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 the Donetsk publishing house “Stalker” in January 1997. The Chinese (and broadly East Asian) 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 began in 1984). Next comes 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.
Thus arises the main Chinese cosmogram, which takes the form of the Bright Hall (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. In addition 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 others were added, but they are not included in the main scheme). Thus, a twelve-sector circle or tortoise is formed, which is the most important scheme of world division. Why a tortoise? In Mongolia, there is 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, shot, and turned over, lying on its back. The hunter approached it. He 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 the other opening.
The hunter looked and 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 one Tibetan Buddhist sutra it is said: “The entire Universe fits on a tortoise. Its head faces south, its tail faces north, its paws face east and west. South contains the fire element and corresponds to the signs Horse and Snake; west is metal or Rooster and Monkey; north is water or Pig and Rat; 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 and 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, a punishment that cannot be avoided. Preserving it is a virtue (de), for which no special reward is due. The path to preserving balance is the dual Way or Dao: observing rituals and knowledge.
Moreover, the circle (tortoise) is a symbol of cyclicity, the repetition of everything. Here there is a clear reminiscence of the ideas of the Taurus era (the world is well arranged, and there is no need to change it), but in a slightly different form (the world is arranged as it is, 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 involve 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 zodiac signs are interconnected, for example Aries-Libra. Hence, it is no surprise that during the Aries era, many elements of the opposite Libra archetype 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
On the Mingtang, eight emerges when considering the intermediate “directions” of the wind rose, and in the circle — in the symbolic representation of the “center” (the earth element) as four small sectors, since each large sector must border the center. However, the small sectors thus acquire a kind of independent significance, and thus one large element breaks down into four small ones:
WOOD wind FIRE earth former
METAL void 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, was achieved 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 “void” here also has Indo-Buddhist origins (and, accordingly, meaning): it is shunyata, the great void as a vessel, the essence of Adibuddha. As it is said in the Daodejing:
Thirty spokes and the hub make a wheel, but it is the space between them that constitutes the essence of the wheel. The clay of the pot’s bottom and walls make the vessel, but it is the space within that constitutes the essence of the vessel.
The familiar Bright Hall (Mingtang), as we remember, contains eight: these are the cells of the magic square without the center. Together with the center, they give nine. The eight and nine, as foundations of the theory of knowledge, received particularly broad development 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
3 iron 3 blue
4 void 4 green
5 fire 5 yellow
6 mountain 6 white
7 wood 7 red
8 wind 8 white 9 red (In reality, there are six colors here, some repeated, but they are considered along with the number, i.e., their ordinal number, which provides the necessary differentiation — and an unusual formulation for us).
Each year, month, and day are checked not only against the 10 static and 12 dynamic signs but also against the 8 elements and 9 colors. Every person knows or can calculate their element and color, which allows determining favorable and unfavorable days for them, choosing a profession or a spouse, and so on.
I Ching
The eight lies at the foundation of the exposition of the famous treatise I Ching, also known as the “Book of Changes.” It describes 64 hexagrams, formed by combining eight primary trigrams. There is also the Nan Jing, one of the oldest medical treatises in China, which is based on nine: it describes the difficulties of classical medicine. This gave our sinologist V.S. Spirin reason to call the I Ching a “light” and the Nan Jing a “heavy” treatise on the grounds that, in his opinion, the I Ching operates with a two-dimensional scheme, while the Nan Jing uses a three-dimensional one. He then attempts to divide or distribute all Chinese philosophical treatises in this way, which, as we now understand, is incorrect, since the “dimensionality” is the same in all cases (three vertically, four horizontally), differing only in the number of accounting elements (Spirin V.S. The Structure of Ancient Chinese Texts. Moscow, 1976).
The I Ching 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 — four large and four small — though they are called slightly differently:
Sixty-four hexagrams are composed of eight trigrams, each accompanied by an aphoristic description. Over the following centuries, more or less extensive commentaries of linguistic, literary, or philosophical nature were added to them. In general, it is precisely the aphoristic nature of ancient books that compelled readers of subsequent eras to provide them with commentaries based on their understanding—take at least the I Ching, the Old Testament, or the Avesta. Even the relatively recent Kitab-i-Aqdas by Bahá’u’lláh, written during the time of Napoleon III, has already accumulated an entire library of commentaries.
Perhaps Yuri Konstantinovich Shchutsky was right when he said that the I Ching initially emerged as a repository 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, and no important decision was made without their consultation.
However, the very starting point from which the author of this book proceeded—the natural (one of the natural) system of dividing the world, the eightfold division, which still carries a purely terrestrial, monoplanetary character (unlike the tenfold division, which already encompasses the 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, the number of “articles”—that is, individual cases—matters less than the degree of fragmentation, that is, figuratively speaking, the resolving power of the lens. In principle, even a binary division (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 measure?
Thus, any “article” of the I Ching turns out to be, albeit brief (aphoristic), yet exhaustive in its description of any situation with precision up to the sixth decimal place—which is already quite a lot. This is sufficient both for describing political events in one country or another and for analyzing the life situation of an individual, and even for predicting the outcomes 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 divine using the I Ching today, one must either have a deep understanding of the symbolism and symbolology of ancient China—which is difficult to demand from non-sinologists—or turn to modern interpretations, where the meaning of each hexagram is explained in the language of our time.
The main meaning of this book, like many others, today lies not in divination. The I Ching offers the reader a certain methodology for comprehending the world, albeit complex and requiring careful study, yet accessible even to non-sinologists, for the foundations of the Chinese worldview are very simple and logical—something we have already had the chance to convince ourselves of.
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