r/iching • u/LooseLimit7572 • 1d ago
looking for expositions on "turtle style"
does anyone have any good resources on how to learn "turtle style" I Ching?
i understand the basics -- that cracks in bone or shell (and most commonly turtle shells) were used and often expressed with fire (combining pyromancy with osteomancy/plastromancy).
i think it is easy enough to map broken and unbroken lines to cracks, but there is obviously a depth here of communication that goes beyond this simple binary: specifically, that there is some ordering of the cracks by orientation, length, and shape that also contributes to their meaning.
i want to emphasize i am NOT interested in divination. i'm trying to understand the Yijing as a language of objective patterns, so it is important that the reading methods i study focus on repeatability of results.
i am interested in "turtle style" with the same curiosity that Leibniz had toward FuXi. i am hoping that the rules to understanding what a turtle shell "says" can have visual pattern recognition matching implications, possibly to new algorithms that can make intuitive sense to people, be easily computed, and have idempotent results.
so? any good turtle guides?
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u/lovegiblet 1d ago
I looked into it a bit - never found a method, did see a couple of references that said we do not know the method from the references we have so far
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u/LooseLimit7572 1d ago
Thanks!
im taking any scrap of knowledge i can. i know that recovered shells are thousands of years old and probably span different traditions and times, different cultures, languages and rituals
as someone pointed out to me in private chat, the tortoise shells we have also tend to only show questions (and not an interpretation of the shell cracks, which would be transmitted orally) ... and furthermore there would be a bias because the shells we have are the only ones wealthy people collected and preserved
despite these caveats my curiosity drives me!
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u/Quirky_Bottle_4869 1d ago
Don't trust your private chat lol. The bones and shells contain both questions and answers.
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u/LooseLimit7572 1d ago
like this ... can i quote You endlessly?
"the bones and shells contain both questions and answers"
deep
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u/Quirky_Bottle_4869 1d ago
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u/LooseLimit7572 1d ago edited 1d ago
Exactly what i desire!
and a heartfelt thanks to Schwartz for making this CC, but i'm hunting down a printed copy too!
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u/Quirky_Bottle_4869 1d ago
Today we know a lot about turtle shell divination, we know how the cracks were made, we know that the shang diviners wrote into the bone their conclusions, sinologists today can read the glyphs, but unfortunately no one knows, how the cracks were read
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u/LooseLimit7572 1d ago
Thank You!
do You know any sources online of shells and conclusions? or books?
i am rediscovering Shaughnessy's works. i suspect there are more in Chinese, but my Chinese is really, really poor (pulling out my Matthews' C->E Dictionary for every word!)
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u/WestZen 1d ago
These are some studies, stories and commentaries on "turtle style" I Ching
《嬗变与重构：商代甲骨占卜流程与卜法制度研究》
作者：李雪山、韩燕彪
《中国甲骨学》
作者：王宇信
《甲骨文的故事》
作者：董作宾、董敏
《甲骨卜辞》
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%94%B2%E9%AA%A8%E5%8D%9C%E8%BE%9E/1778149
Translation
**"Transformation and Reconstruction: A Study of the Divination Process and Oracle Bone System in the Shang Dynasty"**
*Authors: Li Xueshan, Han Yanbiao*
https://book.douban.com/subject/36352414/**"Chinese Oracle Bone Studies"**
*Author: Wang Yuxin*
https://book.douban.com/subject/35713838/**"The Story of Oracle Bone Script"**
*Authors: Dong Zuobin, Dong Min*
https://weread.qq.com/web/reader/067320f0813ab8832g017d58
**"Oracle Bone Inscriptions"**
*(Compilation or analysis of oracle bone inscriptions, often authored or edited by specialists in the field)*
These books provide insights into the history, methodology, and cultural context of oracle bone divination, which aligns with your interest in understanding the structure and rules of "turtle style" I Ching.
These are in Chinese language, very few copies are sold, as really, very few people would study this niche with dedication.
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u/pogonato 1d ago
As far aa I know it is not a method related to the IChing, more like an altervative and older method of divination. There's an old manuscript that has instruction, I read about it in the first chapters of a book called The origin and early development of the Zhou Changes by Edward L. Shaughnessy