#TRIGRAM

[archeia]

Art Summary 2023

[vincord]

my favorite trigram woman (she's literally me)

[cookiescackles]

look I drew Schrödinger’s monkey.

[maristelina]

I'm part of a MILGRAM OCGRAM fan project... I-if you don't mind please support us by checking it out! 'w')c

[ningadudexx]

i am pacing around shaking and losing my mind over the s5 news today . guys if any of you have a drvie of the episodes . please let me know i am going insane

[finrays]

Love all the random shit he pulls out of his box here. I can just imagine him packing in Juuyoku like “Will I need my octopus for this one? I might. I’ll put it in just in case.”

[nacch-an]

The medicine seller's street food journey

[distorted-destiny]

i could be possibly looking too into this,but there's eight beetles in the poster and two of them look oddly familiar...

could this be implying something or is it just a very big coincidence? we will know next year!

[itsabouttimex2]

It’s okay to like Li Jing in spite of (or even because of! I’m not going to discredit the potential to love morally gray characters BECAUSE they are morally gray!) what he did to Sun Wukong, but I’m really sick and tired of this fandom showing its whole goddamned ass when it comes to blatant and undisguised victim-blaming.

Sun Wukong did not “earn” the circlet.

He did not “deserve” the circlet.

Li Jing taking did not “have every right” to bolt a torture circlet onto an innocent man on a literal biased whim.

Li Jing decided, fueled entirely by his biases over settled grudges and punished crimes from centuries ago, decided “Sun Wukong is responsible for all these current things, obviously” forced a glorified shock collar into his head, falsely imprisoned him and two other people, and was going to leave them there.

Li Jing is a big, blundering fuck-up that hurt three people who; while not entirely innocent, Macaque especially being guilty of many things that have been left unaddressed, are innocent of the current crimes they have been accused of.

And Li Jing, playing judge, jury, and executioner, punishes them all with both unjustified imprisonment and one of them with repetitive instances of torture.

It wasn’t “justified”. It wasn’t “fair”.

He turned three people into victims, and instead of sympathizing with those people for being hurt, you’re blaming the chiefest of them (Sun Wukong) for being an “acceptable target” to hurt instead.

You’re not “defending” Li Jing by pretending that Sun Wukong “deserved” to be violently tortured with a circlet.

You’re just victim-blaming.

[mirror-and-mind]

Having thoughts about the Sellers and their swords.

So we know that there are 64 swords and 64 Medicine Sellers, and that eight of the 64 swords are the most powerful, the Eight Trigram swords. We know that series Medicine Seller carries the Ri Trigram ☲ sword and movie Medicine Seller carries the Kon Trigram ☷ sword.

We also know that each of the 64 Medicine Sellers is one of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, each of which is made up of two paired Trigrams.

The most common assumption, I think, is that the eight Medicine Sellers who wield the eight Trigram swords are the ones whose hexagrams are made up of just those Trigrams—so series Medicine Seller would be Ri/Ri ䷝, and movie Medicine Seller would be Kon/Kon ䷁.

There are some reasons why this doesn't make sense to me:

(1) Both series and movie Medicine Seller display elements that contrast those of Ri and Kon, in terms of both appearance and personality. If the Medicine Sellers are hexagrams, and they display those elements, it makes sense to assume that they're hexagrams containing those elements and not just those of the Ri and Kon Trigrams.

(2) Every hexagram of the I Ching is made up of two of the Eight Trigrams. Every one of them should have access to the power of at least one of the Trigrams. We know that these most powerful swords are Trigrams and not hexagrams, so there doesn't seem to be any reason for a Trigram's power to be exclusive to those hexagrams that contain two copies of it. Surely they only need one Trigram to wield the sword of that Trigram?

(3) The hexagrams of the I Ching function as processes of change in the human world, with each hexagram carrying out a different process. We can assume that the Medicine Sellers function the same way. Therefore, which Medicine Seller appears where in the human world depends not on the strength of the mononoke there, but on what kind of change needs to occur. In theory, then, any one of the hexagrams could encounter a particularly powerful mononoke that could only be slain by a Trigram sword.

(4) In a clip from the movie that was shown in the infamous YouTube video, Kon Kusu describes the Eight Trigram swords as being wielded by the 64 hexagrams. He doesn't (at least, according to the one [1] translation I've seen) say that there are 64 Sellers and 64 swords, eight of which are the Trigram swords, but that all eight Swords are wielded by all 64 hexagrams.

(5) As far as I recall, we were never told that there are eight most powerful and 56 weaker Medicine Sellers—only that there are eight most powerful and 56 weaker swords. And there does seem to be a clear distinction between the swords and their wielders.

My working conclusion is that the Eight Trigram swords are in fact not exclusive to eight specific Medicine Sellers. Instead, I think that these swords pass from Seller to Seller depending on who needs to be carrying one at a given time. For example, if a hexagram that includes the Kan Trigram appears where a particularly powerful mononoke exists, that Seller inherits the sword of Kan to deal with the mononoke. Whichever Seller held the sword before that then takes up one of the less powerful swords. With this system, each hexagram has potential access to the power of at least one of their component Trigrams, as needed, and all eight Swords belong to all 64 Medicine Sellers.

[cloudsthefluffykindsartblog]

Here's my version of Rua, Raiko and Yakko from ✨The Long Road Home: A Monkey Odyssey✨ by @fjtrickster-blog, I don’t know if I actually got them right but this is what they look like in my head. (Tbh, they would probably be wearing more modern clothing at this point in the story but this is what I imagine their outfits were like in Ozzimorre)

(I LOVE THESE GUYS SO MUCH!! Usually I’m put off by OCs but these guys THESE GUYS!! I just love their dynamic so much!!) Rua is an absolute saint to put up with the rest of the group’s BS, but he’s also a little shit when he wants to be. Raiko is a riot, I love her whole vibe, she’s almost always unbothered and going with the flow and she’s so good at hyping the others up, I think it’s so cool how that attitude also means she’s pretty mysterious, there have been a few comments here and there about her being otherworldly (if I remember correctly) and I’m really interested about her backstory. Yakko is a hilarious grump, I love the whole set up for his heritage and I think he rounds off the group pretty well, he’s 100% a kleptomaniac (if wonder if Sandy could help him with that?) but his mischief always gets a laugh out of me!

anyway, enough word vomit lol

[archeia]

Barbara from Trigram

[slutpoppers]

[kastellaran]

Revising An Earlier Translation

Earlier this year, after the youtube special where the first lore document was released, I put out a rough translation of it along with a translation of the line that could be heard in the brief clip of the movie they played. I'm not putting out a new translation of the document yet, though I want to do that soon, because there are some things about it that bother me, but I want to at least explain my revision of the movie line translation, now that I have more context for the scene it's said in, and more importantly, I understand a little more about the lore being referenced.

Just for reference, this is the line in question: 故にこの剣　陰陽八卦がひと振り“坤”の剣がある。我ら64卦が携えし蒐我の業物。またの名を…退魔の剣！ yue ni kono ken | inyou hakke ga hitofuri "kon" no tsurugi ga aru. warera rokujuuyonke ga tazusae shi shuuga no wazamono. mata no na wo... taima no ken! Originally I translated it like this: "…and so this sword is Kon, one of the swords of the Eight Yin Yang Trigrams. The master swords of the collected selves we sixty-four omens wield. Otherwise known as the Sword of Exorcism." Grammatically, I still agree with this, but here are some tweaks I would like to make (Scroll to the bottom to avoid my notes and just see the translation): 1.) inyou hakke doesn't sound nice in English no matter which way you translate it, but I'd reword it as "eight trigrams of yin and yang." 2.) Given that Kusuriuri is explaining that mononoke can't be slain by ordinary humans right before this, I'd translate that がある as "I have," as in, "which is why I have this sword." "Mononoke can't be slain by the works of man, therefore this sword is Kon..." doesn't really make as much sense in English as "Mononoke can't be slain by the works of man, therefore I have Kon..."

3.) Change "collected selves" to "Shuuga." That was my first or second time encountering that term, and I really didn't know what to make of it back then, so I just translated the meaning of it, but now I understand it's a term coined by the writers to explain the lore. It does seem to point at some kind of collective unconscious type thing (though maybe not exactly in the Jungian sense), but nowadays I choose to keep it as Shuuga, because it's easier to type and I'm still not sure what a really nice translation would be that doesn't accidentally sound like an already established philosophical term (which would be called something else in Japanese and therefore might mislead an English reader). 4.) Change "omens" to "hexagrams." Again, at the time I wasn't familiar with the I Ching or bagua, so I didn't realize there were sixty-four hexagrams as well as the eight trigrams, which is what's being referenced. Still, I'm a little torn about this because well, omens sounds cool and hexagrams sounds weird and clunky to someone who doesn't know about bagua. Additionally, the gua/ke in bagua/hakke refers to divination, which is why translated it as "omens," because I thought it was a nice way to invoke the divination meaning while still sounding like something that could refer to a physical entity (the medicine sellers). But on the other hand we do already have established language in English for talking about bagua, and we say "eight trigrams" and "sixty-four hexagrams," as unsexy as it sounds to me. You're not gonna find anything if you look up "eight/sixty-four omens," but you will if you look up trigrams and hexagrams. By the way, if anyone's wondering why we call them that, it's because the eight trigrams are a set of symbols each made of three lines, some combination of solid and broken (representing yin and yang). So it's "tri" as in three, and "gram" as in writing. Hexagrams are a combination of two trigams, so they've got six lines, which is what "hexa" means here. Anyway, so my final translation of that line (and a bit of what comes before it) would probably be: "If the mononoke is not slain, these strange occurrences will not stop. However, a mononoke cannot be slain by the works of man. That is why I have this sword, 'Kon,' one of the eight trigrams of Yin and Yang, the master swords of Shuuga which we sixty-four hexagrams wield...otherwise known as the swords of exorcism!"

[ceiling-karasu]

I was discussing Korean shamanism with @agotia-t after they introduced Hanbam, and this encouraged me to finally draw my White-Naped Crane shaman OC, Chongsu (link to months old post here), as I said I eventually would. I have briefly included her in The Rod that Blocks the Lightning (here, about 2/3rds of the way through the chapter), as well.

She participates in the spiritual and medicine making practices of the mudang, while avoiding the performances of the kisaeng path.

Here is an example of one of her gutdang worship rooms, in which she would perform sacred ceremonies.

Generations past, a Joseon style caste system was kept in place with the help of the spiritual priest class, mudang shamans with a mixture of Confucianism and Buddhism, enjoying many luxuries and power in their caste high above most other species.

In the current day of the AU, generations after the former kings and caste systems were overthrown, the scars still remain (ex. Weasels thinking they are superior to smaller species and the squirrels needing to be reminded that they are allowed to join the soldier hedgehogs).

The White-Naped cranes spiritual practices, and preference towards the old caste system, have fallen out of favor with the general populace of Flower Hill. It is, however, very popular with the Weasels, who still hold that they are superior to the smaller animals. Many shaman leave Flower Hill to join the weasels to provide spiritual practices, something Flower Hill cannot stop due to migration permits.

Chongsu is based on a mudang shaman whose bloodline supposedly ties back the strongest to Sungmo, the mother of all shaman priestesses. Which makes her a sort of community elder despite her young age, as well as her constant mysterious illnesses.

She is a young crane, who lives in Flower Hill, too sickly to make the annual migration to Teikoku (Japan), like most of the White-Napes cranes. She and her followers assist in making medicine for the troops. Her biggest wish and command is for all species to get along with each other in harmony. What she does not realize, is that as the ‘supreme leader,’ this could possibly be misinterpreted as a command for her followers to reinstate the caste system, by any means possible, which could even mean teaming up with weasel, wolf, or tiger leaders, who also wish to return to the caste system and crush all underfoot.

In real life, white named cranes are unusual in that they primary live in the demilitarized zone of North Korea, but migrate to Japan. Shaman still exist in Korea to this day (participating in spiritual/healing leaders, fortune telling, and entertainment such as with the kisaeng), but are sometimes treated with suspicion, especially in North Korea, due to many of them, especially the kisaeng (who the Japanese troops found similar to geisha, apparently according to reports), siding with the Japanese during the invasions. As a result, the distrust and semi discrimination the Flower Hill commanders hold for Chongsu, is a hint that all is not absolutely perfect in Flower Hill.

[rad-roche]

next warframe i'm aiming for: baruuk.

i didn't have much interest until i played him a little in the circuit and figured out his gimmick is really, really funny. he's an old man who doesn't like violence, but all of his abilities fill up a big 'i'm getting mad' bar at which point he cracks and can do damage that scales into the billions. the gameplay loop is trying to keep your grandpa pissed off enough to do anything. if he's not sufficiently furious he can't