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The Matrix of Change

 

The Matrix of Change is a system of lines and diagrams that organize, display, interrelate and amplify its omens and myths. The Matrix gives us access to the divinatory language and builds complex structures of meaning around it.

 

At its most basic level the Matrix is made up of 32 Pairs of hexagrams (gua) arranged in a particular order, called the King Wen Sequence. This Sequence creates a series of local logics and systems that include the Tools, the Decades, the Hidden Pathways of the Nuclear Figures, Secret Sickness pathways, and areas of symmetry and coherence that include the interrelations of each Pair both within itself and to particular other Pairs. 

This multi-dimensional arrangement of lines, trigrams and hexagrams is a process duplicate of a chaos system, a fractal system in which each part contains and replicates the whole.

 

The Paradigm

The Dao gives birth to the One, the One gives birth to the Two, the Two gives birth to the Three, and the Three gives birth to the Ten Thousand Things.

 

This old Daoist formula is a paradigm for the creation and emergence of things into our world, the All-under-Heaven. It can act as a guide to the way we see the Matrix of Change.

Dao is the imageless secret, the ongoing process of the Real that flows through the fractal units of the Matrix at all levels.

The One to which it gives birth can be imagined as a circle “whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” When the circle is rotated it becomes a single line with infinite extension.
The world we experience, however, begins as this line divides and we pass into the realm of the Two.

 

The Two Kinds of Lines

The realm of the Two begins with the two basic kinds of lines used to build the diagrams of Change, whole or strong and opened or supple.

 

The Four Symbols: Dynamics of the Two

Doubling the two basic lines gives us four symbols (si xiang) that are an image of their interaction and transformation. This is what allows any diagram (gua) in the Matrix to turn into any other diagram. It is also what enables the process of consultation to produce a dynamic reading, an image of changing states of being.  

 

The Four Seasons and the Time Cycle

Something else happens as we enter the Realm of the Two. The doubling of the infinite line of the One produces a square, the Square Field of Earth with its Four Sides or Directions or Hidden Winds (si fang). This Square Earth opposes and interacts with the circle of the One as Heaven. When we imagine the Square as a cross representing the Four Symbols and the Four Directions and super-impose it on the circle, the Four Symbols become the Four Seasons and the Time Cycle begins, the rotation of the seasons, linking time and space in the oldest image of time as process. This cycle circulates the 16 Core Themes of the Change, the Nuclear Figures made of the Four Inner Lines of any hexagram within the Matrix.   

 

The Eight Trigrams or Spirit Helpers (Bagua)

With the Eight Trigrams, diagrams (gua) that personify and invoke the transformative forces that lie just behind the world of appearance, we enter the Realm of the Three.  The Eight Trigrams are the eight possible combinations of three whole and opened or strong and supple lines. They are fundamental units of eastern thought, describing energies, processes or spirits that activate the world we live in.

These Bagua or Spirit Helpers represent an old shamanic tradition that fused early on with the developing tradition of Change. Over time, they acquired a wide range of associations or correlations. They occur in a number of cycles, most notably the King Wen or Later Heaven series and the Fuxi or Early Heaven series. They figure in the development of all Chinese medicine, philosophy and magic.  

 

The Six-line Diagrams or Hexagrams

With the six-line diagrams (gua) or hexagrams, made by doubling the trigrams, we enter the World of the Ten Thousand Things. Hexagrams are the basic fractal units of the Matrix, all the possible combinations of six whole or strong and opened or supple lines. Because each line can transform itself into its opposite, all of the diagrams flow into each other in a continuous interaction that reflects the diversity and the organization of the Wanwu, the Myriad Creatures or Ten Thousand Things. They are the Tools for Change.

 

Hexagrams and the Matrix

Hexagrams partake of the nature of the Two and the Three through their Pairing and through the fact that are a doubling of the trigrams.  The fact that any hexagram can become any other hexagram reflects the nature of the One or Great Unity. And, tradition says, they all contain the “wordless secret” of the Dao and act as a “reversion” to it. In chaos language they are the hole in the world of appearances that reveals the (w)hole.

 

Fractal Matrixes

The overall Matrix of Change has two major fractal reflections in the world of the hexagrams. These Fractal Matrixes create local systems of meaning or significance, a “reversion to the Way” or hole that reveals the (w)hole in any specific situation.

The Matrix exists as a fractal in the interconnections between a Pair of hexagrams that set out the Crossline Omens or Hidden Pathways of transformation and relate a given Pair to specific other Pairs in the Matrix.

 

The hexagrams also occupy and fill the empty places of the strategic Matrix called Tools for Change. Here they deepen and widen images available to us from a consultation, resolve confusion and point out important themes and perspectives. Each position or Tool is a style of seeing into the spirit of the words, with a certain similarity to the work of the old magicians and sages.