26 September 2012
Yijing Cards
Years ago a publisher asked me to make a Yijing Agenda for the years 2000 and 2001. For attractive purposes I made 64 images of the hexagrams: 12 hexagrams for the…
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6 September 2012
The Picture that Covers Heaven and Earth
A few years ago I bought a book called Zhouyi Tu Jing Guang Shuo 周易圖經廣說, ‘Extensive Discussion of Zhouyi Pictures and its Scriptures’ by Wan Nianchun 萬年淳 (1761-1835). The book is more known…
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13 August 2012
More than words
(Most of the oracle bone images in this article are from the site of Richard Sears. Quotes from classics are from the site of Donald Sturgeon.) The Chinese character yan 言…
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11 June 2012
Another take on ‘you fu 有孚’
(To see all Chinese characters in this article use Firefox with the Hanazono font.) A few years ago I wrote an article about the meaning of fu 孚. It was appreciated…
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6 March 2012
The lost work of Wallace Andrew Sherrill
A few years ago Frank Coolen told me he had bought a book by W.A. Sherrill which was quite unknown in the world of Yijing students. Indeed, the book is so…
Read article →1 December 2008
The banner of Kun
The fifth line of hexagram 2 has the sentence 黃裳元吉 Most often this is translated as something like ‘yellow lower garment/skirt. Greatly auspicious’. The Mawangdui manuscript made me ponder about another…
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5 October 2008
The land bestowed is great
The first three characters of line 2 of hexagram 2, 直方大, are most often translated as ‘straight, square, great’ (Wilhelm, Wu Jing-Nuan, Huang, etc.). It is a sentence which has always…
Read article →27 February 2006
Questioning the question
In every Yi book that teaches you how to consult the oracle you read the same thing: you must ask a question, and the Yi answers that question. It is necessary…
Read article →15 January 2006
A review of Chung Wu’s “The Essentials of the Yi Jing”
…..can be found here at Steve Marshall’s site.
Read article →11 December 2005
Don’t forget the Germans
It is a pity that the German literature about ancient China is so much neglected or ignored. There are numerous excellent studies about Chinese literature, history and culture written by German…
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28 September 2005
The ‘sheng’ sacrifice at Qi Shan
(If you see tiny squares where Chinese characters should be you are probably using Internet Explorer. Switch to Firefox, it does a much better job.) Most Yijing translations translate sheng 升,…
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10 August 2005
Symmetry in the houtian bagua
(Click pictures to enlarge) At first glance the houtian bagua 後天八卦trigram circle seems devoid of any symmetry. It seems as if the trigrams follow each other in a random order, and…
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