Hexagram 30

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Hexagram 30

The Page of Li, The Middle Daughter

"In order that his psychic nature be transfigured and attain influence on earth, it must cling to the forces of spiritual life."- Book III, The Commentaries, by Nauxian/Wilhelm/Baynes.

The light principle becomes visible only when it clings to bodies. Its direction is South; its image, the summer sun; the symbol of Li, the net. Li is the net that when thrown across the Invisible World, captures and illuminates the hidden spiritual forces which govern the processes of life.

The more spiritual and true the object, the more radiant is Li. Clinging to what is right, Li transforms the world and perfects it.

"The Eye is holy to Li" Book III, the Commentaries

The eye

The Hexagram, divided within and closed without, is an image of the meshes of a net

Cast netting with a 9 foot net in Tampa Bay. The mesh (holes in the net) is small because she is casting for small bait fish. The net is made of mono filament and it is round. At the bottom is a line of lead that helps the net to open and then sink to the bottom. She sees a silver flash and, instinctively casts towards a school of greenback minnows, the lead lines propel the net outward. A perfect circle, the net strikes the water and sinks quickly to the bottom trapping the bait. The mesh in the net has the yang quality or strength and substance, but it hole or yin quality of the net is what allows fish to be caught.

The trigram Li, the trigram doubled is Hexagram 30, Li. In the structure of the hexagram, a dark line clings to two light lines that are above and below. " It is the image of an empty space between two strong lines, whereby the two strong lines are made bright." -Hexagram 30, Nixuan/Wilhelm/Baynes, Book I.

Interlaced branches,

Soft rain. In hidden spaces,

Deer among dark pines.

Diviner's Notes: Although the hexagram is said to represent the movement across the sky twice, a more rational idea is that Li represents the movement of the sun during the day and night. For Li not only illuminate the day; Li also illuminates the moon and stars at night.

Further Diviner Notes: This Hexagram also stands for the progression of one human life from birth to death.. The 5th line indicates the sun is setting from middle to old age.

Li is Knots

"The mysterious power that is supposed to reside in knots...can be injurious as well as beneficial."

Quipus and Witches' Knots

Untying the knots that link the body to its ten souls is accomplished through spiritual cultivation and is the way to achieving spiritual freedom. The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth

by Hua-Ching Ni.

"He [the spiritual guide] unties the sealed knots that underlie the profound union of sutra and tantra."

Tibetan Buddhist Chant.

The dakinis consider the tying of love knots on the bodies of their consorts to be one of the sixty-four arts of love.

Early I Ching texts were written on bamboo strips tied together silk tied with special, sacred knots. Perhaps the secret of the knot is to be found in early texts. Bamboo strips were used for making sacred promises and placed on altars. They were also sometimes sunk in rivers. Divinations concerning the appointment of court officials were done this way and seem to be recorded as sacred promises. Before literacy was widespread, the Chinese also used knots for record keeping. Tying knots is an art form today and results in breathtaking necklaces, pendants, bracelets, wall hangings, and hanging lanterns.

Knots were also part of the mystical tradition of the Celts of ancient Britain

The Clan of Pao Hsi , The Turtle People - A Tale of the Ancient Days

The Clan of Pao Hsi , is closely associated with Fu Hsi, is the oldest known clan of diviners. It sprang from the ancient ways of hunting, fishing, and gathering. It is associated with the knots and the tying of rope and the construction of nets and baskets. It represents the most ancient sages who learned by living intimately with nature. Intuition and clairvoyance were not only natural to them but to all the life around them. Plants, animals and sea life have these abilities, albeit at a more basic level.

Over time this clairvoyant and intuitive relationship the people had with their natural world accumulated into mythical stories and visual forms. It is these people, I think, that began to look at turtle shells in the wild and began to see the patterns of their universe. Indeed they probably had a myth or story associated with most of the flora and fauna of their world. But they saw something in turtles. It may be true that they began to associate each moon in the lunar year with the thirteen plates on a turtle's back. Then they began to read the future from the markings on the turtle shell and form impressions of what was to come. In this way the turtle became part of the mythical landscape. They saw themselves living on a gigantic turtle shell intimately connected with the cosmos. Their totems, rituals, their basic understanding of time and space, and their place in the universal scheme of things was inextricably intertwined with the turtle and its shell.

These people were sensually perceptive and discriminating. This is perhaps why intuition and clairvoyance were natural them: They lived with heightened awareness which we have lost in the sensory overload of civilization. What they have told us is difficult to precisely convey in words. Symbols and imagery help the outsider to share their world without reducing it to meaningless abstraction.

left, flying horse symbol found in hexagram 22

We are extremely fortunate that their natural world, their mythical landscape, and their spiritual universe is found as a "layer of meaning," in the I Ching, in especially Book III, of the Commentaries, especially well-explained in Wilhelm/Baynes . These symbols and imagery from these people so long ago come at us from a non-rational, intuitive way that we will miss completely if we are not attuned to it. To comprehend them requires that we use the intuitive and sensory areas of the brain and devote ourselves to things that modern people find incomprehensible.

For me, I could never tell anyone why I became a fisherman, often living near crabbers and shrimpers in and around the waters of Tampa Bay and why it was so important to me and what I learned in doing so. The bay became my mythical landscape and the animals and I have a close relationship, sometimes intuitional and clairvoyant, sometimes full of high harmonic reverberation and mystical intensity. These are some of my comrades: The ibis, harbinger of spring, standing on the sand bar at low tide, the hawksbill laying eggs on mullet fisherman's beach in March, the snook ( the fish below) a tackle-buster of the first rank and worthy warrior, the iridescent speckled trout chasing white bait, the red fish with their black tails cutting through the water, the spawning sheepshead in winter, the grouper who move in on the full moon, the migrating shrimp turning soft and red and coming out at night, the smell of white bait before the eye can see it, the manatee, intelligent and surprisingly graceful, and the whistles of hunting hawks and eagles. The tides, the seasons, and wind set the rhythms of this place. These harmonic reverberations strengthen the intuition and the dream-time of which the Australian aborigines speak becomes a part of one's experience. (above, Tampa Bay mangrove island, "Bird Key." It is now federal bird preserve. The waters around the island are nearly pristine with live grasses, shrimp, wading birds, and manatees. The waters around the island average six feet in depth. The interior of this island is considered a holy place by fishermen and no doubt the Indians before them. (Lagoons such as these have given up artifacts of the Indians of prehistory. )

It must be said that by fishing with hook and line, wading across the shallow grass flats, I sought this connection. Often I made ritual prayers and painted the snook on my body. The snook that was there in my future would appear in strong, clairvoyant dreams. When I caught the fish I always gave thanks for its life and purified myself afterwards. As a Buddhist, I very rarely catch fish anymore but I guide only for those who can appreciate the miracle of this place. (Left, Skyway Bridge over the mouth of Tampa Bay, connecting St. Petersburg and Bradenton.) (Below, Midaughter guides someone to a 26 lb snook)

A lifetime adrift on a boat...

And only the journey is home..

Spider web with dew,

Fishing the air.

Arachnid Sage spins Hexagram Thirty.

A Legend of the Turtle People

Fu Hsi, Worthy Ancestor from the Linked Mountains of the Kunlun Shan - Shangri-La

Fu Hsi, the first of the three legendary sovereigns is generally acknowledged as the earliest ancestor of the I Ching. He is supposed to have lived in northwest China's Gansu Province and later have led his tribe down the Yellow River to settle in central China. He ruled 115 years from 2852 to 2737 BC. He is also renown to have created weaving and musical instrumental skills. Even the "Eight Trigrams" are said to have been worked out by him. Many centuries after his death, a magnificent tomb and temple were built in his honor in his burial place, today's "Dragon City," Huaiyang . Today, on the second day of February, thousands of people goes to Huaiyang to worship Fu Hsi in the hope of being protected by the spirit of the dragon. Fu Hsi is usually depicted alongside his wife and sister, the goddess Nugua. Fu Hsi and Nugua are human from the waist up and have the tails of dragons or serpents.

He is sometimes represented as a mountain with a human head, crowned with leaves, and accompanied by the eight trigrams. (right).

He seems to be saying "Concentrate on the eight trigrams and write your name in the Milky Way. Your are now immortal." Taoist prayer

The Starry Beings

In Taoist tradition it is said that Starry Beings," immortals from another galaxy, or a higher plane of existence descended to the Kunlun Shang 6,000 years ago bringing with them the secrets of the universe. These beings lived among humans and taught the secrets of life. They reincarnated as buddhas, boddhisattvas, and immortals. The Himalayas and the Kunlun Shan enclose the Qing Zang Plateau, which encompasses Tibet and part of Qinghai Province. The Kunlun Shan stretches 1000 miles past dreary provincial towns and desolate roads, its snow-and-glacier-clad peaks rising abruptly along the north edge of the vast dry Tibetan plains.

The Kunlun Shan becomes progressively more narrow from east to west, and along the narrow western section, it highest peaks are found. This is an extremely remote area close to Pakistan and the steppes of Krygyzstan. It is seventy five miles south of Kashi, the largest city in western Xinjiang Province, China. Siberian nomads still flourish here, but so does the remote border activities of weaponry and smuggling. According to tradition, the Starry Beings lived many lives among humans until they reassembled at the mountain and returned to their homeland. These myths hint that Fu Hsi was one of these Starry Beings or he was taught by them.

The earliest I Ching that we know about is called Lianshan , meaning "linked mountains,'" a reference to the doubled mountain image of Hexagram 52. Is it possible that might be a name that hints at this mythical beginning ? Another name given for the Lianshan was given to humankind by the nagas Perhaps the image of The Mountain has more spiritual and historical significance that we have so far considered.

Lao Tzu Sitting at the Entrance to Enlightenment

In Taoist cosmology a gateway to the nine heavens and the three lower realms was to be found in the Kunlun Shan. Star charts of the Han Dynasty placed the center of the universe in these mountains. The Kunlun is a mountain range of massive peaks that separates Xinjiang from Tibet in western China. This mighty range, which traverses all of western China is accurately summarized in the words of the mountain historian Michael Ward: "The gaunt bare backbone of the Kunlun Shan runs 2250 km from the Russian Pamir through western China. Older than the Himalaya, it separates the plateau of the Pamir and Tibet from the deserts of central Asia. It is one of the longest and least known of the world's mountain ranges, with peaks up to 7700 meters." The mountains are still remote and almost uninhabited. Today, it beckons to trekkers, antelope watchers, nomads, traders, and perhaps, seekers. Traditionally there are a small number of gateways on earth to the higher realms. No doubt somewhere in the Kunlun Shan a portal exists. Be patient and work on your character. Train your mind well and refine your essences. The foolish mortal who rushes to get there will see only lifeless slopes!

The Pao-p'u tzu, A Myth of the Turtle People

Somewhere in that remote mountain range, according to myth, between Tibet and China there existed a portal, a Shangri-La. There, in Tibetan Buddhism, the nagas, are said to have their own heavenly realm into which many advanced beings are reborn to live among the nagas until their rebirth on earth as powerful buddhas (enlightened beings.) There is also a lake with waters that contain the immortal elixir, cinnabar. The waters of the lake are yellow because the concentration of cinnabar. In myth, a drink from these waters is to become immortal.

In the Pao-p'u tzu it is said there are two mountains, the Mountain of Great Origin and the Mountain of the Long Valley. The priest becomes the One [turtle] body [mountain] where the ultimate rite of union occurs. Here the smoke of primordial energy rises mildly; gods and perfected ones roam there...in a forest of black mushrooms, one scarlet tree stands out...Thunder drives away all that is evil; the tree and the birds know how to talk. Here are the divine adepts who have rolled back the years. If you can achieve it, you will be a companion of the perfected. " "Now close your eyes and dwell on the Eight Powers [the trigrams]. Write your name in the celestial river [the Milky Way]: It will be transmitted orally forever. This is called the 'mysterious light': You are immortal." ( taken from Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History by John Lagerway)

The Pao-p'u tzu was written during the Jing Dynasty (265-419 AD) by Master Kou Hong. It contains over two thousand ancient and secret methods for achieving immortality. Only when a person is spiritually achieved are these methods passed on. And then one may meet such an Immortal in the Invisible World to be taught these secret and ancient teachings.

Do you doubt that Immortals exist?

Let my superior souls be clean and correct

And my myriad energies remain forever intact!

May I avoid suffering!

May my body be luminous!

May [the officers] of the Three

Realms wait upon me

And the Five Emperors welcome me.

Let the myriad spirits pay their respects

And my name be written in Highest Purity!

When my merit is sufficient and my results perfect

Let me fly up to Highest Purity! - Taoist prayer

(taken from Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History by John Lagerway)

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