Meihua Yi Shu

The received Meihua text lists several routes: date and hour, quantities, sound, written characters and perceived objects. Each supplies a starting rule. A word-count casting and a time casting can therefore give different figures because they use different formation coordinates.

Number-first formation begins from numerical values and converts them to trigrams. Image-first formation begins from classified observations and subsequently obtains a moving line under its procedure. In both cases, knowing how the figure was obtained helps explain which symbolic relationships will be examined next.

The source’s date-and-hour route takes a year-branch number, lunar month and day for the upper trigram, and adds the hour number for the lower and moving line. Its object-count route uses the object quantity and hour; written-character routes have their own splitting or stroke conventions. These choices explain why the starting object belongs in the record: “numbers were used” is insufficient to reconstruct whether a date, sound, length or phrase was counted.

The familiar trigram order is Qian 1, Dui 2, Li 3, Zhen 4, Xun 5, Kan 6, Gen 7 and Kun 8. A specified procedure reduces trigram numbers by eight and a moving-line number by six; a zero remainder is treated as eight or six under that convention.

For an expressly declared two-number exercise, take 10 for the upper trigram and 7 for the lower, and their sum 17 for the moving line. The remainders give Dui above Gen, Xian, with line five moving; changing that line gives Lei Shan Xiao Guo. This demonstrates formation only. It supplies no personal forecast without a question and a justified reading.

The two-number example here declares its own teaching convention: the first number forms the upper trigram, the second forms the lower, and their sum selects the moving line. It is not the source’s complete date-and-hour procedure. For that procedure, a Zi-year first-month first-day Zi-hour exercise gives 1+1+1=3 for upper Li, and 3+1=4 for lower Zhen and moving line four, giving Huo Lei Shi He. The year here is represented by its branch number, not by a four-digit Gregorian year.

In the time exercise, line four is the first line of upper Li. Flipping it produces upper Gen over unchanged lower Zhen, Shan Lei Yi. This contrasts with the two-number Xian exercise, where line five changes upper Dui to Zhen. Both are short classroom constructions with stated inputs. They are not the same casting presented twice, and neither has supplied an event outcome. Their comparison teaches why moving-line location and the adopted route need to be retained along with the hexagram name.

In a common moving-line convention, the trigram containing the moving line is function, yong, and the other is body, ti. Body represents the subject under consideration and function the matter or interaction. In the Xian exercise, the moving fifth line is in upper Dui, so lower Gen is body and Dui is function.

Gen is Earth and Dui is Metal: Earth generates Metal, making this ti sheng yong, body generating function. After the fifth line changes, the upper trigram becomes Zhen, Wood, while the body remains Gen. Wood overcomes Earth, so the changed function has a different relation to the same body. This shows why moving-line location matters to the reading.

Five-phase comparison is directional. Earth generating Metal is body generating function in the stated exercise; reversing the roles would be function generating body even though the same two phases appear. Matching phases are called bi he, while generating and overcoming relations distinguish who supplies or constrains whom. The adopted body remains the reference when comparing the transformed function. This relational vocabulary is what turns two trigram names into an interpretation about an interaction.

The primary figure preserves the initial construction. A common mutual-figure procedure uses lines 2–4 for the lower trigram and 3–5 for the upper. In Xian, bottom-up lines are yin, yin, yang, yang, yang, yin. The mutual lower lines are yin, yang, yang, Xun; the mutual upper are three yang, Qian. Together they form Tian Feng Gou.

The resulting figure changes the declared fifth line, giving Lei Shan Xiao Guo. Primary Xian, mutual Gou and resulting Xiao Guo are three derived configurations with different roles. The mutual figure is obtained from inner lines; the resulting figure from a changed line. Neither operation is a second independent cast.

Mutual construction slides a three-line window through the middle of the six-line figure. Lines two and three occur in one window, lines four and five in the other, and lines three and four are shared. This operation preserves a relationship to the original geometry while omitting its outermost lines. The received text also records a special treatment of pure Qian and Kun mutual figures. A learner should name the adopted convention before applying the window to every possible case.

The received text’s Lun Li discussion stresses interpretation through reason and setting: a dragon image need not mean a literal dragon, and a seasonal image needs to be understood against the season. A trigram’s family of associations supplies possibilities; the actual question guides which association is relevant.

In the numerical exercise, the initial Earth-to-Metal relation and the changed Wood-to-Earth relation suggest different kinds of engagement within the traditional body–function scheme. A reading would next examine the question, season and other stated layers. The example demonstrates why the same hexagram name is not enough to produce one universal answer.

A trigram association is a vocabulary family, not a single translation. Zhen can name movement, the eldest son, the foot or a wood-related object in the source’s different lists. The observed event and the question select which family member is pertinent. The source’s examples of a sound or a falling branch demonstrate this dependence on the occasion. Arithmetic determines the figure; contextual comparison determines which associations are used in explaining it.

The source’s seasonal trigram-strength scheme groups Zhen and Xun as Wood in spring, Li as Fire in summer, Qian and Dui as Metal in autumn, Kan as Water in winter, and Earth trigrams with its stated Chen, Xu, Chou and Wei month grouping. This is a further condition on the phase relation, not a different trigram-number order. For the Xian exercise, body Gen is Earth and function Dui is Metal in every season; seasonal consideration can alter how that relation is evaluated while leaving its formation unchanged.

Meihua is traditionally associated with Shao Yong and stories such as observing plum blossoms. That association should not be expanded into a claim that every passage of a received edition was written by him or that a legendary demonstration proves prediction accuracy.

Methods differ over number formation, time addition, moving-line assignment and the relative use of classical text or external signs. The received text itself contains discussions of these distinctions. Preserve the selected procedure, and distinguish it from Na Jia branch assignment and from a purely textual I Ching consultation.

The familiar attribution to Shao Yong belongs to the text’s transmission history. It does not by itself establish that every procedure and story in the received compilation was written by him. Useful comparisons distinguish the numbered trigram order, casting route, moving-line total, body–function selection, mutual convention and timing interpretation. Two editions can agree on the trigram numbering while disagreeing about an added hour or an interpretive step; those are specific differences a reader can actually follow.

The declared number order is Qian 1, Dui 2, Li 3, Zhen 4, Xun 5, Kan 6, Gen 7 and Kun 8. Their shapes must be read from the bottom upward. Dui is yang, yang, yin; Gen is yin, yin, yang. Placing Dui above Gen therefore gives the six-line Xian figure as yin, yin, yang, yang, yang, yin. This small reconstruction joins the numerical and graphical parts of the example.

Trigram reduction has eight possible positions, while moving-line reduction has six. A total divisible by eight is read as the eighth trigram, Kun, under the stated convention; a total divisible by six names line six, not a nonexistent line zero. These endpoint conventions prevent a common confusion between arithmetic’s zero remainder and the one-based positions in the diagram. A value’s role must also be stated: eight as a trigram index is not the static yin coin value eight.

Once the shape is established, a line changes only at its selected position. In Xian, the fifth line is the middle line of upper Dui. Turning it from yang to yin changes the upper to Zhen while leaving lower Gen intact. This is why the result is Xiao Guo. Counting from the top by mistake would alter another line and produce a different figure; an explicit bottom-up record makes the derivation easy to follow.

Eight choices for an upper trigram and eight for a lower yield sixty-four paired figures. The moving line adds a position within that already formed pair; it does not create an extra sixty-fifth primary hexagram. This is the structural connection between the eight-name numerical map and the sixty-four hexagram vocabulary.

Meihua Yi Shu, juan 1, provides trigram numbers, phase correspondences and several formation procedures: https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/梅花易數/卷一 . Juan 2 discusses body–function, generation and overcoming, primary/mutual/resulting layers and reasonable interpretation: https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hant/梅花易數/卷二

The two-number and date-and-hour demonstrations above are independently worked classroom exercises with stated inputs. The first uses the expressly declared two-number convention; the second follows the received text’s date-and-hour route. Neither is presented as a translated historical consultation or evidence of an actual predicted event. The source provides the procedures and vocabulary; the arithmetic and line changes show how those procedures operate in these exercises.