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In the Jaws

Detail of the Hou Mu Wu Ding vessel handle showing human face in tigers' jaws

Charlie asked ‘How to navigate?’ and cast Hexagram 27, Nourishment – or Jaws – changing at line 1 to 23, Stripping Away:

changing to

What followed was a strongly resonant conversation between his inner imagery and the imagery of the Yi – and also the ancient Chinese motif of being in the jaws of the tiger. The featured image above this post shows a detail from the handle of the Houmuwu vessel, where you can just see the human face between the tigers’ open mouths. (The original photo is by Mlogic, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.)

Here’s another example, from the 11th century BC:

11th century BC bronze that represents a tiger eating a man. It was suggested that those animals helped the shamans to communicate with the royal ancestors and spirits. This bronze is in the Musée Cernuschi in Paris

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