Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Define: Hexagram

There’s a cool feature in Google for defining terms: you just write “Define:” and enter your term… Click ENTER and get your answers; like this: Define: Hexagram
A charge formed of two interlaced triangles, one of them inverted; also known as the star of David or the seal of Soloman.
Six-pointed star or six-sided figure used in Talismanic Magick. 

etc.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Forgive me – I can’t resist!

Define hexagram. Well this might be something a western rationalist (reductionist and positivist) person might want to do. However that is contrary to the approach which the I Ching and early Chinese thought was founded upon. The Chinese chose not to go down the positivist causal route where everything was reduced to its average causal order but to go for meaning instead.

It is a form of the Heisenberg Principle. The more you define something the less you know about it.

Here is a ‘definition’ which is nearer the original Chinese meaning centred approach:

A hexagram is a symbolic representation of light and shadow, inspiration and manifestation each represented by a whole or broken line. The figure itself is dynamic with the forces constantly interacting. Brightness / inspiration and shadow / manifestation each developing to a fullness when they switch into their opposites. Brightness to shagow and shadow to brightness. This switching can be gradual, one fading to the other and back or sudden as in on/off. These two modes of change add a further level of complexity to the way change is represented and transforms itself.

And so it might go on in a descriptive manner not a definitive one.

Description and definition or definitive and correlative thought are as two legs and two legs are needed to walk. We have hopped enough in the West with definitive / [positivist though. So, please can I have a left leg as well now?