Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
I don't know what cycles you're referring to but you have the old as meaning changing to it's unchanging opposite correct.
There are many analogies one can use for this. For instance, AC (alternating current). Another is an A/B vacuum tube or valve circuit. When energy reaches its limit it reverses polarity. It is greatly more efficient, using each direction to generate the same power as one which is constant and uses twice the energy, rather like pedaling a bicycle. I think hexagram 32 is another example of this self-perpetuating power. Maybe this is something related to your cycle idea?
On #2:
"III. Explaining the Milfoil Stalks(139)
The number of the Great Amplification is 50.(140)
The numbers in the centers of the River Chart and the Lo Text are both 5. Expanding them, each increases its number up to 10, and taking these [multiplied] together makes 50. The sum of the River Chart is 55. The 50 is always obtained from 5, and only 5 is what 50 is derived from, yet it itself is derived from nothing. Thus by subtracting it we are left with 50. Also, 40 of the 55 is divided into the numbers of the mature and young yang and yin, while the 5 and 10 do nothing [i.e. are neither yang nor yin]. So again, by taking 5 and multiplying it by 10, or by taking 10 and multiplying it by 5, in both cases we get 50.
The sum of the Lo Text is 45, with 40 dispersed to the outside and divided into the numbers of mature and young yin and yang. Only the 5 abides in the center, doing nothing. So it also contains in itself the number 5, and altogether we get 50. "
( From http://web.archive.org/web/20030218...s/religion/fac/adler/Writings/Chimeng.htm#Ch3)
I am investagating this topic. What I have is a type of number that exists in finite space but has a variable value. It can spin in a forward direction or a backward direction.
The wisdom I have so far is "A building rests on a foundation but it is people that make it a home."
I will continue to ponder the root of the I Ching but I have nothing to connect DUE to I Cning except Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Like the great Leibinz I find Binary and the I Ching to be of interest.
I accept the concept of opposite forces. I am now investegating what that really means for me. I think it is a valuable clue for me.
Thank you for the reply
The concept of Zero was first spoken of in the Upanishads as early as 1000 BCE, which was around the time of the early I Ching writings, yet I find no representation of Zero in our current IC, other than the circle, which is represented in hex 1. H2 is represented as a square and a cube, as depicted in 2.2: the three dimensional paradigm. What I don't see at all in the Yi is the purely two dimensional Flatland. Even dreams have three (or more) dimensions; our psyche does not illustrate in two dimensions, though much of our art does, but even that attempts to expand within our imagination and optical illusion.
The correct term is Ourovoros Ophis (the tail-eating snake) and its greek from oura (tail) vora (eating) and ophis (snake, serpent). The Chinese had images of pig-headed dragons (the earliest dragon archetypes, 4700-2200 b.C.) eating their tails. Then it appears in Egypt. The Greek philosophers gave the sympol its name: Plato (in Timaios) identifies it with the first primordial, immortal, perfect being. The snake (or dragon, or winged dragon, in some cases) stands for a hermaphroditic symbol of rebirth. Generally the tail-eating snake is seen as a symbol of eternity, the endless cycle of life and death, but it is more complex than that: there is two quite different images of the Ourovoros - the one who bites his tail and the one who swallows its tail. The first is static (often painted half-black, half-white), dividing what is inside and what is outside, a symbol of perfection and balance between negative and positive, male and female, constructive and destructive, somewhat like the yin & yang. The second, however, is dynamic: it symbolises spiral movement and energy; when the snake reaches it head it dissapears, and so it signifies the whole and the absolute, consuming itself until it reaches the point where it has to start again. This is its symbolic use in Alchemy. Orphic cosmology (an ancient greek mystic movement c. 6th century bC) recognised the Ourovoros Ophis as the symbol of Aeon, the lifetime of All & Everything (the univerce), as the snake was wrapped around the cosmic egg, forming a perfect circle (Epikouros -341 to 270 bC- wrote: "the whole was from the beginning like an egg, with the serpent/spirit around it like a circle"). It was the codex of Markianos (11th century AD) that attracted Carl Jung's attention to the symbol as an archetype, together with the term "One the Whole". So the symbolism can be interpreted according to these two variations, as a symbol of a static, immobile, perfect universe that has closed the circle, attained wisdom and is at peace, or as a symbol of eternal energy, in the constant process of self-devouring and self-regenerating - "my End is my Beginning"; the latter version can be seen as a symbol of the eternally existing spirit and reincarnation or transmigration of the eternal soul...
That looks as though it's from LiSe's Yijing, named The oracle of the sun. Hex 1 itself represents the sun, which was seen as the great life giving orb in the heavens.
I think it's fair to see this as that zero or the continuous circle. I also think a similar medieval and very ancient Chinese symbol would be expressed in the snake eating its own tail, expressing the saying "My end is my beginning."
It's also believed by many to be the reason the Yijing ends with Before Completion rather than After completion.
Ernst,
Don't know if this is the type of cycle you are looking for, but I have posted what I consider to be the 6-7-8-9 cycle here: http://www.thetolteciching.com/blog/the-cycle-of-6-7-8-9/
From this, you'll see that I don't think there are two different cycles. Young and Old Yin and Yang relate specifically to the seasons of the year and the cycle of day and night, correlated moreover to the four compass points (an act ethnohistorians refer to as the spatialization of time). This alignment, you will see, forms the basis of an ethical human response to natural cycles.
You may find some foundational work from which to leapfrog in the newly published I Ching Mathematics for the King Wen Version (http://williamdouglashorden.com/ching-mathematics-king-wen-version/).
All the Best
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).