心神 ~

Ahh, I get that. Empowering, but also people and situations can pull you into overdoing it. I don’t know as much about Generators, but I wonder if ‘gut reaction’ doesn’t mean being impulsive. It might mean noticing the body’s yes or no, then pausing long enough to avoid misreading yourself and rushing forward. If your instinct hasn’t always felt reliable, having guardrails makes sense. When you say ‘unreliable intuition,’ what does that feel like for you? When you move too quickly toward something that isn’t right for you, does it feel like you’re responding to what feels true, or responding to urgency? What other parts feel contradictory to you?

singing a sad song, bare maple branches shiver; the moon's gaze, obscured.

Yes, it's pretty accurate. In some ways, learning about my type was validating, but not necessarily reassuring. For the 3/5, 3 is learns by trial and error, and 5 is problem solver that others project onto, both of which resonate with me. As a reflector, I'm easily influenced by mood and environment, and require a significant amount of time alone. I've spent a long time feeling guilty about my inconsistencies, trying to fit into standard societal structures. But learning to work with the ebb and flow of the energies of the moon and with my own cycles has been really helpful and healing for me. Ahh, okay. Does doing everything yourself usually feel empowering, or more tiring over time?

Well, followers of the Way. Apparently in Greek, Acts 9:2 uses the noun ὁδός (hodos), “way / road / path,” with the article: τινας ὄντας τῆς ὁδοῦ. Literally: “any being of the Way.” Unrelated to the OP, this story pretty strongly indicates that Saul is a false prophet. Saul claims he met Jesus in the wilderness, declares himself the 13 apostle, and begins to preach "the Gospel." His conversion story is clearly built on the same skeleton as Balaam and the donkey, in Numbers 22: a religious man on the road, sure he’s doing God’s work, actually moving against what God wants, blocked by a divine encounter, confronted with “why are you doing this to me?” and then forced into a new path. Initially, Balaam speaks real oracles from God, but later becomes greedy and dangerous, leading others astray.

A 4/6 Manifesting Generator, how interesting. I'm a 3/5 Reflector. As far as I know, Human Design shows personal themes, patterns, and how you meet cycles and transits. It’s like a user manual for how your body and mind operate and a guide for shedding expectation and stepping into authentic being, as opposed to an oracle for what exact event will happen. A lot of emphasis is placed on the importance of following one's personal strategy and authority, and working through a 7 year deconditioning process. Here's additional information overviewing your chart and highlighting what your strategy/authority and deconditioning process may look like, taking your gates into account. It looks like it's important for you to listen to your body and gut for a clear yes or no, announce what you will do (without requesting permission), and then act. Your life is defined by trial and error activity, which helps you develop into a wise guide that helps other people and systems get unstuck. Because your strategy relies on reading the body and the gut, simple healthy routines are essential for you. Paying attention to how to respond to transits as they cross your gates can help you develop an understanding of your personal cycles and patterns. Chart Overview Strategy and Authority Seven Year Deconditioning Process

What is your Human Design type?

The leaves have fallen Frost creeps along window’s edge Within, lantern warms

Yes, it's true. There are websites where you enter your birth date, time, and place, and they’ll generate a profile plus timing forecasts. They sort people into “types” (or patterns) and describe traits, strengths, weak spots, and likely life cycles. The specific framework depends on the method: BaZi, Liu Yao, Qi Men, Ziwei Doushu, Da Liu Ren, and Tai Yi are systems built from classic Chinese cosmology and technical traditions, with Liu Yao being the one that most directly runs through the Yijing. Each uses a similar, but slightly different framework. BaZi (Four Pillars) uses the sexagenary calendar (Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches), yin–yang, and the Five Phases (Wood / Fire / Earth / Metal / Water) to describe your baseline pattern and how luck cycles shift over time. It’s usually read through the Four Pillars (year, month, day, hour), the Day Master, the balance of elements, “ten gods” relationship categories, and multi-year luck cycles (commonly described as 10-year cycles) plus year-by-year and month-by-month influences. Liu Yao (Wen Wang Gua) is directly based on the Yijing: you cast a hexagram and read changing lines for a specific question. The reading observes which lines change, the moving-to hexagram, and the role each line plays in a structured way (like “roles” inside the hexagram), so it’s less about a personality profile and more about diagnosing a situation, timing, and likely outcomes if nothing changes. Qi Men Dun Jia uses a time-and-space chart (stems, doors, stars, deities, palaces) to judge momentum, timing, and best actions for a situation. It’s used for strategy: what to do first, what to avoid, what direction supports the goal, what obstacles are active, and what timing window is strongest. Zi Wei Dou Shu (Purple Star) is another common system that can be done from birth details and produces a chart with “palaces” and stars placed into them. It tends to be read as a life map: personality patterns, relationship patterns, career themes, health tendencies, and timing cycles based on how the palaces and stars activate over time. Da Liu Ren is a calendrical divination method that also builds a chart from a moment in time, then reads layers of relationships inside the chart to answer a question. It’s treated as technical and situational, and readers use it to judge dynamics, hidden factors, and timing. Tai Yi is another high-level method that uses time cycles and chart structures to forecast trends and larger-scale momentum. It’s discussed alongside Qi Men and Liu Ren as part of the older “strategic timing” traditions. Western divination has the same structure mainly through astrology (natal charts, transits, progressions, solar returns, horary), which can also be calculated and assessed online. Many sites generate a natal chart from birth data, then add timing forecasts by tracking how current planetary cycles interact with that chart, and some also offer question-based astrology (horary) that functions more like situational divination than a personality profile. I'm partial to Bazi Calculator for Chinese divination, and it offers calculators for a handful of systems. For online Yijing readings, I prefer Hilary Barrett's version. For Western astrology, the calculators I use are through Serennu and Astro-Seek.

You’re right that Indo-European material doesn’t prove influence or creation of the Yijing. But Indo-European also isn’t ‘just a language.’ In archaeology and historical linguistics, it refers to real Bronze Age groups who carried IE branches. The Anatolian branch is directly attested in Hittite and related languages in cuneiform from the 2nd millennium BCE, making Hittite the oldest recorded Indo-European language (Hrozný 1915; see, for example, Melchert, “Hittite and Indo-European: Revolution and Counterrevolution,” and the UT Austin Introduction to Hittite). On the steppe side, the Yamnaya horizon is widely accepted in Kurgan-type models as a main candidate for late Proto-Indo-European speakers (Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language; recent summaries in genetic / linguistic work). The later Sintashta and Andronovo complexes in the southern Urals and Central Asia are generally identified with early Indo-Iranian on the basis of shared burial customs, chariot technology, and linguistic/onomastic evidence (Kuz’mina, The Origin of the Indo-Iranians; Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans; see also syntheses that explicitly describe Andronovo as Indo-Iranian). So “Indo-European” refers both to a reconstructed proto-language and to a set of archaeologically defined Bronze Age populations who spoke its early branches, from Anatolia through the Pontic-Caspian steppe into Central Asia, which is what's being referenced here. And in the context of Chinese culture, that entire belt of steppe, Central Asian, Iranian and Indian polities is precisely what Han and later historians call the “Western Regions” (Xiyu) (as described in the Hanshu “Xiyu zhuan," the Treatise on the Western Regions, in its accounts of Dayuan (Ferghana), Daxia (Bactria), Anxi (Parthia), and Tianzhu (India)). Finally, the specific Yijing study being discussed isn’t resting on linguistic evidence alone. It’s using a mix of structural comparison, statistical patterning, and archaeological / historical context to argue for possible links.

Maybe, but there are some classes of divination that don’t fit that pattern. Trance oracles, ecstatic prophecy, and temple dream oracles deliver long, open answers rather than yes/no verdicts. Full horoscopic astrology also doesn’t collapse into a binary outcome, since it builds a whole scenario by combining many factors. Text-lots that point to long oracle passages work similarly. Even in augury and extispicy, the raw signs aren't binary. Bird behavior and liver marks are open-ended, and the priestly tradition compresses those signs into a paired verdict for state use. Strictly talking about what survives in writing, the earliest divination we see in detail is binary, closed, and coded Mesopotamian liver omens, star omens, and then Shang cracks and later Yijing-style procedures. Those are some of the first known systems where we have tablets, models, and line-by-line rules. But if we're talking about human practice rather than written record, open-ended interpretation likely comes first. People were reading weather, birds, animal behavior, strange births, and dreams long before anybody made a clay liver model or wrote a huge omen series. I agree, and I'm not arguing for or against the connection to Proto-Indo-European influence. I'm just outlining historical timelines for context, placing the both the PIE Influence study and the Roman Legion article into their respective time periods, as well as providing scholarship that shows the Yijing is, at a minimum, rooted in and an evolution of a Shang dynasty oracle system, not a Warring Era creation. The Bronze Age divination methods are also for context, to see how other cultures developed divinatory systems, and to see what patterns can be observed or interpreted.

Development of Yijing Divination System Archaeological discoveries now show concrete links between late Shang divination practice and the number-based hexagram system behind the Yijing. Andrea Bréard and Constance A. Cook, in their article “Cracking Bones and Numbers: Solving the Enigma of Numerical Sequences on Ancient Chinese Artifacts” (Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 2020), describe a large corpus of Shang–Zhou bones, bronzes, jades, stones, and potsherds covered with structured number strings. They note that these artifacts bear “records of numerical sequences” whose mode of production was long unexplained, and that “structural links to the Book of Changes, a divination manual that entered the Confucian canon, are evident.” In the same study, Bréard and Cook document “numerical gua” written as stacks of six digits on Shang and Western Zhou objects. One key passage describes “the numerals 667668 written along the edge of a whetstone,” and later a pottery jar with “eleven sets of neatly inscribed numerical gua with six lines” made up of 1s, 6s, 8s, and a few 5s and 9s (for example “111111” and “116881”). These are explicit six-place sequences of even/odd values, laid out vertically like hexagrams. Bréard and Cook argue that “dice and divination stalk use, either in combination or separately, appear in fact to have been underlying the rather stable numerical patterns in ancient China all the way back to the late Shang dynasty (1300–1046 BCE).” Taken together, their description of stable six-number patterns, their use of the term “numerical gua,” and their conclusion about late-Shang cleromancy directly support a developmental bridge from Shang sortilege to later hexagram divination. Within that same corpus, Bréard and Cook summarize earlier Chinese work on the famous Yinxu Sipanmo “Yi gua” bone studied by Cao Dingyun (“Yinxu Sipanmo ‘Yi gua’ bugu yanjiu,” Kaogu 1989) and on Western Zhou oracle bones from Fengchu, Qishan, published by Cao Wei (“Zhouyuan jiaguwen,” 2002; “Zhouyuan xinchu Xi Zhou jiaguwen yanjiu,” 2003). They note, for example, a Fengchu fragment H11:85 where a six-digit sequence “766718” is followed by 曰 and a short divinatory text, and they stress that these sets occur in clear divinatory contexts on plastrons and bones. This means that by late Shang / early Zhou, diviners were already writing six-step numerical results right on the same media as crack inscriptions. Rao Zongyi pushed this line of evidence earlier than anyone. In his Chinese-language work on “shuzi guaxiang” (numerical hexagram images) and in the abstract “The Yi-Kua in the Shang Dynasty and Various Problems Pertaining to Divination” (Early China, Supplement 1, 1986), he famously stated: “The method of divining by yarrow stalk in accordance with the scheme of 64 hexagrams did exist in the Yin Dynasty. Numerical strings of three and six lines on oracle bones recently unearthed provide the new evidence for the above statement.” Rao explicitly links “numerical strings of three and six lines on oracle bones” to a 64-hexagram system already operating under the Shang (Yin). Bréard and Cook’s survey shows that Rao’s “numerical strings of three and six lines” are not an isolated curiosity but part of a wide pattern of six-digit gua, written as vertical stacks of numbers and appearing across media (plastron, bone, handles, jars, whetstones) from late Shang into Western Zhou. Their quantitative work backs up Rao’s qualitative thesis: stable six-step numerical patterns, generated by some randomizing device (dice, stalks, or both), already form a divinatory code before the received Zhouyi text appears. The binary and complementary logic inside Shang oracle-bone practice lines up cleanly with the later yin/yang line structure of the Yijing. A widely reproduced Shang plastron from Anyang, cast in the reign of Wu Ding, carries a paired charge. Wikimedia’s file description for “Shang dynasty inscribed tortoise plastron.jpg” glosses the left inscription as “戊午卜古貞般其有 [wùwǔ (day 55) Gu divined: Ban will have misfortune]” and the right as “戊午卜古貞般亡禍 [wùwǔ (day 55) Gu divined: Ban will have no misfortune],” with the verdict “吉 [auspicious]” written at the bottom. This is a very clear, concrete example of Shang crack divination working with a pair of opposite statements (misfortune / no misfortune) and then recording a favorable outcome, “auspicious.” Modern summaries of Shang pyromancy emphasize this structure. The Smarthistory overview of oracle bones notes that Shang records typically include a charge, prognostication, and verification, and that diviners asked whether an action “would be misfortune over the next ten days” and then checked the result. David Keightley’s classic work on Shang oracle language, as summarized in later secondary literature, underlines that divinations focus on disaster versus safety, illness versus health, curse versus protection. The paired inscriptions for Ban thus show the same kind of binary opposition, two contrary possibilities, one of which is marked as auspicious after reading the cracks, that later hexagrams encode abstractly as broken versus solid lines. Technical vocabulary carries straight through from Shang to the Zhouyi. In Shang inscriptions, the verb 貞 (zhēn) routinely appears in formulae like “Gu zhēn” (古貞) meaning “Gu divined,” or more literally “Gu performed zhen.” The Chinese “Key Concepts in Chinese Thought and Culture” entry on 元亨利貞 (yuanheng lizhen), drawing on the Yijing, explains that in the divinatory sense, Lizhen (利贞) “refers to a favorable reading by a diviner and an auspicious prospect.” Scholarly discussions of the phrase 利貞 in the Yijing, such as those surveyed in studies of heng and zhen, note that Gao Heng glossed 利貞 as “beneficial to divine,” treating 貞 explicitly as the act of divination. This is directly relevant to the Yijing’s stock formula 元亨利貞. The same four characters open Hexagram 1 and appear elsewhere in the Zhouyi. Modern philological work makes the continuity plain: a Brill chapter on heng in the context of Yi divination observes that 利貞 means “favourable to divine”; when the sacrifice was accepted, the divination could proceed with the expectation of a positive outcome. In other words, the technical Shang verb 貞 (“to divine, to test by oracle”) and the evaluation “favorable divination” underlie a central formula in the Zhouyi judgments. The vocabulary of zhen and li zhen shows conceptual inheritance, not a new invention. The received Yijing tradition itself remembers precursor “Changes” systems that it connects to Xia and Shang. The ritual classic Zhouli (Rites of Zhou) says that the Grand Diviner (太卜 taibu) “handles the three Yi methods: the first is Lianshan (Arrayed Mountains); the second, Guicang (Return to the Storehouse); and the third, Zhouyi,” and adds that “there are a total of eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams in these texts.” A modern study of the Guicang and the “three Yi” notes that early exegetes treated Lianshan and Guicang as predecessors of the Zhouyi; an English article on “New Notes on the I Ching” states plainly that “In historical documents, Lianshan (连山) and Guicang (归藏) were considered as the predecessors of the book of I Ching,” citing the Zhouli as a key source. Excavated Guicang material reinforces this continuity. Anke Hein’s discussion of authenticity and the Chinese textual heritage points out that the Guicang, where preserved, “uses the same hexagram system” as the Zhouyi, and that debates around the three Yi focus on whether they represent different texts or methods within a common hexagram framework. This lines up with the ancient claim that Xia, Shang, and Zhou each had their own “Changes.” It also strengthens the idea that the Zhouyi hexagrams are not a standalone creation but a further development of dynastic divination codes. Dating work ties this all chronologically back toward the Shang. Modern reference summaries of Edward L. Shaughnessy’s research report: “Based on a comparison of the language of the Zhou yi with dated bronze inscriptions, the American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou, in the last quarter of the 9th century BC.” That places the redaction of the Zhouyi text only a few generations after the fall of the Shang (c. 1046 BCE), squarely within Western Zhou, not in the much later Warring States. At the level of general conclusion, recent handbooks emphasize gradual development, not a rupture. Joseph A. Adler, in his 2022 chapter “Yijing Divination” in The Yijing: A Guide (Oxford University Press), writes that “The hexagrams of the Zhouyi and their associated method of divination did not spring fully formed from the mind of Fuxi or anyone else.” He stresses that hexagram divination evolved out of earlier techniques, especially Shang crack-making and early milfoil (stalk) casting. Richard J. Smith, in the overview to The I Ching: A Biography (Princeton, 2012), describes the I Ching as having “originated in China as a divination manual more than three thousand years ago,” and notes that it was only later, in 136 BCE, that an emperor “declared it a Confucian classic.” Both Adler and Smith frame the Yijing first and foremost as a divination text whose roots reach back to the late second millennium BCE. Bréard and Cook’s abstract makes the same long arc explicit. They review artifacts “inscribed… with a large number of records of numerical sequences” and conclude that “Dice and divination stalk use, either in combination or separately, appear in fact to have been underlying the rather stable numerical patterns in ancient China all the way back to the late Shang dynasty (1300–1046 BCE).” Their choice of “all the way back to the late Shang dynasty” and their phrase “structural links to the Book of Changes … are evident” directly back the claim that the Yijing’s number-driven hexagram system grows out of late-Shang cleromantic practice, not out of thin air. On the basis of these quoted claims and their supporting material, the through-line is clear: late-Shang oracle-bone divination, with its binary logic, technical vocabulary, and six-step numerical gua, feeds directly into Western Zhou stalk-casting and the 64-hexagram framework. The Zhouyi is a codification and textual crystallization of divinatory techniques that were already in active use under the Shang. Other Bronze Age Divination Systems Bronze Age divination wasn't unique to China. Other cultures working at roughly the same time as late Shang and early Zhou developed their own highly structured systems for asking gods yes–no questions and reading patterned signs, often with a clear binary logic. The Hittite KIN oracle sits in that cluster and is especially useful for comparison with Shang and Yijing divination. Mesopotamian diviners in Babylonia and Assyria relied heavily on extispicy and omen series. The National Museum of Aleppo’s description of a Mesopotamian clay liver model explains that after sacrificing an animal, “the priests would examine the dead creature’s liver, believing that the thoughts of the divinity to whom the animal had been offered were transferred to this organ,” and that “studying the signs in the sacrificed animal’s entrails was therefore likely to provide divine answers to questions about future events on earth.” (National Museum of Aleppo, “Model of a liver”). A survey of Near Eastern divination practices on TheTorah.com likewise defines extispicy as “the reading of entrails, i.e., finding the divine message by asking an oracular question before the sacrifice of an animal, usually a sheep; the answer is found in its internal organs, usually the liver, after it is slaughtered.” (Jonathan Ben-Dov, “The Practice of Divination in the Ancient Near East,” 2016). Scholarly overviews of Mesopotamian omen series note that the great Akkadian collections Enūma Anu Enlil and Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin catalog celestial and terrestrial signs as codified answers, so that irregular events (eclipses, odd births, unusual animal behavior) could be matched to written predictions. Francesca Rochberg’s work on celestial omens, summarized in a Brill chapter on divination, lists Enūma Anu Enlil and Šumma ālu as key series and stresses that they were copied, referenced, and treated as authoritative handbooks. This is a divination world where the gods’ will is encoded in a stable repertoire of signs, and the specialist reads those signs off a model (liver, sky, or tablet) using a fixed corpus. In Egypt, New Kingdom and later sources show a different but still binary kind of oracle practice built around cult statues. The entry “Oracle” in the Global Egyptian Museum’s glossary explains that in Egyptian temple oracles “the method of consultation demanded that questions be so formulated that they could be answered by ‘yes’ or ‘no’,” and that questions “were sometimes put verbally” to a god’s statue, which then responded in a way that could be interpreted as yes or no. A teaching page from the PredictionX project at Harvard notes that “the first representations of a sacred boat containing an oracular statue of the god Amun date to the early New Kingdom (reign of Amenhotep I, around 1525 BCE),” and that the statue of the god would be carried and “answer the request by moving or by making sounds.” In other words, Egyptian temple oracles in this period required yes–no questions and treated the physical movement of the god’s cult image as the sign. That is less combinatorial than hexagrams but rests on the same binary question–answer structure. Hittite Anatolia developed one of the most varied oracle repertoires in the Late Bronze Age. A summary of Hittite divination methods by Livio Warbinek in Current Research in Cuneiform Palaeography states that “the oracles used by the Hittites included Extispicy, Augury, the ‘Bed’ Oracle, the ‘ḪURRI-bird’ Oracle, the ‘Snake’ Oracle, and the KIN Oracle,” and adds that “like other peoples of the ancient Near East, the Hittites considered any omen as a divine message.” (Livio Warbinek, “The KIN Oracle in the Hittite Divinatory System,” in Current Research in Cuneiform Palaeography 2). The Hethitologie Portal Mainz entry “Oracles and Omens: Hittite Divination” explains that, alongside liver readers and augurs, Hittite texts “regularly refer to a third specialist of divination, the ‘Wise Woman’ (Sumerian logogram: MUNUS.ŠU.GI ‘old woman’). Those oracles which the Hittites simply referred to as ‘action’ (Sumerian logogram: KIN) are her specialty.” The same description continues: “The Wise Woman interprets constellations of diverse symbolic objects, in other words, various lots. At least some of these lots are moveable, and can ‘act’ to a certain degree. We do not know how the Wise Woman caused these lots to move and what the individual symbols looked like; occasionally the names of the lots refer directly to the subject about which the enquiry is being made, but mostly an established inventory of symbols is employed.” (Hethitologie Portal Mainz, “Oracles and Omens: Hittite Divination,” section on KIN oracle). The practitioners in charge of this KIN oracle were the Hittite “Old Women” or “Wise Women.” Hannah Marcuson’s dissertation “‘Word of the Old Woman’: Studies in Female Ritual Practice in Hittite Anatolia” describes these figures as a distinct professional class: “The Old Women are well-attested as religious functionaries in the Hittite texts. There is extensive evidence documenting their ritual and oracular practices, both in service to the royal family and in broader state cult.” The abstract further notes that “The Old Women were the primary personnel in charge of counteracting sorcery and other negative supernatural forces directed against the Hittite king, and this dissertation serves as a comprehensive analysis of their function and method.” (Hannah L. Marcuson, PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2016). Within that coherent system of “approaching metaphysical problems using physical methods” (Marcuson’s phrase), the KIN oracle is one of their main tools. The most detailed modern treatment of the KIN oracle itself is Livio Warbinek’s monograph Il sistema mantico ittita KIN (Firenze University Press, 2020). The abstract, in Italian, describes the work as follows: “La presente monografia ha per oggetto l’oracolo KIN, una tecnica mantica simbolica prodotta dagli Ittiti nel II millennio a.C. e sviluppatasi esclusivamente nel milieu ittita.” (“The present monograph is concerned with the KIN oracle, a symbolic mantic technique produced by the Hittites in the second millennium BC and developed only in the Hittite milieu.”) A separate article by Warbinek titled “An ‘Economical’ Oracular Procedure: Evidence from the Hittite KIN Oracle” summarizes the same system in English as “a symbolic divination technique employed by the Hittites,” and emphasizes that this kind of oracle was “more convenient and affordable” than other methods, because it did not require expensive sacrifices and could be repeated quickly. (Livio Warbinek, “An ‘Economical’ Oracular Procedure: Evidence from the Hittite KIN Oracle,” conference paper). From these descriptions, the core features of the KIN system are clear. It is a lot-based oracle: the Wise Woman “interprets constellations of diverse symbolic objects, in other words, various lots,” and “at least some of these lots are moveable, and can ‘act’ to a certain degree.” (Hethitologie Portal Mainz, “Oracles and Omens: Hittite Divination”). It is also binary in outcome. Warbinek’s discussion of KIN procedures in Il sistema mantico ittita KIN and in the palaeography article notes that Hittite oracles are framed as yes–no questions put to the gods, and that the result of the KIN rite is evaluated as favorable or unfavorable, just as results of liver and bird oracles are. Marcuson’s study of Old Women shows them running KIN oracles repeatedly on the same matter, sometimes multiple times in succession, until a consistent pattern emerges that can be reported to the king, much like the example letter where a KIN oracle is performed four times concerning the illness of a high official’s son and then checked by augury. Seen against this Near Eastern background, the Yijing and Shang–Zhou divination system share several structural features with KIN and related oracles, even though the media differ. First, all of these systems rest on binary questioning. The Hethitologie Portal emphasizes that KIN oracles are “oracles of ‘action’” where the Wise Woman interprets whether the gods endorse or reject a proposed course, based on how the lots fall. Egyptian temple oracles, according to the Global Egyptian Museum, demanded “questions [that] be so formulated that they could be answered by ‘yes’ or ‘no’.” Shang plastrons from Wu Ding’s time show charges split into “Ban will have misfortune” and “Ban will have no misfortune,” with 吉 (“auspicious”) written when the cracks favor one side. The Yijing reduces that constant yes–no framing to line-level yin and yang, and Bréard and Cook’s work on numerical gua shows that late Shang and Western Zhou diviners were already writing six-step sequences of even–odd numbers as structured outcomes. Second, the KIN oracle and Yijing-style milfoil or coin divination both rely on cleromancy, that is, the use of randomized physical procedures to generate a coded pattern. Bréard and Cook’s abstract states that the numerical sequences on ancient Chinese artifacts can be explained by “cleromantic techniques” in which “dice and divination stalk use, either in combination or separately, appear in fact to have been underlying the rather stable numerical patterns in ancient China all the way back to the late Shang dynasty (1300–1046 BCE).” (Andrea Bréard and Constance A. Cook, “Cracking Bones and Numbers,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 74.4, 2020). Warbinek’s description of the KIN system as a “tecnica mantica simbolica” that uses “constellations of diverse symbolic objects,” interpreted as lots, shows the same type of random-pattern generation, even if the exact mechanism is lost. Both traditions therefore treat the fall or arrangement of objects as a divinely guided, yet mechanically random, way to select one structured outcome from a fixed space of possibilities. Third, both KIN and Yijing hexagram practice are supported by specialist diviners with carefully defined ritual protocols. Marcuson’s “Old Women” are a class of ritual professionals whose oracles, including KIN, are part of a “coherent and cohesive system for approaching metaphysical problems using physical methods.” Bréard and Cook’s reconstruction of Shang–Zhou cleromancy and Adler’s overview of pre-Han milfoil techniques show that early Chinese stalk divination likewise had fixed sequences of counting, division, and recording; the diviner’s job was to handle the process correctly and then read the resulting pattern against a known framework of gua and texts. In both cases, ritual correctness is what makes the random outcome legible as a divine answer. Finally, there is a shared sense that the outcome is part of a larger coded system, not a one-off omen. Mesopotamian diviners matched liver signs to lines in omen tablets like Šumma ālu; Hittite KIN specialists worked with an “established inventory of symbols” in their lots; Zhou and later Chinese diviners mapped six-line patterns to one of sixty-four hexagrams with attached judgments. Bréard and Cook explicitly say that the numerical sequences on bones and artifacts have “structural links to the Book of Changes,” and Warbinek’s work frames KIN as a consistent “systema mantico” within the Hittite cult. So when Shang and Zhou divination is set next to Mesopotamian omen series, Egyptian statue oracles, and the Hittite KIN system, it sits in a recognizable Bronze Age family. Extispicy and statue movement use different media, but they share with Shang–Yijing cleromancy and Hittite KIN oracles the core patterns that matter here: yes–no questions, binary or paired structures, random but rule-governed procedures, and a closed symbolic code that mediates between human questions and divine decisions.

Neolithic China (c. 10,000–2000 BCE) People shifted from hunting and gathering to farming, village life, and pottery. In the north, millet farming spread (often linked with cultures like Peiligang and later Yangshao, c. 5000–3000 BCE). In the lower Yangtze and southeast, rice farming grew early (often linked with Hemudu, c. 5000–3300 BCE). Later, large walled settlements and clear social ranking show up in the Longshan era (c. 3000–1900 BCE), with more conflict and regional leaders. In the southwest, the Sanxingdui area developed a powerful bronze culture a bit later (main phase c. 1200–1000 BCE), showing that “early China” was already many regions, not one center. Erlitou / “Early Bronze Age” (c. 1900–1500 BCE) This is a major bronze-working society centered in the middle Yellow River region. Many scholars connect Erlitou with the traditional Xia story, while others treat it as its own early state culture. It shows palaces, planned roads, elite burials, and large-scale bronze production. In Ramsden’s paper, the potential Proto-Indo-European / Indo-European influence on “China” is pushed back before Xia, into late Neolithic–early Bronze Age western China, then argued to crystallize in the early Zhou. He proposes that “a band of Indo-Europeans entered into west China early on and began to inhabit an area near a mountain where jade could be obtained”, and from there their descendants moved east and mixed with local matriarchal and agricultural tribes. From there, he sees traces, sustained influence by Western Zhou, especially through the Zhou–Qiang/Western Rong connection, Zhou’s Sky God worship, caste-like four occupations, and chariot burials, which he treats as the political expression of that earlier Indo-European stream. Xia (traditional dates c. 2070–1600 BCE) Traditional histories describe Xia as the first dynasty, linked to flood control and the rise of hereditary kingship (often tied to the story of Yu the Great). Archaeology supports early states in this time range, but the Xia name comes from later texts, so the match between text and excavated sites stays debated. The big historical shift here is the move into stronger centralized rule and early bronze-age state society. Shang (c. 1600–1046 BCE) Shang is the first dynasty with strong written evidence. Key events include the rise of a powerful royal house, major bronze ritual culture, and oracle bone divination (the earliest large body of Chinese writing). The late Shang capital at Anyang (Yinxu) shows royal tombs, war captives, and a state built around lineage, ritual, and warfare. Zhou (c. 1046–256 BCE) The Zhou defeated Shang and promoted the political idea later called the Mandate of Heaven, used to explain why rule can change hands. Western Zhou (1046–771 BCE) built a feudal-style network of allied states and kin-based rule. In 771 BCE, the western capital fell, and power shifted east. Eastern Zhou (770–256 BCE) splits into two famous eras: Spring and Autumn (770–476 BCE), when many states competed under a weakening Zhou king, and Warring States (475–221 BCE), when strong states fought for total control. This period also saw major philosophical traditions (Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, Mohism) and huge military and administrative reforms. Qin (221–206 BCE) Qin unified the warring states under Qin Shi Huang in 221 BCE. Major events include standardizing writing, weights, measures, and currency, building roads and defensive walls, and creating a highly centralized bureaucracy. The dynasty collapsed quickly after harsh policies, heavy labor demands, and rebellion. The Terracotta Army belongs to this period. Han (206 BCE–220 CE) A long, foundational dynasty. Western Han (206 BCE–9 CE) expanded territory and built strong state institutions; the Silk Road connections grew during Han expansion into the northwest. Confucian learning became central to government training and legitimacy. Wang Mang briefly interrupted as the Xin dynasty (9–23 CE) with reform attempts that triggered major unrest. Eastern Han (25–220 CE) restored Han rule but faced court faction fights, powerful landholders, frontier pressures, and big rebellions like the Yellow Turban Rebellion (184 CE), leading to fragmentation. 53 BCE → Battle of Carrhae happens during Western Han. Post-53 BCE → Roman prisoners relocated to Margiana (Pliny’s account). 36 BCE → Battle of Zhizhi (Ban Gu, Han Shu) also occurs during Western Han. After 36 BCE → Captives resettled in Liqian (Hexi Corridor, Gansu) also within Western Han. Three Kingdoms (220–280 CE) China divided among Wei, Shu, and Wu, with constant war and shifting alliances. This era is famous for strategy, fortress warfare, and later legends that shaped Chinese historical memory. Unification came when the Jin defeated Wu in 280. Jin (266–420 CE) Western Jin (266–316) reunified China briefly, then fell into internal conflict (elite civil wars) and invasions. Eastern Jin (317–420) held the south while the north fractured into multiple states. Large-scale migration to the south changed population patterns, economy, and culture for centuries. Sixteen Kingdoms (c. 304–439 CE, mainly northern China) A patchwork of short-lived states, many founded by non-Han elite groups, with constant warfare and shifting borders. Despite instability, this period helped spread Buddhism and reshaped northern politics. Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589 CE) China stayed divided between southern courts and northern regimes. In the north, the Northern Wei (386–534) and successors pushed major reforms, including sinicization policies and support for Buddhism (famous cave temples and sculpture traditions). In the south, literati culture, poetry, and court life flourished, even as political control shifted between dynasties. Sui (581–618 CE) Sui reunified China and rebuilt strong central government. Major events include constructing the Grand Canal system to link north and south and launching massive military campaigns, including against Goguryeo, which drained resources and helped cause collapse. Tang (618–907 CE) Often seen as a high point of imperial culture and power. Tang expanded influence across Central Asia and strengthened institutions. Major events include the Wu Zetian reign (the only woman to rule as emperor in her own right, 690–705), the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) that devastated the empire and weakened central control, and the growth of cosmopolitan cities like Chang’an. Poetry, art, and Buddhism flourished, alongside later crackdowns and political turmoil. Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907–960 CE) After Tang fell, the north cycled through five short dynasties while the south and parts of the east had multiple stable regional kingdoms. It was a politically fragmented era but economically active, especially in the south. Liao (916–1125 CE) Founded by the Khitan, Liao ruled parts of the north and northeast and interacted with Song through treaties and border politics. Liao used dual administration styles to govern different populations. Song (960–1279 CE) A major period for economic growth, urban life, printing, education, and technology. Northern Song (960–1127) faced strong northern rivals and lost the north after the Jurchen invasion; the capital fell in 1127 (the Jingkang incident). Southern Song (1127–1279) rebuilt in the south with a strong economy and navy but eventually fell to the Mongols. Neo-Confucian scholarship became highly influential. Western Xia (1038–1227 CE) Founded by the Tangut people in the northwest. It controlled key Silk Road routes and often fought or negotiated with Song, Liao, and later Jin, before being conquered by the Mongols. Jin (1115–1234 CE) Founded by the Jurchen, Jin defeated Liao and took northern China from Song, ruling a powerful northern state. Jin later fell to the Mongols (with Southern Song as a temporary partner against Jin). Yuan (1271–1368 CE) The Mongol-led dynasty founded by Kublai Khan. Yuan ruled a vast empire framework, promoted long-distance trade, and connected China more directly into Eurasian networks. Social status hierarchies and heavy demands contributed to unrest. The dynasty fell amid rebellion and regional breakdown. Ming (1368–1644 CE) A Han-led restoration after Yuan. Ming strengthened bureaucracy, rebuilt agriculture, and expanded maritime power early on through the Zheng He voyages (1405–1433). Later centuries saw strong commercial growth, major urban culture, and also fiscal strain, frontier pressures, and internal rebellion. Beijing became the main capital; major rebuilding and expansion of the Great Wall happened across Ming rule. Qing (1644–1912 CE) Founded by the Manchu, Qing expanded China’s territory to its largest imperial extent and managed a multi-ethnic empire. Early Qing saw strong rulers and stability; later Qing faced major crises: the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860), unequal treaties, internal uprisings like the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), and reform struggles. The dynasty ended in the 1911 Revolution, with the last emperor abdicating in 1912.

This was a fascinating read. I find the sky-father deities and twin progenitors to be the weakest part of the argument. Those patterns show up in too many cultures to carry much weight on their own. I've always been interested in the appearance of a threefold pattern in the Daodejing, so that catches my eye. What intrigues me most, given my interests, is the proposed connection between Xi Wangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, and Kubala of Carchemish, Great Mother of the Mountains (and later as Cybele of Anatolia, Queen of Heaven and Earth.) I also think it's interesting that the Yijing trigram names may be Indo-European words, that the heavenly stems and earthly branches share a very old source with the Phoenician alphabet, and that Old Chinese itself may hold many Indo-European loanwords. It is clear there was real contact, influence, and exchange between these worlds. My question is, if Indo-Europeans created the Yijing and the Daodejing as distinct systems, separate from early Chinese culture, where is that system now in their own traditions? China, despite repeated waves of loss and destruction, has held onto these texts and developed their philosophy for thousands of years. If the deeper origin really lay with Indo-Europeans, where is the parallel, continuous lineage on their side? ---------------- 1. Mythological and Religious Parallels between Early China and Indo-Europeans • Sky Father Deities • Twin Progenitors and Sibling-Creators • Tripartite Functions and the Three Sovereigns • Western Paradise and the Queen Mother • Kunlun Mountain and the Cosmic Pillar • Jade, Immortality, and Steppe Connections • Foreign Ancestry of Culture Heroes 2. Linguistic and Textual Evidence (Yijing Trigrams and Language Contacts) • Yi Jing Trigram Names as Indo-European Words • Binary Structure and Yin–Yang Dualism as Indo-European Pattern • Heavenly Stems / Phoenician Alphabet Parallels • Old Chinese Loanwords from Indo-European Languages • Feudalism and Social Structure Parallels 3. Cultural and Philosophical Comparisons • Nomadic vs. Sedentary Lifestyle Fusion • Mandate of Heaven and Indo-European Moral Kingship • Chariot Technology and Warrior Aristocracy • Recording of History and Philosophical Consciousness 4. Archaeological, Genetic, and Migration Evidence • Tarim Basin Caucasian Mummies • Europoid Skulls at Anyang • Chariot and Horse Burials in Western Zhou • Steppe Cultural Motifs in Bronze, Art, and Tools • Migrations of Yuezhi, Wusun, Qiang, and Western Rong Near Zhou

I suppose the people are either nourished by the waters or flooded by them, depending on the force and flow of energy and activity, or water. Maybe a draining of resources, a sudden drop. Since water is connected to emotions, maybe an overflow of emotion or impatient action that leads to quick descent and loss.

Well, the descending water collects into a pool. Possibly connects to other streams of water. So it gathers and collects resources and support.

I would read that as water blocked by mountain, suggesting one should be like water: flow, don't force. Adapt to the obstacle. See boundaries and rest, then look for alternative routes.

Ahh, thank you!

I'm unable to access the study. What does it say? What supports its claim?

I'm still learning about this topic, and maybe I'm answering incorrectly. But is this what you mean? Each symbol is a representation of energetic activity. 乾 (Qián) ☰ is Heaven. It represents pure initiative: leadership, starting, creating, setting direction. It is strong, clear, and upward-moving, like open sky and momentum. 坤 (Kūn) ☷ is Earth. It represents receptivity: support, patience, carrying, nourishing, making space for growth. It is steady and downward/holding, like soil that receives seed and turns it into life. 震 (Zhèn) ☳ is Thunder. It represents sudden movement: a wake-up shock, a startle, a breakthrough that gets energy unstuck. It is the force that begins action after stillness, like the first spring thunder that pushes life to move. 巽 (Xùn) ☴ is Wind/Wood. It represents gentle penetration: influence, steady progress, spreading, persuading, entering little by little. It does not force. It works by consistency, like wind shaping a landscape or roots working through soil. 坎 (Kǎn) ☵ is Water. It represents depth and danger: the hard and honest part of life, risk, fear, and the need for skill. Water goes around obstacles and keeps moving, so it also means adaptability, practice, and learning to navigate rather than trying to control everything. 离 (Lí) ☲ is Fire. It represents clarity and brightness: seeing, understanding, attention, and what things “cling” to. Fire needs fuel and a place to hold it, so it also points to dependence and relationship: clarity comes from staying connected to what feeds it. 艮 (Gèn) ☶ is Mountain. It represents stillness and stopping: boundaries, rest, restraint, and ending a motion at the right time. Mountain energy is knowing when to pause, hold steady, and not chase, so a clean decision can form. 兑 (Duì) ☱ is Lake/Marsh. It represents joy and exchange: openness, conversation, pleasure, and shared spirit. Lake energy is mouth and breath, so it also means speech, persuasion, and the power of a warm, honest connection.

Yes, it does translate to metaphysics. 玄: dark, deep, hidden, or mysterious. 学: study, learning, or a field of knowledge. Historically, 玄学 also refers to a Chinese school of thought from the Wei–Jin period, and a scholastic approach to earlier Daoist texts. So our ability to determine whether all discussions of the Dao are "xuanxue" depends on which definition we use. Metaphysics is the study of the unseen, unknown, the mysterious. It is the study of the underlying fabric of reality. So all study of the Dao is literal 玄学. But the idea that the Dao is emptiness and ziran is the expression of this emptiness (the original inquiry of the thread), is strongly developed from the historical, scholastic 玄学 movement. This view influences much of how we discuss the Dao in modern context. Before the Wei–Jin 玄学 movement, Daoist discussion was framed less as an exact, comprehensively designed system, and more like guidance for living, governing, and cultivating life. As you know, in early texts like the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, the Dao is usually pointed to through images, paradox, and lived examples. You get lines like “the Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao,” or stories that show how forced control backfires. The focus stays on how to move through life: wuwei (not forcing), softness, timing, simplicity, protecting your vitality, and letting patterns unfold. Even when they use words like 无 (wu), it often works like “the generative absence that makes functions possible” (like the empty hub of a wheel, or the empty space in a bowl), rather than “emptiness” as a full metaphysical theory. And 自然 (ziran) reads more like “so-of-itself” or “things unfolding on their own,” not “the expression of emptiness." But the Wei–Jin 玄学 approach shifts the focus. It takes those earlier Daoist lines and tries to make them philosophically exact and defensible, which are later blended with Buddhist concepts: debates about 有/无 (being/non-being), what is “root” (本) and what is “branch” (末), and how a deeper “source” relates to the visible world. Commentarial reading becomes a major method, and the Dao starts getting discussed in more systematic, abstract terms–often as the underlying “non-being” that grounds “being,” with ziran framed as how that ground shows up in the world. That scholastic style is a big reason modern discussions of Dao define it as emptiness. So 玄学 describes the study of the unknown, and it also describes a historical movement that sought to define the unknown in exact, and yet paradoxically more abstract terms.

A lot of real world decisions aren’t just data problems. They’re value conflicts, timing, overconfidence, fear, distraction, mixed motives, and blind spots. On the surface, an oracle can be useful as a structured mirror: it forces a clear question and provides a framework, and then you have to do the work of mapping that frame onto your actual situation, working through internal and external factors. Personally, I believe a variety of divinatory systems to be more "divine communication" than a simple trigger for reflection, but the two acts are in relationship with one another. Especially if one believes that the source of all is within each of us. But anyway, observation and measurement can also be applied to divination outcomes, so the two aren't mutually separate.

Yes, I agree with you that the concepts are abstract at the core. It's just when lived meaning gets lost, nothingness language seems to easily slide into a nihilistic perspective. A teacher can prevent the confusion by showing, directly, that emptiness is not the same as nothingness. But many people don't get that kind of guidance, so they grab the bleak version and stop there, you know?

Ah, I see. My understanding of xuanxue is that it's a style of elite metaphysical reading and debate anchored in commentary work. A textual, scholarly movement and approach to pre-existing texts.

What is your definition of xuanxue?

In this context, I mean the Laozi / Zhuangzi presentation of the Dao. Dao as the root that precedes fixed names and rigid norms, and the practical orientation that comes with it; wuwei as non-forcing, ziran as self-so unfolding, and the wu/xu register that points to openness, absence of imposed structure, and the usefulness of what is “not there.” Of course Daoism draws on a very long prehistory of Chinese ritual life and spirit-facing practice (like you said, pre-philosophical shamanism, but there's also a huge span of time and a lot of change between early court ritual worlds, Shang divination practices, and the Zhou / Warring States philosophical explosion. So if we’re looking for Daoism without xuanxue, I'm not sure pre-philosophical shamanism gives us a good idea of what to expect. Maybe better to consider the Daodejing and Zhuangzi with the center of gravity on practice, governance, and cultivation language, before Wang Bi-style metaphysical framing became the default for educated readers.