. But everything I've generally read is about generating a single hexagram and applying that, rather than interpreting readings over time and the structures and changes within them.

 

Hence my post

[Shidifen]

Scribe, what method do you use to cast your hexagrams? I've often wondered about the statistical probability of getting certain hexagrams when using the yarrow stalk method. With coins, or any other method where the probability of getting a static yin line versus a static yang line is the same, there is a six in sixteen chance of getting a yin line on any one cast and the same chance of getting a yang line on any one cast. With the stalk process (or marbles, etc) there is more likelihood of getting an unchanging yin line (seven in sixteen) than an unchanging yang line (five in sixteen).

 

There’s also a differing likelihood of casting a yin or yang changing line depending on which method you use to cast. With coins, there is a two in sixteen chance of getting either a changing yin or yang line, while with yarrow stalks there is a one in sixteen chance of casting a changing yin line and a three in sixteen chance of casting a changing yang line.

 

This means that with the stalk method you’d be more likely to cast hexagrams with more static yin lines than static yang lines and more changing yang lines than changing yin lines as your primary hexagram.

 

I think with the yarrow stalk method you’d expect to get more hexagrams that contain bottom and top trigrams like Kun, Zhen, Kan and Gen. Coins would give you a more even mixture of all eight trigrams. I keep a record of my casts and the date but I’ve never recorded which method I used. I’m only using the coin method now so I’ll draw a line after my last cast and see what happens in the future.

 

I’m one of those that has a question and makes a cast for that specific query and then usually not giving it a second thought once I've used the reading for clues to possible answers. Your concept of comparing past hexagrams and their enclosed trigrams against something that denotes change like moon phases is quite interesting.

 

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Thanks for the reply, Shidifen. I use a 3-coin toss method, although I flip a single coin in order 3 times for each line rather than 3 coins together - I have a (strange?) belief that the gua hierarchy is fractal, and like to stick to the sense of linear generation that a single coin gives. A single coin also seems to fit with the idea of a single source, but I digress.

 

The statistics side of things is really interesting though. I'll have a think about it when I get a moment, but yes - a 50/50 on each flip should give an even split of gua. My instinct is that I get more fire and water over time, but definitely keen to go back over previous casts and check the figures.

 

I should also really try to publish my casts somewhere...

[Michael Sternbach]

Hi Scribe,

 

First off I would like to ask, were all these readings on the same query and for the same querent (supposedly you)?

 

For instance - the sequence at the start of the year has been very influential on me. Not sure the best way to put this down, but I generally use a 0 for yin and 1 for yang:

 

010 101 (water | fire = not yet fulfilled, 64) moving to 110 101 (lake | fire = diversity, 38)

101 110 (fire | lake = abolishing the old, 49) moving to 101 111 (fire | heaven = seeking harmony, 13)

101 010 (fire | water = already fulfilled, 63). No moving lines.

 

These were the readings in order, with no others in between, with each reading around 10 days apart.

 

The links between the upper guas and lower guas stand out to me. Diversity (38) swaps upper and lower to become Abolishing the Old (49). Already Fulfilled (63) seems to be the counterpart to Not Yet Fulfilled before it. The whole sequence talks of a new cycle, things reaching a turning point.

 

Yes, it makes sense that, doing repeated readings, we should see a development in keeping with the inner "narrative" logic of the I Ching.

 

More recently, my last two readings (about a week apart) have been pretty consistent too:

 

000 000 = (2) Responding, lowest 2 lines moving.

010 000 = (7) The Army/Multitude, lowest 2 lines and 5th line moving.

 

More generally, I've had a run of several months of the first, lowest line following the moon - a yang line generated when the moon is waxing, and a yin line when it's waning. This happened for 10 readings in a row.

 

Very interesting observation.

 

I've come round to accepting coincidences as something more, it's a useful thing to believe in. But everything I've generally read is about generating a single hexagram and applying that, rather than interpreting readings over time and the structures and changes within them.

 

Hence my post

 

I agree. I experience similar phenomena with the Tarot cards - when reading for myself, the same cards keep showing up over prolonged periods of time, far over chance.

 

I hope that we will hear more about your research, still.

Edited March 29, 2015 by Michael Sternbach

[Shidifen]

G'day scribe. Have you noticed a continuance of any patterns?

 

I've been doing a small experiment to see if there was any time based pattern to the received hexagrams I cast. I was hoping to do a reading each night for a month but the cosmos conspired against me.

 

I did eighteen readings from March 23. Each reading was at about the same time each night and I asked the same question each time, the last reading being tonight. After I collated all the data it looked like a totally random bunch of hexagram numbers. I always consider a hexagram as being built up of two trigrams, so I decided to examine the constituent trigrams of the hexagrams. I know the sample size is small but the results were interesting.

 

I compared the trigrams to the waxing and waning of the moon. I did ten readings while the moon was waxing. Those ten hexagrams were made up of twelve yang trigrams and eight yin trigrams. There were eight secondary hexagrams made up of eight yang trigrams and eight yin trigrams.

 

I did eight readings while the moon was waxing. Those eight hexagrams were made up of ten yang trigrams and six yin trigrams. There were four secondary hexagrams made up of four yang trigrams and four yin trigrams.

 

Its interesting that there were more primary yang trigrams than primary yin trigrams (about 3:2) but the same number of secondary yang trigrams as secondary yin trigrams. I’ll go through the individual lines at some later date and see if there’s a mathematical expectation or just chance. There didn’t appear to be any difference whether the moon was waning or waxing.

 

The trigrams are considered to be yang or yin depending on how many strong (yang) lines it has. One yang line makes it a yang trigram because there is one yang line ruling over two yin lines (Chen, Kan, Ken), which is stronger than two yang lines ruling over one yin line (Sun, Li, Tui). Chien is also yang and Kun is yin.

 

You mentioned you felt you were casting more water and fire trigrams. I should have expected each primary trigram to average about four appearances over my eighteen casts. Interestingly Kan (the abysmal, moving water) came up eight times but Li came up only twice. There were fifteen trigrams that changed and you’d expect each of the eight trigrams to come up about twice but Kun came up five times, Li three times, Kan once and Tui (lake, still water) none.

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Thanks for the answers, Michael and Shidifen. I've been moving house over the past month so have done fewer readings, and only have them written down on scattered bits of paper. I think I'll start collecting them properly when I get a moment. The main progression I noticed was one hexagram followed next time by the one following it in the I Ching. But I guess that must happen sometimes I think I have also escaped the clutches of the moon a little.

 

To respond a little...

 

From Michael:

First off I would like to ask, were all these readings on the same query and for the same querent (supposedly you)?

 

All for myself, although the query was often a particular situation I was in, rather than a direct question. Usually this is about the development of the same topic - mostly either work or home life.

 

From shidifen:

I was hoping to do a reading each night for a month but the cosmos conspired against me.

 

Interesting exercise, I wonder what could come out of that. Usually I don't like to "force" readings, and seemed to go through an internal cycle of every 10 days, instinctively. But it would be interesting to do, yes.

 

After I collated all the data it looked like a totally random bunch of hexagram numbers.

 

Slightly unrelatedly, I wrote recently about thinking of the I Ching as a thermodynamic system. There is randomness in such systems, but at the same time there is order other than progression - the I Ching clearly refers to a way of thinking outside of normal binary logic, despite its simplification to 1s and 0s.

 

I think I might have to do another reading tonight