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FROM GUI TO GUA
the origin of the hexagrams??
Playing with an idea
(Animation: the white figure sees the hexagram 'growing')
The ancient sundial of the Zhou was a Guibiao圭表. A tablet, gui, which was at one end round, at the other end straight. At the round end a biao, a gnomon, which cast a shadow, longer in winter, shorter in summer. Midwinter is moon 10, the shadow goes across all lines. Midsummer is moon 4, hardly any shadow.
The Guibiao (tablet with gnomon) was horizontal, but I have put it upright, so the connection with the vertical hexagrams is obvious.
10 11 12 1 2 3 4
Moon 5 looked exactly like moon 3, with one line broken by the shadow. If you make a record about which moon you are referring to, it is easier to write one of the two upside down. It stays the same picture, but the difference is easy to see. At the same time this way of writing them makes a logical sequence. The light creeps up, then the dark, and then the light again. The light of heaven and the shadow of earth.
5 6 7 8 9
The next step is trying to divine when something will happen. Cast coins, or draw sticks out of a bunch with shorter and longer ones, or count beans or any other way to decide how many whole and how many broken lines come up. You will have to find a way to decide which come first, the whole or the broken lines. But then it will clearly indicate a month.
The character GUI is the left part of the character at the top. If you add the character for divining (the part at right: a divination-crack in a shell or bone), then you have the character GUA: hexagram or trigram.
And why 6 lines? Because there are 6 moons/months from shortest shadow at midsummer until longest shadow at midwinter, and again 6 moons/months until next midsummer.
In .hex19
it says "when the 8th moon comes - pitfall". The 8th moon is the 'upside-down' of hex.19: hex.20, contemplating.
Bradford Hatcher put me on the right track: hexagrams and calendar were connected since old times. I found the following text in his book (in the part 'Dimensions', search for “8th” and you hit right upon it).
“Most of the elaborate associations of the Yi with the Chinese calendar first appeared in the Yiweishu一位数 in the Early Han. The development of the Shi Er Yue Gua, in the order of the 12 Moons, is attributed to Meng Xi 梦溪(1st cent. BCE) by Yu Fan (164-233) (Fendos, p. 406). The pairing of the 12 Branches to the 12 Lines of Qian and Kun and a system known as “Internalizing the 12 Branches” is attributed to Jing Fang (77-37) (ib, p. 370). However, the Chinese had developed their 12-month calendar long before the Zhou Yi was composed. Further, the references to the coming of the 8th Moon at Gua Ci 19.0 (Lin is the 12th Moon, the 8th’s Inverse), the reference to the coming of solid ice at Yao Ci 02.1 (Zhi Gua 24) and the association of Gua 24 to the Winter Solstice in Da Xiang 24.X all suggest that a system of assignments was both in place and a part of the Zhou Yi and Wing composers’ thought processes.”
(Gua ci is the image, yao ci is line-text and zhi gua is relating hex)
Obviously the Tidal Gua (the combinations of moons/months and hexagrams) are very old.
Two days ago I had jumped up because of “the 8th moon”, it suddenly explained this enigmatic sentence in hex.19.
This afternoon (Oct.19, 2002) at 1.30 I suddenly combined things, and at 3 o’clock I had made photos and put them on my website. I had cut strips of paper and a little bamboo stick acted as gnomon. In Ricci it says (shortened): "GUI: measuring tablet, 15 寸 (cun, inch) long, placed horizontally North-South, at noon the shadow of a gnomon of 8 尺 (chi, feet) high at the extreme south end fell on it. Tablet of jade or ivory, the top round, the bottom square, given by the emperor to the new princes as token of their power or to envoys as credential. Several measures of capacity".
A measuring rod .. for measuring the capacity of containers with liquids or grain, the capacity of princes, the 'capacity' or seasons of the year. And in divination the capacity (or season or time) of the question.
One problem: the hexagram with all lines broken, 2, is not the moon of winter solstice, but the moon just before. Maybe winter solstice, and especially its celebration, is associated with the return of the light, with hexagram 24. There the judgment says: "the kings closed the frontiers at sun solstice". Hex.2, the bottom line, talks about hoarfrost, which comes usually many weeks before winter solstice.
Of course on the gui, hex.2 is the exact moment of winter solstice. But the month of midwinter reaches from Dec.5 to Jan.5 (approximately), and includes the first lengthening of the days. So it is not at all illogical to take hex.24 for this month, and hex.2 for the preceding one, when the days only become darker. This might explain the one-moon shift of the hexagrams.
8 chi Gnomon, Beijing Ancient Observatory, China. It is difficult to see the markings, but it seems there are many lines. Lots more than six.
10 chi Gnomon in the Qing dynasty
Nanjing Observatory.
Look at this!!! In this website, "Chinese Fortune Calendar" the TaiQi symbol is explained.
All lines dark at winter solstice. All lines bright at summer solstice. Three bright, three dark at spring and autumn equinox. More diagrams here
I knew that the character for hexagram, gua (actually diagram, it also indicates trigram etc) is a picture of a sundial (a gui) with the radical ‘divining’ added. On the old picture of the character it looks very much like a pile of lines. It is two times the character for ‘earth’, one on top of the other, but maybe originally it was not a picture of earth. Very often characters which resembled each other are later drawn the same.
The development into divining must have been very natural. A moon (month) could be indicated by a number of whole and broken lines, so it was calling for a divination method to find a moon. Finding the number of whole lines by counting pebbles or whatever, and the broken ones ditto, or some other way, but it was not difficult to devise something.
Then the next evident step is making a system together with the other combinations of lines, resulting in 64 different possibilities. When I see how many people are intrigued by the mathematical possibilities of the light and dark lines combinations, and how clever they are in finding systems, then I am convinced that in those old days some Wu had this same obsession.
So I think the hexagrams did indeed precede the texts, or maybe existing texts were added to them, and King Wen and the Duke of Zhou (or whoever) wrote or appended the texts to existing hexagrams and lines.
This is just my own idea, and there are many facts speaking against it. I will put everything I can find side by side on this page.
Gui day today – the Wu is wearing her animal mask and all her feathers and bells. She will perform the ritual for the next ten-day period. The whole village is sitting in a circle around the ritual space where she will dance. Strings are attached to a long pole, horizontally shutting off one end of the dance-floor, and at every string a chicken hangs upside down. They are the payment for the gods, and also for the Wu, because gods and Wu always share everything.
They need to know if the weather will be steady in the coming period. Do they have to hurry to get the harvest in? Or is it better to wait until the next period? For the crop waiting would be better – but if a storm comes, it might destroy everything. It is an important decision.
The Wu dances in circles, faster and faster, shaking her bells, and also shaking the big pumpkin with beans. Big flat beans, six of them, one side painted black, the other side white. Through a hole in the pumpkin the gods make the beans fall out, one by one. Everyone watches them flying, so they will know where they fall.
Exhausted the Wu falls prostrate on the floor. Nobody moves, in silence they wait until she comes back on earth again. When she finally opens her eyes and raises her head, she looks around until she sees one bean. A white one, the gods are telling her to start with the white ones. She collects them all, sits down cross-legged and puts them in a line, starting with the white ones, and then the black ones. Three white, three black. Everybody smiles, they know what this means. It is the moon of spring, when the cold of winter and the hunger are over. When the rains start, and when the first fresh greens can be collected. The crops start to grow. It is usually the most happy period of the year. This means the weather in the next ten days will be fair, and the harvest can wait. The crop has another chance for growing, it will be bigger.
But then suddenly one of the chicken manages to wriggle her leg out of the string. Screeching she runs across the dancing space. This cannot be anything else than a very bad omen. Everybody is looking anxious at the Wu now. She sits in deep thought, trying to grasp the meaning of what happened. The beautiful picture of the spring moon is scrambled and one of the beans has even been turned over.
Very softly she begins mumbling words about storms and darkness and misfortune.
Nobody can sleep that night, and the next day they all start the harvest. Not with songs and laughter this year, but filled with fear. They never before have managed to bring it in so fast, and they are just in time. Big black clouds move in faster than they ever before saw clouds move across the sky, and within minutes the most severe thunderstorm is raging. Even the old people cannot remember such dark and awful weather. The clouds are so black and thick that it is as if the sun is down. The whole day and most of the night the earth is trembling by the thunder and the terrible rains. The next morning the sun rises bright in a crystal-clear sky. The entire village is greeting her, laughing, crying, all talking and singing.
The Wu looks in her thoughts to the picture of the scattered beans. White-black-white-black-black-black. It engraves itself into her mind. Forever she will remember what this image means ..
Tidal Gua, hexagrams of the moon or month, week and day.
Animation: the white figure sees the hexagram 'growing'. The left one from midsummer to midwinter, the right one from midwinter to midsummer.
In this website, "Chinese Fortune Calendar" the TaiJi symbol is explained. All lines dark at winter solstice. All lines bright at summer solstice. Three bright, three dark at spring and autumn equinox. |
The sun casts the shadow. In the course of one year, drawing a line along their lengths makes a spiral. So the sun creates the TaiJi.
The moon divides this spiral in 12 segments. Each quarter of the moon-month is one week, 7 days. The days of full moon, new moon and the two quarter moons are not fit for doing things. There is a much higher chance for accidents to happen, and the mind withdraws from labor, needs rest. So the natural sequence is: 6 week-days and a sunday.
Twelve segements. The moon creates the hexagrams out of the shadows of the sun. For a calendar which assigns hexagrams to weeks and hexagram-lines to days, see HERE.
To index 'Origins of characters' 'WU' see 'origins' > shaman
searching for the origins
Rutt (Zhouyi, 1996) gives most information. He says (p.88):
”The word gua itself seems originally to have meant yarrow-wand divination, and is written by combining a graph for ‘baton’ with a graph for ‘divining’ that looks like a crack in a tortoiseshell. Perhaps this reflects the bamboo or other slips, shaped like batons, on which the hexagrams were first written”.
(p.100-102) The bagua numerals: groups of 6 symbols, the oldest reliably dated ones from the reign of Wuding (1238-1180 BC). Zhang Zhenglang identified them as being probably hexagrams. They usually occur at the end of an inscription, sometimes as two groups of three chevrons placed side by side, most often as a group of six lines, chevrons, or numerals set vertically one above another. When the groups consist of lines, the broken lines may have three parts, rather than two. When the signs are numerals, they are easily recognized Chinese figures from 1 to 9, in groups such as 766718.
.. The bagua numerals are much older than any hexagram drawings now known. Little detailed information has been gained about them since they have been identified.
LINK to pictures of the bagua numerals
(.."When the groups consist of lines, the broken lines may have three parts, rather than two".. This was the only thing which I saw as a real counter indication for my idea. All the others are no proof that I am wrong. Maybe there is an explanation for the three lines. The Tai Xuan Jing太玄经 consists of tetragrams of single, double and triple lines. Maybe in the beginning there were more oracles, some without triple lines too, and did they not survive the times.
I don't expect to find any real proof, I don't think that is possible after so many centuries. The only criterion may be 'does it make sense'. My search goes on..)
Calendrical groups
Some scholars have wondered whether the counting of days in cycles of sixty, giving six ten-day ‘weeks’ to a cycle, underlies the hexagram form. In late Shang times tortoise-shell auguries were taken at the beginning of each ten-day period, on the gui* day. Hexagram 55.1 may reflect this usage. The results of these divinations were inscribed on oracle bones in columns containing six items, often read from bottom to top. [James Menzies proposed the idea that this custom may have suggested the hexagram form of Zhouyi (Kunst p.23, Shaughnessy 1983 p.109f).
Kunst (p. 23, about Menzies):
"The typical series of six ten-day week divinations comprising a full 60-day sexagenary cycle corresponds to the six line texts of a hexagram. .. In Japan Naito Torajiro (1923) and Kaizuka Shigeki (1947) reached a different conclusion, they successively developed the idea that the six lines of a hexagram corresponded not to the divinations for the six ten-dayweeks, but to each day of a ten-day week. They argued .. there were only five lines to a hexagram chapter, and a pair of adjacent chapters formed one large one of ten lines. .. when the Zhou took this system over from the Shang, they modified it to fit their own calendar of four lunar phases, which was tantamount to a month of four seven-day weeks. Like the Shang, the Zhou ignored the last day of the cycle, leaving a total of six days, .. the oracle sayings were thus also arranged in corresponding units of six, rather than in nine as with the Shang (It has been confirmed by Prof. K. Takashima that there is indeed an absence of gui-days in .. divinations. Gui day may have been a day of rest or of taboo on which nothing, except the ten-day divination, was conducted". Kunst p.220, note 13).
* This gui is a different character than the 'sundial'. It is the tenth stem or calendrical sign, 'yin water'. It can be found back in the name of hexagram 38.
Sundials
My search for the guibiao (tablet-with-gnomon sundial) did not yield anything helpful yet. The pictures with text on them come from http://ccms.nkfust.edu.tw/~jochi/index.htm
Duke Zhou's Gnomon?, Dengfeng-xian Observatory in the Yuan dynasty.
40 chi Gnomon in the Yuan dynasty, Dengfeng-xian Ancient Observatory, Dengfeng-xian, Henan, China.
The gnomons (above) indicate the seasons, the round sundials (below) indicate the hours of the day.
Sundial, Dengfeng-xian Observatory in the Yuan dynasty.
http://www.nmns.edu.tw/New/Multimedia/china/A-1-8_display.htm
Ancient Observatory, Kyonju, Korea.
How does it work?
The gui has lines to indicate the months of the year. Every day at noon, the shadow of the sun passes the horizontal lines, and shows the season.
The round sundials of later times had lines emerging from one point, like a fan, indicating the hours of the day.
Guibiao with 10 chi Gnomon in the Qing dynasty 圭表 gui1 biao3. Sun'dial' to measure the season of the year. Its direction is exactly North-South. In this photo time is around 10.30 in the morning. At noon the shadow is in the length of the horizontal bar. |
| 日晷 ri4 gui3 (sun cast-shadow) or 日規 ri4 gui1 (sun pattern). Sundial for measuring the hour of the day. Top points towards the sun. This is only the dial, the gnomon is missing. |
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discussion
Mails from Thomas
The shadow of the gnomon is cast toward the north and is observed at noon, when the shadow is at its shortest for the day. At the winter solstice the shadow is long and will cut all the lines, producing hexagram 2, the hexagram of the winter solstice. At the summer solstice the shadow is short and will not cross any lines, giving 6 whole lines, or hexagram 1, the hexagram of the summer solstice.
The gui is read in the direction that the shadow is moving. Yin hexagrams are read from the round south end, looking northward. Yang hexagrams are read from the flat north end looking southward.
Yang months (11, 12, 1-4): the shadow is moving toward the sun (shortening).
Yin months (5-10): the shadow is moving away from the sun (lengthening).
The remarkable power of LiSe's theory is its ability to unify and explain. One way or another, much of qimancy [Stephen Field's term: URL below] seems to be reducible to the gui, as the original working model of the interaction of heaven and earth. Fluctuations in the vitality (qi) of nature are shown on the gui's dial. The connection between shadow and spirit is obvious. (LiSe is not responsible for these speculations.)
Yijing:
The hexagrams and the standard representation of yin (shadow cut) and yang (shadow free) lines may be as old as the gui -- perhaps 10,000 years old or older. At its simplest a stick in the ground with pebbles or twigs to mark graduations [see shadow stick, below], the gui was a possibility in the most primitive conditions of human life.
The hexagrams came before the trigrams as well as before any text.
The hexagrams represent energy cycles inherently, rather than symbolically.
Fundamental yijing ideas are implicit in the gui: Hexagram inversion (King Wen's pairs) is a consequence of the direction of shadow movement. The changing (moving) line is the line and adjacent area on the gui where the tip of the shadow falls. The idea of one hexagram changing into another and the cycles of endless change are also exemplified.
Legge (p.14 of his I Ching) wonders why the Chinese stopped with six lines. They did not stop with six lines; they began with six.
The hexagrams represent states of qi as exemplified in the life of the year, thus justifying the hexagram calendar (Meng Xi or Blofeld). A yijing diviner (IMO) aims to determine the qi of the subject of divination.
Traditional Chinese Medicine:
"The ancient sundial of the Zhou was a Gui, a tablet which was at one end round, at the other end straight." The human body is also round at one end and flat at the other, so it is likely that the tablet symbolized the human body. The life of the body is sustained by the circulation of qi just as the life of the universe is sustained by the circulation of qi in the cycle of the year.
Recent discussion in IChing_YiJing (Message 2073) concerned "Medical Use of I-CHING (TCM)" with the claim "there is no relationship between yijing and chinese medicine." A better understanding of the gui might alter such a view.
(First sentence of 'Yijing', by Wu Jing-Nuan: "When I first began my study of Chinese medicine, one of my instructors told me that to be an Yi, a Chinese Doctor, one must understand the Yi of the Yijing". - LiSe)
Feng Shui:
Feng shui is about qi, and the gui is apparently the original model for detecting and harmonizing qi. In his webpage "QIMANCY The Art and Science of Fengshui" Dr. Stephen L. Field says: "This practice [feng shui] is as old as Chinese culture itself (neolithic Yangshao villages date from about 6000 BCE)...."
Also: "A neolithic grave unearthed recently in Henan province is a microcosm of the Chinese world as it was perceived at this early period. Its southern face (beyond the head of the skeleton) was round, while its northern face (at the skeleton's foot) was square."
That is, the shape of the grave is similar to the shape of the gui, which gui might very well have been used to site the grave. Here's how:
There is a simple procedure for determining directions from a gnomon, the "shadow stick" as it is called in outdoor lore:
"All you need is a straight stick about 3 or 4 feet long. Set the stick in the ground in an open area where sunlight will strike it and cast a shadow. Mark the tip of the shadow with a stone. After a few minutes, when the shadow has moved over the ground, place another stone at the tip of the shadow. Draw a straight line through both stones.
This line runs east and west. The first stone is at the west end of the line. Now, if you draw the shortest line from the base of the stick to the east-west line, you will have found north (in the Northern Hemisphere)."
I do not know how accurate this procedure is, but if Field's Qimancy webpage is correct, the ancient Chinese used it or something like it: "Liu [c. 1796 BCE] was measuring the shadow of the gnomon, or sundial, to determine the cardinal directions."
Considering that the weather in ancient China was more humid than now and thus the polestar (whichever star it was then) could often not be observed because of clouds, it seems likely that before the lodestone came into use the gnomon would have been the primary means for orienting graves and temples.
Calibration of a Gui
The graduations of the gui should represent the midpoints (the hight) of each season, as is the Chinese convention, rather than the limits (beginning and end), as is the Western convention. Thus, only six lines are needed to mark the seasons (solar-determined months). If the seasons were represented by spaces rather than by lines, seven lines would be needed.
This confusing matter is (I believe) discussed by Lorraine Wilcox in her "A Chinese View of the Seasons" webpage: "In China the seasons were traditionally calculated with the solstices and equinoxes as the midpoint of the season, not the beginning." In the Chinese day of 12 two-hour periods, midnight falls in the middle of a two-hour period.
The ancient Chinese would have determined the placement of the graduations empirically. The mathematical construction of a precise gui for a particular latitude is beyond me.
(See http://www.sundials.co.uk for many different sundials, and also an instructions for making one – LiSe)
-Tom
References
QIMANCY
The Art and Science of Fengshui ⓒ 1998 Dr. Stephen L. Field http://www.fengshuigate.com/qimancy.html
The quote about the shadow stick is from Complete Book of Outdoor Lore by Clyde Ormond, Harper & Row, 1971, p.77.
Oct. 8, 2003,
Hello LiSe,
Your idea about the gui is simply the best thing going, and anyone who is interested in the Yi or any area of qimancy ought to consider it. If your idea were false, there should be some contradictory evidence somewhere, and I haven't found any.
I did have questions about calibration, but Lorraine's article seems to answer that. Thanks for a wonderful idea.
Did you see this:
"Gnomon-and-Ruler
This is the most ancient time-measuring instrument. The record of the use of the gnomon-and-ruler in the ancient book The Rites of Zhou confirms the long history of this instrument. The gnomon-and-ruler indicates the time [date] by the length of the shadow of style in the sun. It consists of two parts. The post or stone pillar standing upright on the ground to cast a shadow is called biao (gnomon) and the marked tablet lying north-south is called gui (ruler); hence, the name guibiao. Since time can be measured in the length of the shadow, to describe duration of time with length units like "inch" becomes logical." http://www.gzwaishi.gov.cn/english/newsdetail.asp?news_sno=4106
Somewhere there should be books and scholarly papers about the details of the gui. Too bad we don't have them.
Tom
Connection with tidal gua
Tom (to IChing_YiJing mailing list:
I refer to the gui as a sundial, because that is the closest western analogue. However, the typical western sundial is an hour dial. The gui is better described as a calendar dial, since it determines position within the cycle of the year. If the graduations on the gui were fine enough, as is perhaps the case on the huge stone gui that LiSe has pictured at her website, then the gui could mark each day of the year.
I should say that LiSe is much more reserved about her theory being historical fact than I am. In spite of my very limited information, I think the circumstantial evidence is conclusive that the gui is the origin of the hexagrams.
IChing_YiJing mailing list: In as to hexagrams tai and pi, spring equinox occurs at second (mao) month, and autumn equinox occurs at the eighth (you) month, mao and you months are yinyang balance. If hexagrams originated from the change of sun's shadow or 'gui', would you please tell us the reason why the hexagrams tai and pi are assigned to the first (yin) month and the seventh (shen) month, refer to 12 xiaoxigua/bigua/growth & decay hexagrams/sovereign hexagrams, not mao and you months. and how about the rest hexagrams?
>(snip) "please just tell me how to associate sun's shadow or "gui" with ALL hexagrams and ALL xiantian and houtian trigrams and charts for proving your words.
No problem. The gui is the original Chinese qimantic calendar and the source of yin and yang lines and of the hexagrams. Xiantian (Before Heaven) and houtian (After Heaven) are qimantic and calendrical and are made up of yin and yang lines. Therefore, the gui is the primordial source of xiantian and houtian. Time is place in Chinese thinking (1). To relate to the calendar is to relate to a place on the gui. For xiantian and houtian, see Complete Idiot's Guide to Feng Shui (1999), pp.74-5.
The xiantian emphasizes the qi flowing through the four seasons, while the houtian emphasizes the elements. Xiantian (Before Heaven) originally meant (IMO) "before appearance," that is, the qi that exists before something is actualized. Knowing such qi makes divination possible.
Each hexagram of the hexagram calendar is associated with a place on the gui. (Persons interested in binary might prefer Shao Yong's hexagram circle.) If the gui is large enough, each individual line of a hexagram has its own place. Here is a rectangular arrangement of the hexagram calendar:
Month Hexagrams
1 11 5 17 35 40 51
2 34 16 6 18 49
3 43 56 7 8 9
4 1 14 37 48 31 30
5 44 50 55 59 10
6 33 32 60 13 41
7 12 57 45 26 22 58
8 20 54 25 36 47
9 23 52 63 21 28
10 2 64 39 27 61 29
11 24 3 15 38 46
12 19 62 4 42 53
The rightmost column represents the seasons and intercalary time. The other five columns are the hexagrams of 30-day months (5*6 = 30), each line representing a day. This is the simple 360 day calendar, but the same pattern was used for 365.25 day calendars too.
That is the basic sequence, but variations occur. Peter thinks this hexagram calendar began with Meng Xi. I think it is far older. Anyway, it is the foundation of the Taixuanjing (2 BCE) and I think is now used in the calculation of auspiciousness in the tongshu, the Chinese almanac from Hong Kong, but I don't have this for sure.
(1)"An inch of time [on the gui] is worth an inch of gold; yet you can't buy an inch of time at an inch of gold." http://www.gzwaishi.gov.cn/english/newsdetail.asp?news_sno=4106
Magical
Dear LiSe,
In my opinion your idea about the guibiao is a major contribution to Chinese studies, and I am grateful to have it.
Your idea is simple, but for many people who have studied the zhouyi extensively and know its details, it's hard to stop focusing on details and see the whole picture. It was hard for me.
How one looks at things determines what one can see.
It is now an accepted theory that all multiple-cell forms of life -- trees, horses, people, rabbits, and so on -- began as a single cell creature some billion of years ago. Most likely the person who started the single-cell theory was asked a question like "If your theory is true, then explain why birds have feathers." But the truth of the theory did not at all depend on whether its originator could explain why birds have feathers. To see the relevance of the guibiao, a person much first stop looking at familiar details that are especially important to him. That's hard to do. Someone wanted me to use the guibiao to explain the Later Heaven arrangement. He was asking for feathers.
Then there's the emotional reaction. Twelve hexagrams are produced on the gui so quick and easy that it seems like a trick. To put the emotion in words, "OK, you've got twelve hexagrams. So what?" At that point, I had to put the idea on the back of my mind and let it stew. Things kept being added to the pot (a moving line with real movement, one hexagram changing into another, etc.), and the aroma got better and better. This takes time.
To be persuaded, I even had to stop looking at the the details of guibiao itself and consider vague general conditions that the origin of the zhouyi should satisfy. So far as I can see, the guibiao is the only thing that satisfies these conditions.
It's hard to put these things into words. The zhouyi is magical (xuan), so its parent must be magical too. What is magical about the guibiao?
Well, shadows are magical, and the guibiao is like a device for taking the vitality (qi) of the universe -- like devices for taking human blood pressure and temperature. Just looking at a shadow move gives one a sense of cosmic vitality (dragon's breath). So all those associations with any form of qimancy link to the guibiao. I have long argued that hexagrams are best thought of as representing state of qi. The relationship between cosmic process (dao), qi, time in the cycle of the year, and the tetragrams is explicit in the taixuanjing, and the taixuanjing reveals how thoughtful Chinese understand the zhouji. So to have a hexagram on the guibiao as a cosmic state of qi just confirms what I already believed to be true about the zhouyi.
The person who accords with cosmic process (dao) in a timely manner is virtuous (te). Such personal acts are supported by the universe as a whole -- 'correlatively', Bradford would say. Nature conspires to aid the virtuous person. By acting prematurely or retardedly, persons who act out of season fail. Their crops don't grow, and their meat spoils; their families, enterprises, or dynasties decline. God structures time, and when we accord with this structure we flourish. The guibiao provides religious insight into the structure of time and one's place in that structure, just as does the zhouyi.
Such general, philosophical ideas about xuan, dao, de, and qi are what persuaded me that the guibiao is the remote parent of the zhouyi. Everything fits beautifully.
Tom
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