I
Current work in Baha'i philosophy.
II
Instructions on the sex drive, from 'A Course in Miracles', a book written by Helen Schucman offering many similarities to ancient esoteric teachings, and like a synopsis all such efforts at present.
III
Numerology of the arcana of the Tarot.
IV
Commentary on the Sufi works of Idries Shah.
INTERPRETATION OF THE I-CHING
There are three ways of correlating the five elements to the trigrams, corresponding to Earth, Man, and Heaven. The commonly known correlations correspond to Earth, the others are derived from the study of Chinese alchemy.
Earth:
|
element
|
trigram
|
trigram
|
| earth |
001
| 000 |
| water |
010
| |
| metal |
110
| 111 |
| fire |
101
| |
| wood |
100
| 011 |
Man:
|
element
|
trigram
|
trigram
|
| earth |
101
| 111 |
| water |
110
| |
| metal |
010
| 000 |
| fire |
001
| |
| wood |
100
| 011 |
Heaven:
|
element
|
trigram
|
trigram
|
| earth |
101
| 001 |
| water |
000
| |
| metal |
010
| 110 |
| fire |
111
| |
| wood |
100
| 011 |
These are the three ways of understanding the relationship of the trigrams in a hexagram. From the bottom up, in each of these ways they may act on one another as generating, destroying, injuring or exhausting. Combine all three and you have the complete meaning of the hexagram, which can be compared to reaching the goal of the alchemical work. Earth, Man, and Heaven are also related to the three lines of a trigram, so an element may be thought of as relating to a trigram as a whole, or to only one of its lines. The wood trigrams have the same element in all three lines, and by changing the value of a line in hexagrams that don't have a wood trigram, a wood line can be included in the lines of the hexagram. In 111 and 000, the bottom line is changed, in 010 and 101 the top line, and in 110 and 001 the middle line is changed. Thus also a hexagrams' related hexagrams can be found, as for example the related hexagrams for 111111 are: 011111, 111011 and 011011. As for the interactions of the elements, these can be studied in any of the common works of Chinese metaphysics, such as Chinese astrology, feng shui, and traditional Chinese medicine. The previous and later Heaven trigram arrangements and their numerological correlations, the Ho Tu and Luo Shu diagrams, are also fundamental to understanding Chinese alchemy.