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hilary
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There’s a much-quoted passage from Wang Bi’s General Remarks on the Zhouyi about concepts and images:
Now, I know next to nothing about Wang Bi’s thought, and I’m quoting excerpts out of context – and also out of the historical context within which he was writing. I believe he was emphasising that images are metaphors and point beyond themselves, rather than necessarily trying to argue that imagery is basically redundant and can be usefully discarded in favour of abstractions. However, his choice of words (and imagery!) does lend itself to support of that view… so here’s another quotation, in support of an alternative view.
This is from James Hillman, A Blue Fire, talking about dream imagery:
It’s one thing to consider how you need better ‘personal boundaries’ when responding to other people’s emotions. It’s something else altogether to be given the image of your self as a mountain with space for a lake. This can become part of your bodily awareness of your emotions, and allows you to change and recreate your sense of self out of this new imagery.
This is next to impossible to describe, but it’s an example from my own experience, receiving Hexagram 31 when asking about empathy, experiencing other people’s emotions as my own, and it did have that effect of reshaping my inner landscape. Perhaps this is how an image Yi offers is a different kind of gift from those that arise in dreams – not only a place to watch your soul, but somehow a place, a shaping force, that allows it to change.
I’ve seen the same truth at work in reading for others. It’s one thing to tell someone they need to be strong and confident (this isn’t, as a rule, news to anyone); quite another to tell them they can become a tiger. (And when a person does become a tiger, this is a remarkable transformation to behold!) What happens here is far beyond anything I might ‘explain’ to the person I’m reading for, or anything that I (or they) might ‘understand’.
“Images are the means to express ideas. …The images are generated by ideas, thus one can ponder the images and so observe what the ideas are. The ideas are yielded up completely by the images, and the images are made explicit by the words. Thus, since the words are the means to explain the images, once one gets the images, he forgets the words, and, since the images are the means to allow us to concentrate on the ideas, once one gets the ideas, he forgets the images. Similarly, ‘…the fish trap exists for the sake of fish; once one gets the fish, he forgets the trap.’ If this is so, then …the images are traps for the ideas.
…Anything that corresponds analogously to an idea can serve as its image, and any concept that fits with an idea can serve as corroboration of its nature. If the concept involves really has to do with dynamism, why must it only be presented in terms of the horse?”
(From RJ Lynn, Classic of Changes – the complete Yijing with all ten Wings and Wang Bi’s original commentary.)…Anything that corresponds analogously to an idea can serve as its image, and any concept that fits with an idea can serve as corroboration of its nature. If the concept involves really has to do with dynamism, why must it only be presented in terms of the horse?”
Now, I know next to nothing about Wang Bi’s thought, and I’m quoting excerpts out of context – and also out of the historical context within which he was writing. I believe he was emphasising that images are metaphors and point beyond themselves, rather than necessarily trying to argue that imagery is basically redundant and can be usefully discarded in favour of abstractions. However, his choice of words (and imagery!) does lend itself to support of that view… so here’s another quotation, in support of an alternative view.
This is from James Hillman, A Blue Fire, talking about dream imagery:
“For instance, a black snake comes in a dream, a great big black snake, and you can spend a whole hour with this black snake talking about the devouring mother, talking about the anxiety, talking about the repressed sexuality, talking about the natural mind, all those interpretive moves that people make, and what is left, what is vitally important, is what that snake is doing [...] The moment you’ve defined the snake, interpreted it, you’ve lost the snake, you’ve stopped it, and then the person leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality, or my cold black passions or my mother or whatever it is, and you’ve lost the snake. [...] See, the snake’s no longer necessary the moment it’s been interpreted, and you don’t need your dreams any more because they’ve been interpreted.”
So Hillman agrees that once you have the concept, you can discard the image… he just doesn’t see this as such a helpful move. He* continues:
“But I think you need them all the time, you need that very image you had during the night. For example, a policeman, chasing you down the street… you need that image, because that image keeps you in an imaginative possibility … if you say, ‘Oh, my guilt complex is loose again and is chasing me down the street,’ it’s a different feeling, because you’ve taken up the unknown policeman into your ego system of what you know, your guilt. You’ve absorbed the unkown into the known (made the unconscious conscious) and nothing, absolutely nothing has happened, nothing. You’re really safe from that policeman, and you can go to sleep again.”
There are two pages here I could happily quote in their entirety… but just three more sentences:
“The image is always more inclusive, more complex than the concept.”
“The images are where the psyche is.”
“The gift of an image is that it affords a place to watch your soul.”
This corresponds with my own experience from readings with Yi. Its images – made of lines, trigrams, words, deep etymological roots, allusions to myth and legend… – are not reducible to concepts, and not replaceable in the divination process. (This is why I go on endlessly about how vital it is to have a translation that gives you as much access as possible to that original richness of imagery. Even if the author has done a superlative job of expressing the a concept behind the image, this is not the gift.)“The images are where the psyche is.”
“The gift of an image is that it affords a place to watch your soul.”
It’s one thing to consider how you need better ‘personal boundaries’ when responding to other people’s emotions. It’s something else altogether to be given the image of your self as a mountain with space for a lake. This can become part of your bodily awareness of your emotions, and allows you to change and recreate your sense of self out of this new imagery.
This is next to impossible to describe, but it’s an example from my own experience, receiving Hexagram 31 when asking about empathy, experiencing other people’s emotions as my own, and it did have that effect of reshaping my inner landscape. Perhaps this is how an image Yi offers is a different kind of gift from those that arise in dreams – not only a place to watch your soul, but somehow a place, a shaping force, that allows it to change.
I’ve seen the same truth at work in reading for others. It’s one thing to tell someone they need to be strong and confident (this isn’t, as a rule, news to anyone); quite another to tell them they can become a tiger. (And when a person does become a tiger, this is a remarkable transformation to behold!) What happens here is far beyond anything I might ‘explain’ to the person I’m reading for, or anything that I (or they) might ‘understand’.