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The Ding as the Symbol of Change
We tend to underestimate, indeed can hardly understand the immense creative shaping power of the mythological imagination and its capacity to produce dynamic models of complex realities. Levi-Strauss described this modeling capacity through the figure of the bricoleur, one who picks among the rubble of traditional images and symbols, re-arranging them until a quantum change occurs. The quantum change is what the ancient smiths described as the melting of the metals and their re-casting into a dynamic new form, portrayed in Figures 49 and 50, Revolution and Casting the Vessel: Ge Tian Ming, “abolishing the old and establishing the new.”
Sacred vessel, a new spiritual paradigm; hold, contain and transform through imagination; the meal shared with spirits, ancestors and noble people; establish, found, ground a noble house and line. A Realizing Figure, mission of this stage of life. Core theme: 43 Decide and part from the past. Season: Fall, harvesting the crop and gathering the insights. Trigrams: Bright Omens above Wood/Wind. Inner self-cultivation now leads to finding real directions in life. Correct your situation to solidify your fate. This is not the difficulties at first birth. Stimulus: 37 establishing a new Dwelling.
Myths for Change
This is the story of the Time, how your inspiration can be realized.
Charge to the Inquirer: Skinning (49) (The Pair with 50: Ding) means nothing other than transforming the Vessel. Accept this and use the energy of The Vessel.
Out of revolution comes the new vessel. Ding is a ritual vessel that signifies connection with the spirit world and the ancestors as the foundation of a dynasty or noble house. It is divination, divinatory incantations and submitting a question to the oracle, as well as the right moment to act (shi). It is an emblem of power, an alchemical cauldron suggesting “cooking” in a literal and spiritual sense. It offers nourishment to the warriors and sages and the sage-mind in all of us, brightening the eye and ear. It suggests a mandate, a destiny conferred by Heaven that is also a duty or responsibility, becoming a true and responsible individual.
The Ding has roots in Neolithic worship of the dead. It is the ultimate symbol of a sacrifice and ritual meal, a symbol for the oracle itself, the Change. It is also a part of high culture, a skillfully and magically crafted ritual tool that releases or frees the spirit, nourishing the sage-mind, beauty, imagination, the world of myth and the omen-animals. It is synonymous with the Dragon of creative energy and transformation, with the act of divination through which the spirits speak, and with the rites at the Ancestral Temple that call down the spirits. The first bronze Ding-vessels were cast by the Yu the Great, establishing communication with the spirit world as the foundation of human culture.
In ancient times Yu the Great received the metals from the Nine Provinces and the magical animal symbols (xiang) from the Shepherds of the people. He cast the Nine Ding-Vessels at the foot of Jingshan, a sacred mountain, so we could penetrate the forests, valleys and swamps and none of the river or mountain spirits could harm us. The Vessels showed which were the beneficent spirits and which were the noxious spirits, what opened the Way and what closed it. They united all the provinces, connecting the Above and the Below. Thus we enjoyed the Mandate of Heaven.
A Word-Fantasy
The word Ding connects with the word xiang, which means both a symbol and a sacrifice, a term used exclusively in Yi-divination. It also connects with heng, to fix or endure, to ripen or bring to maturity, success through a sacrifice, and the word peng, to cook or boil. Ding or Vessel is the symbol of a transformation or transmutation, a passage from one level to another, the transformation of the solid into the subtle body. It links a sacrificial offering – the xiang or symbolic sacrifice – with words that penetrate or pass through to the world of the spirits, connecting the act of divination with the sacred meal and the cult of the ancestors. It gives the ancestors the “subtle influences” that nourish them, thus connecting Heaven and Earth through the founding of a noble line. The Ding is the most refined expression of the two pillars of its culture, ancestral cult and the sacred meal, the passage from the raw to the cooked. It rectifies a situation, settles a question, makes things stable, founds and establishes a real base. It sends messages that make us present in the invisible world.
The word also suggests the mound altars, temple enclosures and viewing towers where offerings and divinations were made that ensured benevolence of the spirits. It means to feast or enjoy, the enjoyment derived from divination, when the sacrifice is received and accepted. It is a beautiful gathering in a sacred place, a union in ritual, gathering with the ancestors and enjoying their blessings, an influence that extends to all the people. It collects images of fertility that culminate in jade, the essence of the blood transformed to a precious stone.
The Vessel opens the Way of the Realizing Person and is the vehicle through which this Way is accomplished and spread. In the Matrix it connects a primal experience of the spirit with the building pressures that lead to its emergence as a new order. It exchanges influence with 31:32 (Spirit influx at the Sacred Site and Fixing the Omen that is given) and is driven by 13:14 (Harmonizing the People and the Great Being that emerges). Center and threshold lines connect the theme and process with 17:18 (Following the Spirit to Renovate the Ancestral Images); 43:44 (Announcing the Omen and the entrance of the Lady of Fates); 55:56 (The New King who receives the Mandate and the Wandering Sage who circulates it through the Shadow Lands); and 63:64 (Burning Water and the final Crossings of the river of life and death).
When actually look at a Ding, we see circles of Dream Animals dancing around and through the Vessel, all the omen animals carrying the message engraved in its center to the other world, nourishing the ancestors and establishing our presence there. We might think of Jung’s famous reading when the Yi spoke of itself through the image of the vessel as a symbol of the sacred meal, high culture, a new paradigm and the place of divination in establishing it. We are the substance cooking in the Ding through the continual act and process of divination that transforms our everyday concerns.