THE IMAGE of two trigrams: Heaven above, Water below. Water always seeks the lowest point. Raindrops fall to earth and sink into it. The water becomes part of a dark, invisible world. And it is in water that things hide. Invisible and unfathomable, what is concealed causes fear. Above is the Heaven, the sky, tfirmament. The epitome of power and clarity. Heaven above Water - power and fearful emotion, which do not communicate with each other - the recipe for conflict.
The expansion of one and the sinking of the other means nothing less than removal. As in a high-contrast photograph, the light becomes lighter and the dark becomes pitch black. The nuances disappear: how can we still understand each other? Heaven above Water: the image of Conflict.
The hexagram of the previous Chapter 5. Waiting is exactly the inverse. There, the storyline was one of nourishment and scarcity, of need and the necessity to exercise patience. But before you know it, it ends in quarrelling, confrontation and controversy.
The image of two constituent parts turning away from each other appears several times in the I Ching. In the hexagram of Chapter 12. Stagnation, Heaven is now above Earth. What moves upwards is already above, and what naturally sinks is already below. The rich get richer, the poor poorer.
When the hexagram is inversed, the image of Chapter 11. Progress emerges, where the rising and descending values of Heaven and Earth meet in the middle.
Chapter 38 describes Estrangement. Fire is above, the Lake is below. Here too, there is no recognition or rapprochement, but rather separation. Due to the natural movements of Fire and the Lake, they lose sight of each other.
The reversal of this hexagram leads to Chapter 37. Family.
to be continued …