As Usual,
Why I can’t blame Mr. Pig,
An aged farmer and his wife were leaning against the edge of their pig-pen when the old woman wistfully recalled that the next week would mark their golden wedding anniversary.
"Let's have a party, Homer," she suggested. "Let's kill a pig."
The farmer scratched his grizzled head. "Gee, Ethel," he finally answered, "I don't see why the pig should take the blame for something that happened fifty years ago."
Ha, ha….
Now to carry on with Yi Jing Divination using Poker Cards,
As you noticed there is a centre card which will gives an answer and there are eight cards surrounding it apart from another twelve in the outer circle. This is the Bagua for the eight cards in the second circle. You will notice there aren’t any cards for 2, 3, 4 and 5. This system uses the Gua or trigrams based on early heaven arrangement for divination. The eight cards which each represent a gua is also divided into eight sectors representing eight areas in life. The Directions followed the later heaven arrangement that is, looking at it, the top would be south, the bottom would be north, the left side would be east and the right side would be west. This is for fengshui purpose. In my earlier post, I mentioned that I got an Ace of Heart from my divination. Surprisingly it is shown in the south position in this divination. ESP, ha-ha. The outer circle of the cards represent the twelve lunar month of the year. This is for checking the time of events. There are another 3 cards at the side of the layout.
A story about how Mei Hua Yi Shu 梅花义数 comes about,
Story of a broken pillow.
In olden China, people sleeps on ceramic pillow. Shao Kang Jie woke up one morning and saw a rat in his room. He then took his pillow and threw it at the rat. The pillow cracked open and inside was a note that said: this pillow will be sold to Shao who will break the pillow when he throws it at a rat at a certain time, on a certain day, on a certain month and on a certain year.
This is amazing thought Shao, for he had just broke the ceramic pillow under the very circumstances and exact time as in the note. Shao decided to track down the author of the note.
This lead him to the potter who made the pillow who told him about an old man who would sit in his workroom carrying the Yi Jing under his arm. Then Shao went to the old man’s house only to be told by a young boy that his father, had died two days earlier.
Thinking that he had come too late, Shao started to leave. But the son called him back and gave Shao a book that his father asked to be given to a scholar that would come to his house two days after his death. And that this scholar would be able to find where the money was buried to pay for his funeral.
That book was the Yi Jing and tucked inside the pages were the formulas for prediction. With this, Shao was able to mathematically calculate where the old man had buried his silver to pay for the funeral expenses.
Next episode: How it was named Plum Blossom Oracle 梅花义数 and further about the standard Bagua poker card readings used for divination.
Above story taken from Mentor Koh’s I Ching Course.
Till-then, cheerio!!!
