Numbers and trigrams

Once the basic formulas of the patterns of change were established though the trigrams, they could be married with the sequence of numbers to create various significant arrangements. The first arrangement, usually termed simply "The First Sequence" or "The Sesquence of Earlier Heaven", was a perfect balance of forces. Each of the opposites was placed across from its partner in a circle.

The Sequence of Later Heaven

Now we can see the full display of the energies acting as a cycle, below, unlike the preceding static design. This model is sometimes known as "King Wen's Arrangement" or "The Sequence of Later Heaven". Now the tools are at work. This is the same as the configuration of trigrams showging the cycles of seasons and the transmutation of day into night. It is a living model of the constant progression of birth, decay, and creation.

To read the sequence correctly, you begin at that point on the circumference of the circle where Yin changes to Yang. Here you find the creative force rising, expressed by the full strength of the three Yang lines of the trigram Heaven. In the sequence of the seasons, this is early Winter, the onset of the season of deepest concentration.

Moving around 45 detrees to the left, at the bottom of the circle, is Midwinter, whose trigram is Water: profound, dark, and difficult, the ground of creation. Then comes the energy of the Mountain, the stillness of late Winter, the transition to new growth. Spring emerges like the explosive force of Thunder, the irresistible power of all nature. Everything that comes forth in the Spring must then fulfill its pattern of growth, requiring patient, prolonged work. This is the power of the early Summer, whose trigram is Wind - gentle, persistent, and pervasive. The energy of Midsummer is symbolized by the trigram for Fire, in which everything is startlingly illuminated and seen in the the fullness of its powers.

The intensity of Summer complets its work in the fruition of Fall, beginning with the trigram Earth and reaching its culmination in the trigram of the Lake. This brings us to the depths of Fall and the decay of the year, the fullest extent of Yin, out of which Yang is again born. Thus, the vision of the I Ching is of a vast, revolving cascade of energy, not a linear world in which death is the end of life. At the farthest point of the cycle we are not at an end but at a beginning.