I CHING AND THE TORTOISE
Excerpt from the book: Thirteen Gates. The History of Esoteric Teachings from Adam to Our Days. The book was published by Donetsk’s “Stalker” publishing house in January 1997.
The Chinese (and broadly Eastern) calendar consists of two parallel running cycles: Tian Gan and Di Zhi, the Ten Heavenly Stems and the Twelve Earthly Branches, which together form a sixty-year cycle. The cycle begins with the year of Wood-Yang and Rat (the current cycle started in 1984). It is followed by the year of Wood-Yin and Ox, then Fire-Yang and Tiger, and so on. The differing lengths of the two cycles (10 and 12) ensure the rotation of combinations of primary elements and cyclic symbols. Similarly, static and dynamic signs alternate for months and days of the year.
This forms the main Chinese cosmogram, shaped like the Bright Throne (Mingtang):
element of the day
5
element of the month
3
element of the year
1
sign of the day
6
sign of the month
4
sign of the year
2
hidden
9
signs
8
elements
7
Next. To the ten meridians of the human body, two more are added — the Heart King (Pericardium) and the Triple Burner (later, the so-called “extraordinary meridians” and some others were added, but they are not included in the main scheme). This forms a twelve-sector circle or tortoise, which is the most important diagram of world division.
Why the tortoise? In Mongolia, there is such a legend:
Long ago, in ancient times, there lived a skilled archer-hunter. Once, while hunting on the shore of a lake, he shot a strange beast. It was a tortoise. It fell, struck by the arrow, and turned over, lying on its back. The hunter approached it and saw lumps of clay in its four paws. Under its front paws lay a fragment of a wooden arrow with an iron tip, fire blazed from its mouth, and water poured from another opening.
The hunter looked and realized that earth, iron, wood, water, and fire — the five primary elements — from which the Universe is composed.
In the image depicting the tortoise, “threes organize fives,” and the 10 static signs combine with the 12 dynamic ones:
Here you have the tortoise — so to speak, a living model of the world. In a Tibetan Buddhist sutra it is said:
“The entire Universe fits on a tortoise. Its head faces south, its tail faces north, and its paws face east and west. The south contains the element of fire and corresponds to the signs of Horse and Snake; the west is metal or Rooster and Monkey; the north is water or Pig and Rat; the east is wood or Tiger and Rabbit” (cited from: Skorodumova L. Dzurhai: Buddhist Astrology).
For the inhabitants of China and Mongolia, the tortoise’s shell served as a natural divination board: even the I Ching, as is well known, originates from divination on a tortoise shell.
It also served as a symbol of world harmony, unshakable cosmic balance (Libra) — no wonder it was believed that the Earth rests on the back of a giant tortoise. Hence the principle: do nothing that could disrupt this balance. Disrupting balance is a crime, a sin, and its retribution cannot be avoided. Preserving it is a virtue (de), for which no special reward is due. The path to preserving balance is the dual Dao: observing rituals and knowledge.
Moreover, the circle (tortoise) is a symbol of cyclicity, the repetition of everything. There is a clear reminiscence here of the Taurus era (the world is well arranged, and there is nothing to change), but in a slightly different form (the world is arranged as it is arranged, and nothing can be changed) — no wonder most cultures of East Asia are described by the Libra archetype, and Libra, like Taurus, is the domicile of Venus.
Chinese meridians are paired, meaning they imply the interaction of two opposite sectors of the circle, for example, the Heart and Gallbladder. Energy exchange occurs between them. This means, for instance, that treating a disorder in one meridian can be done through the other. Similarly, the archetypes of the zodiac signs are interconnected, for example Aries-Libra. Hence, it is no surprise that during the Aries era, many elements of the opposite archetype, Libra, were activated, and in Japanese culture, both are represented almost equally.
But let us return to our diagram. It shows that among the main components of the “Tortoise,” the number eight has appeared.
Eight
In Mingtang, eight emerges when considering the intermediate “directions” of the wind rose, and in the circle — when the symbolic representation of the “center” (the primary element of Earth) is depicted as four small sectors, since each large sector must border the center. However, the small sectors thus acquire a kind of independent significance, and one large element breaks down into four small ones:
WOOD
wind
FIRE
earth
former
METAL
emptiness
EARTH
WATER
mountain
The concept of eight elements — four large and four small, forming a fifth — originated in antiquity. However, their greatest development, including names, interpretations, and principles of practical application, occurred only under the influence of Buddhism (cf. “the eightfold path of moral action”), although in its homeland, India, the role of eight as a sacred number remained rather modest.
The term “emptiness” here also has Indo-Buddhist origins (and, accordingly, meaning): it is shunyata, the great emptiness as a vessel, the essence of Adibuddha. As it is said in the Dao De Jing:
Thirty spokes and the hub make a wheel, but it is the emptiness between them that constitutes the essence of the wheel. Clay forms the bottom and walls of a vessel, but it is the emptiness between them that constitutes the essence of the vessel.
As we remember, the familiar Bright Throne (Mingtang) contains eight: these are the cells of the magic square without the center. Together with the center, they give nine. The eight and nine have particularly extensive development as one of the foundations of epistemology in Tibet, where the eightfold and ninefold cycles were also incorporated into the calendar cycle:
Eight elements and nine colors
1 water
1 white
2 earth
2 black
8 Wind
8 White
9 Red
(In reality, there are six colors here, some repeated, but they are considered together with their number, i.e., their ordinal number, which provides the necessary differentiation—and an unusual formulation for us).
Every year, month, and day is checked not only against the 10 static and 12 dynamic signs but also against the 8 elements and 9 colors. Each person knows or can calculate their element and color, which allows them to determine favorable and unfavorable days, choose a profession or a spouse, and so on.
I Ching
The number eight underlies the structure of the well-known treatise I Ching, also called the “Book of Changes.” It describes 64 hexagrams, formed by combining eight primary trigrams. There is also the Nan Jing, one of China’s oldest medical texts, based on the number nine; it describes the complexities of classical medicine. This led our sinologist V.S. Spirkin to call I Ching a “light” and Nan Jing a “heavy” treatise, based on the idea that I Ching operates with a two-dimensional scheme, while Nan Jing uses a three-dimensional one. He then attempts to apply this division to all Chinese philosophical texts, which, as we now understand, is incorrect, since the “dimensionality” in all cases is the same (three vertically, four horizontally), differing only in the number of accounting elements (Spirkin V.S. *The Structure of Ancient Chinese Texts*. Moscow, 1976).
I Ching, however, primarily operates with eight primary trigrams (Ba Gua), four of which still adorn the national flag of the Republic of Korea. These are the same eight elements we are already familiar with—four great and four small—though they are called slightly differently.
The eight trigrams form 64 hexagrams, each accompanied by an aphoristic description. Over the centuries, increasingly extensive commentaries of linguistic, literary, or philosophical nature were added to them.
Indeed, the aphoristic nature of ancient books compelled later readers to supply them with commentaries based on their own understanding—and take, for example, the I Ching, the Old Testament, or the Avesta. Even the relatively recent *Kitab-i-Aqdas* by Bahá’u’lláh, written during the reign of Napoleon III, has already accumulated an entire library of commentaries.
Perhaps Y.K. Shchutsky was right when he said that initially, the Book of Changes emerged as a collection of purely divinatory rules, a practical guide to divination. After all, during the Age of Aries, and especially in China, diviners and astrologers were considered state officials, without whose consultation no important decision was made.
Yet the very starting point from which the author of this book proceeded—the natural (one of the natural) system of dividing the world, the number eight, which still carries a purely earthly, monoplanetary character (unlike ten, which encompasses the entire Solar System)—transforms the I Ching into the first known “encyclopedia” of the world and humanity.
For such an “encyclopedia,” or rather, for the theory of macrocosm and microcosm, what matters is not so much the quantity of “articles,” i.e., individual cases, but the degree of fragmentation—the resolving power, so to speak, of the lens. In principle, even a division in half (yang-yin) already allows for the classification of all things and phenomena, grouping them into two large categories. Sixty-four is two to the sixth power, whereas (returning to the Nan Jing or, say, to the *Book of Great Mystery* /Taixuanjing/ by Yang Xiong) eighty-one is merely three to the fourth power. Where, then, is the greater dimensionality?
Thus, each “article” of the I Ching turns out to be a brief (aphoristic) yet exhaustive description of any situation with precision up to the sixth decimal place—which is quite sufficient. This is enough to describe political events in a given country, analyze a person’s life situation, and even predict the outcome of a physical or chemical experiment. Indeed: a molecule—one, an atom—two, electrons and protons—three, various mu- and pi-mesons—four, quarks—five, gravitons—six…
However, to use the I Ching for divination today, one must either have a deep understanding of the symbolism and symbolology of ancient China—something difficult to expect from non-sinologists—or turn to modern interpretations where the meaning of each hexagram is explained in contemporary language.
The main meaning of this book, like many others, lies not in divination. The I Ching offers the reader a certain methodology for understanding the world—complex and requiring careful study, yet accessible even to non-sinologists, since the foundations of the Chinese worldview are very simple and logical, as we have already had the chance to see.
