Yijing Dao – ‘The Original I Ching Oracle’ by Rudolf Ritsema and Shantena Augusto Sabbadini
Steve Marshall has reviewed the ‘new’ Yijing from Rudolf Ritsema, which is a revised version of the original Eranos I Ching, the Ritsema/Karcher with concordance. (To be published on April 30th, I think, so I expect someone sent Steve a review copy.) He can’t resist the opportunity to snap at Stephen Karcher’s ankles again – no surprise there – but he’s also less than enthusiastic about this new version.
If it’s anything like the old Eranos edition, then yes, no doubt it has its limits, and not making plain that ‘sun centre’ means noon or that the Bin is the Dipper is a big one. And if Ritsema hasn’t seized this opportunity to incorporate the older word-meanings, then that’s a disappointment.
But for any dedicated diviner who’s not at a stage where they can actually read the Chinese directly (like this one 😉 ), I’d say this book is little short of essential. (I’m talking about the original version here, as I’ve yet to see the new one.) A true translation will reveal the syntactical relationships of the words, true (or one of the possibilities, at least), but most of them also conceal the words themselves.
For instance, you can read 16, line 5 and never discover that it contains the name of hexagram 32. In conversation with the oracle (where you might be receiving a series of 32s in response to other questions), I do think this is something you need to know.
My copy of the new ‘Ritsema/Sabbadini’ version is on order, though it’s bundled with a lot of not-so-available things and may not arrive until mid-June. I’ll see if I can find it faster elsewhere.