Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
confucius
visitor
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2006
- Messages
- 199
- Reaction score
- 0
The ideogram used to illustrate Huan.59 has virtually no use outside the context of the Yi Jing. It is composed from two groups. On the left the general symbol for Water, here contracted and drawn as three strokes. On the right a complex group in which we find (at the bottom) the character Grand, Great. The global meaning of this group, rarely used by itself, is Great Deployment: Richly Decorated, Brilliant, Prosper, Abundant or Numerous. When this group is used with the character Mouth it forms the character To Call, To Awaken; combined with Fire it becomes Radiant and with the Hand a very common character meaning To Exchange, To Change Appearance, To Barter, as is understood in the ideogram Dui.58.
The combination of the two symbols composing the name of this hexagram therefore evokes the great developmental work of water. The concern here is not its irrigating power but its faculty of dispersion, of dissolution, particularly manifested when the riverbed overflows. Flooding, one of the recurring nightmares of China, is written with a different character. The choice of this one shows that the image of the rising waterline (stroke after stroke) all along the hexagram, must not be understood as a destructive flood but like an allegory of the progressive dissolution of structures and rigidities.
Finally, in the complex group constituting this ideogram, one can also read the image of two hands lifting a ceremonial vase. Therefore, the Character To Unbind, within its general meaning of propagation of a destructurising flux, may also suggest that the way to remedy this situation is in relation with a ritualistic attitude.
Confucius
The combination of the two symbols composing the name of this hexagram therefore evokes the great developmental work of water. The concern here is not its irrigating power but its faculty of dispersion, of dissolution, particularly manifested when the riverbed overflows. Flooding, one of the recurring nightmares of China, is written with a different character. The choice of this one shows that the image of the rising waterline (stroke after stroke) all along the hexagram, must not be understood as a destructive flood but like an allegory of the progressive dissolution of structures and rigidities.
Finally, in the complex group constituting this ideogram, one can also read the image of two hands lifting a ceremonial vase. Therefore, the Character To Unbind, within its general meaning of propagation of a destructurising flux, may also suggest that the way to remedy this situation is in relation with a ritualistic attitude.
Confucius