A Mulan in the Yijing

(If you see tiny squares where Chinese characters should be you are probably using Internet Explorer. Switch to Firefox, it does a much better job.)

Through several channels the character of hexagram 44, gou 姤, has been brought to my attention. On Hilary’s forum there has been some discussion about it, mainly stirred by the view of Margaret J. Pearson as expounded in her article Towards a new reading of hexagram 44 in The Oracle Vol. 2, no. 11 (September 2000). In this article she says,

“I suggest that this character be read as ‘queen’ , as did Karlgren (GSR 112) or, more precisely, ‘the bride of the ruler’ (king or duke) 王后, as in the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals)”.
(p. 25) Continue reading