EDITORIAL
- Floret of an original, transversal and fruitful thought, the I Ching is the formalization of Changes, alchemical wedding of Yin and Yang, natural laws of circular regulation in acupuncture and in "Feng-Shui" (geomancy), which apply to man and his environment, for setting them in a reciprocal agreement, in a very ecosystemic and yet typically Chinese way...
Moreover the I Ching belongs to the same divinatory family as the medieval European geomancy...
géomance / jé-O-man- / or géomancie / je-o-man-sy / s.f.
Alleged art of guessing the future by throwing a handfull of dust or ground randomly on a table, to consider future events by the lines and the figures which result from it. |- | XVIe S.
"Do not gather two by two the points of geomance,
do not make the sieve turn, do not embrace the science
That boasts of saying with water or fire
All that will happen to you, though it knows little",
Amadis Jamyn, Sonnets, "Future Things".
"Then, with a stylus, quickly drew a certain number of various points, coupled them by geomancy, and said..." Rabelais. "Pantagruel". III, 25.
( from the Emile Littré dictionary )
Geomance project
Chinese I Ching designed in GIF fonts : - Chinese text of " Zhou Yi", plus the Great Symbol for every 64 hexagrams of the I Ching,
composed of a thousand graphic fonts (GIF).- Its French translation from the end of XIXème century, by Louis Felix Philastre.
- Its English translation from the end of XIXème century, by James Legge.
Commented summary
In 1679, when Gottfried Wilhelm von LEIBNIZ announced the discovery of the binary system to Joachim Bouveret, a Jesuit teaching astronomy at the court of emperor K'ang Hsi, the later congratulated him for conformity of the invention with this ancient system of the " Book of Variations" (I Ching), that he esteems the most in the world in the domain of science".
- With the Boolean legacy of arithmetic binary (from logic to data processing) the analogy with Leibniz binary system will be strongly confirmed...
Some see today in I Ching hexagrams a quasi systemic model, so narrow are the parallels between its system and the modern Information theories...In XXth century, I Ching, known by the general public thanks to Richard Wilhelm translation, inspired Carl Gustav Jung and Wolfgang Pauli to a theoretical framework able to take account of phenomena overflowing from the field of the classical theories.
With the assumption of their paradoxal synchronicity theory, postulating the existence of non-causal interactions between physical and psychologicalphenomena, comes a new revival of the alchemical belief of "Unus Mundus" (oneness of macrocosm and microcosm).During the Sixties a large audience of people embraced the I Ching becomed a fashionable best-seller in Occident, while in modern China its use, during centuries anchored in popular superstition, had been prohibited...
Today when the knowledge of "natural science of former Chinese " confirms the rational statute of its theoretical model, the irrational aspect of I Ching is disconcerting so much so as to prove to be indissociable with the former...
Old Chinese writings attest presence of this divinatory use as of the highest antiquity, and Chinese archaeology recently showed that the Chang shamanic practises precusors of the I Ching are also at the direct origin of Chinese writting.
- A Table of the 64 hexagrams (ordered by number) gives access to each of the 64 sequences of a polysemic text, subtitled in French and in English, according to the versions of Louis-Felix Philastre (1881) and James Legge(1899).
- A text about the Traditional use of the I Ching explains its oracular use by "Shamans to the Book", deviners and imperial consultants...
- An Interactive Drawing of the I Ching simulates the yarrow stalks method.
:
- Qi - The Journal of Traditional Eastern Health & Fitness ; Electronic magazine on the Tai Chi Chuan, with a remarkable demonstration of a complete movement of Tai Chi Chuan by an animate skeleton (influence of Halloween?). Another item shows a pattern of acupuncture, with an interactive human model in 3D allowing the anatomical localization of main points and acupuncture meridians.
Other columns of Geomance ;
- External Links Page (by subjects)
- The picked subjectively, in reference with an actual or inactual subject...
- A Bibliography page suggests some readings for a deeper approach.
Geomance's I Ching Programs (PC ShareWares for DOS) :
- Download english version of I Ching program (EV).
- Download french version of I Ching program (FV).
LAST CENTURY,
- This site was formerly homed by MYGALE, then by Multimania.
Special Thanks :
- The website Arcadie, that formerly helped this page to start thanks to his parainage, presents an Association of ancient students of "école du Louvre" who animate cultural conférences and tours about art and archéology. A little part of their program concerns ancient China...
- To contact Geomance's author :
Clic on the logo
Jean-Pierre MOULS, geomance's webmaster
Author's biography
GEOMANCE EDITIONS HOMEPAGE :
