I Ching and the elements

The last post has made me think about the cycle and how, if earth is at the centre, each element spends some time above earth and some time below. I will be posting some I Ching verbal images to go along with this idea as starting points for thoughts about the five elements. There are several hexagrams which may relate to each element, for example, there is the abysmal water and there is the joyous lake. The gentle wind or the arousing thunder may be different qualities of wood. There are others too.

The I Ching uses Yin and Yang lines and forms hexagrams from two trigrams. It is the trigrams that relate to an element and so a hexagram describes the relationship between two elements. K'un, the receptive is Earth and is described as three Yin lines. Qian, heaven is three yang lines and is heaven which perhaps is outside of the circle formed by the five element cycle.

The movement of yin toward yang and then yang toward yin gives us our changes and I will be looking at what they say to me. I hope they are useful and inspirational.