A glimpse into the Yi Jing
If you are looking into the origins of Feng Shui, you certainly cannot miss that Feng Shui is based on the yi jing (also known as the I Ching). The yi jing is a profound Chinese oracle. It is one of the five classics of Chinese writing. The five classics are the Book of Changes (yi jing), The Book of History or Documents (Shu Jing), the Book of Songs (Shi Jing), the Book of Ritual, (Li Ji), and the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu). These five books are considered to be the early writings that most influenced Chinese thought. The yi jing is one of the primary sources for the calculations of Feng Shui.
The core text of the yi jing is only about 4,000 characters. Later Confucius added commentaries (appendices) to the book adding only 6,000 more characters. All in all, it is only 30 or so pages in Chinese. Today, more than 10,000 commentaries and essays have been written about the yi jing.
W. Scott Morton in his book “China, Its History and Culture” states “The Book of Changes (yi jing), a book used for divination built on the oracle bones tradition, which combines, in one interrelated whole, all of human life and fate and the physical elements of the world in symbolic form, represented by the ba gua diagram of whole and broken lines. The contents of the Book of Changes include ancient cosmological beliefs of the Chinese antedating the separate philosophical schools. Appendices giving amplifications and interpretations where added by the early Han times.” (1)
Early in Chinese history, the ancients used animal bones for divination. They would try to divine answers from breaking the bones, seeing how the cracks formed, and then interpreting them. Later, they came up with a system that combined bones with mathematical patterns. These numerical patterns where fashioned onto turtle shells and large animal bones.
According to Chinese tradition around 2200 BCE, a great flood covered the earth. Master Yu (or Yu the Great) found how to control these floodwaters. The mythology around Master Yu, was that he discovered the Luo Shu pattern on the turtle. s shell when it emerged from the waters at the river Luo. The pattern was the magic square. This pattern “magically” added to 15 in every direction. This became the “Post Heaven” order for the Eight Trigrams (also known as the Ba Gua). A thousand years later, during the Shang Dynasty, King Wen of the state of Zhou stacked the trigrams on top of one another, making sixty-four hexagrams. (2)
Lo Shu Map
The trigrams were based on Yin and Yang. During the time of the Zhou dynasty, there was a rise of philosophy known as Yin and Yang theory. The philosophers of this time further examined the concept of Yin and Yang, with Yang rising and being light and Yin descending and being dark. Yin contains some Yang and Yang contains some Yin. Nothing is absolute, but rather it is evolving continuously. The trigrams are three lines representing Yin and Yang by broken and solid lines. Therefore, from the two sides of Yin and Yang evolves eight Trigrams and finally the Trigrams give way to the 64 Hexagrams of the yi jing.
The 64 Hexagrams of the yi jing actually can be considered binary in nature. Yes, just like the bits and bytes of a computer, the yi jing uses binary calculations. Leibniz, the mathematician who shares with Newton the credit for the creation of calculus, was thinking about binary integers when he cam across the I Ching in 1689. The Jesuit priest Bouvet had sent him a copy from China, with a list of the hexagrams in the Fuxi order and a segregation diagram. Leibniz instantly recognized the hexagram symbols as none other than binary representations of the sixty-four integers from 0-63, with Earth being 0 and Heaven 63. He was astounded to find in so ancient a source the very idea he was working on, namely that out of the elementary dyad 0 and 1, one can in principle build everything . the motivation for his study of binary mathematics. In his first full discourse on binary integers, published in 1703, he acknowledged their origin in “the ancient Chinese diagrams of Fohy (Fuxi).” It was his belief that God had revealed the truth to Fuxi three thousand years before his time. (2)
In Feng Shui, the trigrams that correspond to the eight directions are based on these binary-like changes of Yin and Yang. Further, the more advanced calculations of the Feng Shui analysis correspond to the changes of Yin and Yang. Each house is different and the critical piece of an analysis is timing. The yi jing analysis is based on timing as well. While most people toss coins or use the yarrow sticks, a more profound method involves the time you are asking the question. Timing is key in both yi jing and in Feng Shui.
The yi jing is the book of changes. It is based on the concept of all things are undergoing constant change. The trigrams in Feng Shui are based on the yi jing and are also undergoing change. Remember that there is nothing is fixed, especially the qi within a house. What might work this year, may not work the next. There is no “one-size fits all” application of Feng Shui.
Even in terms of the East\West theory of Feng Shui, the directions of North, South, East, and Southeast belong to the Eastern group of directions. The West, Southwest, Northwest, and Northeast belong to the Western group of directions. How are these groupings determined? By the change of the Yin and Yang lines in the trigrams.
In yi jing, the changes in the lines can represent the changes in life. In Feng Shui, the changes in the lines can represent changes in directions and their influence. While many books available on the subject discuss how to cure your house, few discuss how to account for the changes that are occurring. This is frequently why people see results for only a short time. Changes continue. Be aware of the changes in your environment.
References:
1 - “China, Its History and Culture”, by W. Scott Morton, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill paperback, 1995. ISBN 0-07-043424-7
2 - “I Ching”, by Kerson and Rosemary Huang, 1st Edition, Workman Publishing Company, Inc., 1987. ISBN 0-89480-319-0
