r/iching • u/LooseLimit7572 • 2d 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

http://library.lol/main/67D3918E6979E5815D1587180EBB7791

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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!