I CHING and the

ANIMA MUNDI

Capricorn

Virgo

Taurus

Scorpio

Cancer

Pisces

Aquarius

Gemini

Libra

Aries

Leo

Sagittarius

Y Y

SOURCE

These are The COMPLEMENTARY CONNECTIONS on the Anima Mundi.

Negative Signs

PositiveSigns

10 11

SOURCE

WEALTH

LIFE

WORK

FORM

TIME

12 9

4

6 3

7

1

5

8

2

Apart from the all-important Lights they connect the old rulers of the signs, Saturn to Saturn, Mercury to Mercury, etc.,

This diagram illustrate how this creates a negative-positive, yin-yang, mass-energy, space-time expression of

a single phenomenon.

YIN

-

YANG

+

Air

Fire

Earth

Water

Time and Energy Physics Space and Mass Chemistry

Saturn .. crystalization

Virgo/Mercury .. fertility

Earth/Venus .. mud

Pluto .. regeneration

The Moon .. liquid

Neptune .. gas

actuation .. Uranus

cognition .. Mercury

perception .. Venus

heat .. Mars

radiation .. The Sun

potential… Jupiter

Science regards space-time/energy-mass as EQUIVALENT. Einstein called mass ‘congealed energy’.

Structure

Chaos

Thinking

Intuiting

Sensing

Feeling

The Imagination

The Creative

The Body

The Receptive Conscious

Unconscious

AA

A

POSITIVE NEGATIVE

Here they are again. The Creative Heaven on the right, The Receptive Earth on the left. The arrows point to the ruling lines, the spots indicate their position on the pattern. The model mimics the yin yang symbol above. The two archetypal systems, one Eastern in origin, one Western, correlate. If archetypes are the deepest patterns of psychic functioning as James Hillman, and Carl Jung believe, then it’s not surprising that they manifest in a similar manner in separate esoteric systems?

Ruling Line. The Creative

Heaven. Nine in the fifth place: Dragon flying in the

heavens.

Ruling Line. The Receptive Earth. Six in the second place: Straight,

square, great, without purpose, yet nothing remains unfurthered.

So an important question has arisen.

Do the planets correlate with the lines ?

Lets see.

The following quotes printed in italics are taken from the Wilhelm I Ching.

Sag/Jupiter.

9 in the beginning means: Hidden Dragon. Do not act.

The Great Treatise: ‘The Creative produces the invisible seeds of all development. At first these seeds are purely abstract, therefore with respect to them there can be no action nor acting upon; here it is knowledge that acts creatively.’

The 9th house rules Universities.

THE CREATIVE HEAVEN

Leo/The Sun 9 in the second place means: Dragon appearing in the field. It furthers one to see the great man. ‘Seriousness of purpose, unqualified reliability, and an influence exerted on the environment without conscious effort.’

This effortless influence is the subject of an old story in which the North Wind foolishly challenges the Sun to a test of strength. Using all the force at its command the North Wind attempts to blow the cloak off a traveller's back but accomplishes nothing, for the traveller simply wraps his coat about him more securely. The Sun however succeeds where the North Wind fails. It merely has to shine.

Aries/Mars 9 in the third place means: All day long the superior man is creatively active. At nightfall his mind is still beset with cares. Danger. No blame.

Mars, god of action, assertion and war - the creative fighting spirit of Spring. Associated with adrenaline the Aries nature is impatient, wound up, and ready to go. The I Ching warns that in this position ambition can destroy integrity. Liz Greene in her Book The Astrology of Fate correlates Aries with the myth of Jason.

Libra/Venus 9 in the fourth place means: Wavering flight over the depths. No blame.

This is Libra - the wavering scales. The I Ching calls this ‘a place of transition’; on this model it is a transition from Fire to Air, and here ‘flight’ is mentioned.

This is the position, we are also told, where we can exercise choice.

Gemini/Mercury 9 in the fifth place means: Flying dragon in the heavens. It furthers one to see the great man.

‘Flying dragon in the heavens’ This shows the great man at work.’ The complementary property I have given to Gemini is that of intellectual Work. In March 1984 the Guardian published The Zodiac Test; out of a sample population of 80,042, Gemini topped the bill for social class 1 (occupations considered by the Registrar-General to have the highest standing). Is this an example of flying dragons in the heavens, the intellect at work? And Mercury has wings.

Aquarius/Uranus 9 at the top means: Arrogant dragon will have cause to repent. Here, in the position of the scientist, the line warns against ‘titanic aspirations that exceed one’s power.’ The subtle gifts of emotional sensitivity (Water) and imagination (Fire) are the qualities Aquarius lacks. Aquarius, ruled by the planet Uranus, is connected not only with creative genius but also with extremism, bloody revolution and violent rebellion. Its independent spirit shows itself in a need for free self-expression which can manifest as a fanatical obsession with individual rights. Paradoxically, this need, exercised subjectively with no account taken of the rights of others, is responsible for much cold-hearted cruelty. The I Ching warns us here that ‘whatever has reached its extreme must turn back.’

Pisces/Neptune 6 at the beginning means: When there is hoarfrost underfoot, Solid ice is not far off.

The energy of line one of The Receptive is carried here by Pisces. Pisces is strongly identified with escapism, with fantasy, drugs and drug abuse. Pisces (far from Earth and Air) has difficulty coming to terms with harsh reality. Drugs and fantasies are dangerously addictive; the I Ching says: ‘After certain scarcely noticeable signs of decay have appeared, they go on increasing until final dissolution comes.’ Hoarfrost is frozen mist.

THE RECEPTIVE EARTH

Cancer/The Moon 6 in the second place means: Straight, square, great. Without purpose, Yet nothing remains unfurthered.

Moon-ruled Cancer, associated with race memory and instinctive memory, is responsible for the sympathetic nervous system, the system that initiates responses that are instinctive and autonomic. The line says: ‘the Receptive has no need of a special purpose of its own, nor of any effort; yet everything turns out as it should.’ Cancer is the female pole of the complementary connection Life. Moon means Mother. The I Ching says: ‘Thus the Earth brings forth all beings, each of its own kind.’

Scorpio/Pluto 6 in the third place means: Hidden lines. One is able to remain persevering. If by chance you are in the service of a king, Seek not works, but bring to completion.

Scorpio is known for its attribute of secretiveness. Pluto, Scorpio's ruling planet, rules degradation, all that pertains to the active underworld of physical existence, all that rots and stinks - the things man naturally hides. It is a transformational energy, an energy mythologised in the phoenix, the golden beauty that rises from the ashes of its own destruction, the revivification of existence which sprouts out of decay. The I Ching says: ‘He completes his works in such a manner that they may bear fruit for the future.’

Taurus 6 in the fourth place: A tied up sack. No blame no praise.

Here, with Taurus, we have left the element Water and reached ground. Taurus is a slow, steady, notoriously cautious sign. The I Ching says; ‘A tied-up sack. No blame, no praise. This councils caution.’ This position on the pattern describes the physically manifest, a material product, it is represented by the conservationists who attempt to tie up the artefacts of the past so that we can continue to enjoy their manifested form today. On a solely material level it describes the atom; energy tied up as mass, the building blocks of physically manifest life. I am convinced planet Earth rules Taurus but as this is not collectively agreed I have not added the glyph here.

Virgo 6 in the fifth place means: A yellow undergarment brings supreme good fortune.

There are two major rivers in China, the Yangste Kiang and the Yellow River. The Yellow River is named for its colour which is the colour of the earth through which it flows. Yellow for the Chinese symbolises, not planet Earth, which is represented by the previous line, but the earth (the dirt) in which things grow. Yellow was a colour reserved for the aristocracy - the fact that the undergarment is mentioned as being yellow indicates modesty and discretion. Virgo is a sign known for modesty and discretion. Red-orange-yellow-green-blue; yellow is the colour of the middle. Virgo is a mutable sign which balances the energies of fixed Taurus and cardinal Capricorn.

Capricorn/Saturn 6 at the top means: Dragons fight in the meadow. Their blood is black and yellow. Saturn and Uranus rule Capricorn and Aquarius, the negative and positive poles of the complementary connection Wealth. The disparate values carried by these two mighty archetypes are in eternal conflict. The importance of preserving the security of traditional values contradicts the need to explore new possibilities. The socially condoned drive to establish our personal identity and secure it with the trappings of material wealth (the dark face of which is miserliness) and the less understood drive to experience the enlightening freedom of being one with the dynamic creativity of the life-spirit (the dark face of which is superegoistic arrogance and madness), confront each other across the gulf.

So these are the lines of the I Ching combined with the signs and ruling planets which the pattern defines. Some of them are ambiguous, yet if you shuffle them around and try to fit the signs and planets to the lines in other ways, you will find that this is the best all round fit. I could have paired Mars, god of war (ruler of the sign Aries), with the top line of The Receptive, the fighting dragons, but this would have been a simplistic placing of Mars as it takes no account of the fact that Aries is a positive yang sign while The Receptive is yin and therefore negative. Mars is a youthful energy that fights to live; Saturn, on the other hand, is prone to depression, that dreadful, heavy feeling of negativity so damaging to the life force. Here are our dragons fighting - the ever changing life force against the unbending structures imposed by rigid conditioning and the brittle bones of old age. If the deeper meanings of the signs are understood then it seems that the top lines of both hexagrams are indisputable.

At first I was unsure of my placing of Capricorn and Virgo on the Anima Mundi - here they belong exactly where they are. How could I present the gentle Virgo to the fighting dragons pictured at the top of The Receptive? The top line is manifestly Saturnian. Other lines which fit are the cautious Taurus, the dissolute Pisces, the indecisive wavering Libra, the Cancer mother; that brings forth all beings, the hidden Scorpio, the modest Virgo, and the active Aries. The danger associated with Uranus genius, the genius of the empiric/thinking, cool, detached Aquarius, the hubris which can so easily cause a man to discount his dependence on the intuitive/feeling Source, is adequately described here by the top line of The Creative. The placing of these lines gave me a confidence in this pattern that I had previously lacked for I was aware that the complementary connections, though illuminating and probably mandatory as pairs could possibly have been placed in some other line up. I recognised these connections in 1984.

The Complementary Connections can also be seen on the Zodiac. I have added connecting arrows. I first saw this diagram at the Oxford Summer school in 1988. Lindsey Radamacher, head of the Faculty, was using it to put over Maggie Hyde’s fears that the Faculty was failing to introduce students to the old order. I was very excited looking at this as I recognised these connections from my work on the Anima Mundi.

So this is The Ancient Ptolemaic Order!

On the Zodiac the I Ching lines (whichever way the Zodiac is aligned) make up the hexagrams After Completion 63, and Before Completion 64. These are the last two hexagrams in the book. This makes perfect sense as the Zodiac is a Cosmic Clock: it tells us the Time. Every moment is either Before or After completion. If we align the Zodiac with the Ptolemaic Order the vernal equinox falls before the ruling 5th line, and the autumnal equinox, after the ruling second line. I Ching lines are read from the bottom up. The Summer solstice (Cancer) begins Before Completion, The Winter solstice (Capricorn) ends After Completion.

Before Completion After Completion

Finally this is an overview of the Anima Mundi (here titled The Golden City),

and the Zodiac. They have been organized according to the I Ching’s

three types of Change. 1. NON CHANGE, the background upon which

change can be seen to take place; 2. Recurring CYCLIC CHANGE; and 3.

SEQUENTIAL CHANGE: No cycle ever returns to exactly the same condition.

Wilhelm edition, Page 280.

I came up with this final layout in the early hours of August 26th, 1988, I was

in an attic study in Jesus College Oxford. Too excited to sleep I watch as the Sun turned the standard on Balliol

College spire into a blaze of light. I think it was a excellent venue in which to

recognize such a momentous representation.

THE END