| * Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on I Ching
I Ching (Chinese) Also Yi King. The Book of Changes; also Holy Book of Mutations, these mutations being the manifestations of tao.
The text of the original treatise is from a system of eight trigrams and 64 hexagrams, composed of whole and broken lines, thus: (illust) which, by altering the positions of the whole and broken lines form the changes in the diagrams. This has been assigned by scholars to Fu-Hsi (30th century BC). The first extant commentary on it is assigned to Ching Wen, founder of the Chou dynasty in 1122 BC, and his son.
There have been many explanations offered regarding this work, called by many the Qabbalah of China: some see in it only a system of divination, a lunar calendar, phallic worship, or again the vocabulary of a tribe whose very existence had to be postulated for this purpose. Both Taoists and Confucianists regard the I Ching as the holiest of books; Confucius declared that he would like to give another 50 years of his life to its study, while the only Chinese commentator who is said to have understood it was Chu Hsi (1130-1200).
In the Hi-ts''ze (or so-called Appendices to the work) the universe is described as a living organism called T''ai-ch''i (the supreme being, or most ultimate). The processes of birth and rebirth, or the production of life, are due to the manifestations of tao by means of the yang and yin.
"To Yang belong the numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9; to Yin belong the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. There are then five celestial and five terrestrial numbers; these rows of five operate upon each other, and each number has one with which it corresponds. The sum of the celestial numbers is twenty-five. It is in accordance with these factors that the processes of the Universe are effected, and the kwei and the shen do their work" (Hi-ts''ze).
Speaking of the I Ching, Blavatsky says:
"the Stanzas given in our text . . . represent precisely the same idea. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian style, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these represent the most abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe" (SD 1:441).
(See also: I Ching, Mysticism, Occultism, )
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