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The Pair in the Matrix of Change
The Pair holds the two Primal Powers (yin and yang, Dragon and Dark Animal Goddess) in a single effective image, an interchange between Inspiration and Realization. This provides a unifying model for your situation as a whole.
The Pairs, the sets of two interconnected hexagrams (gua), are the basic units of Change. There is a lot of evidence, both textual and historical, that Change was originally conceived as a Sequence or Matrix of these interconnected Pairs. To my mind, thinking in Pairs is perhaps the most important thing we can do to enter the world of Change.
Myths of the Pair
Let’s start with Pairs as a way of perceiving Change, “holding the opposites in one thought.” This reflects an old meditative practice – “one yin, one yang, that is the Way” - that allows the shen ming or “enlightening spirit” to enter and inform our heart-mind. You see, Pairs reflect the basis of all eastern thought: Nothing stands alone; each thing can only truly exist when held in tension with what we perceive as its opposite, like dark and light, female and male, death and life, cold and hot, being and acting. Pairs are like the underworld Ghost River that unites the Sun Tree and the Moon Tree, putting the two halves of our lives together in their mysterious ways.
A basic way of imagining these Pairs is as a set of “spindles” on which an unbroken thread is wound back and forth like a Möbius strip, or a Great Egg that turns itself inside out without breaking its shell. The thread is the thread of life itself as it passes back and forth between the two fundamental Powers, seen in Change as the Dragon and the Dark Animal Goddess, at every level of our lives. This mythic way of perceiving is capable, in Jung’s words, of working a profound transformation of our thought.
Pairs as Tools
A Pair is also a subtle interpretive tool. The two figures involved in a Pair interact as inspiration and realization, agonist and antagonist, light and shadow, woven together by the interconnection of their transforming lines. The complex internal Matrix this interconnection creates reflects the healing power of the mythological imagination, its capacity to produce dynamic and psychologically effective models of complex realities. The internal Matrix of the Pair gives Change a voice, establishing a place in the imagination where omens can be displayed in all their complexity.
Types of Pairs
The 64 gua or six-line diagrams constitute 32 pairs. Of these, 28 pairs or 56 diagrams are related to each other by a process called inversion or rotation: one figure becomes the other when it is inverted or “rotated” on its central axis. These I call Rotational Pairs. They reflect a process called hua: gradual, “normal” change. It is the norm in the overall Sequence or Matrix, the regular exchange between the two halves of a theme or story, effected diagonally across the internal Matrix of lines between the two hexagrams.
Another, smaller group of Pairs do not change when rotated or inverted. To effectuate the change here, each individual line must be transformed or converted (bian) into its opposite. These Symmetrical or Conversional Pairs (1:2, 27:28, 29:30, and 61:62) are the Engines of Change, Primary Sites of Radical Transformation where the stream of time is disconnected, turned, and re-connected in a different way. They reverse entropy, re-charging a situation by connecting it to primal sources of energy.
The Engines of Change are distributed at key points in the overall Sequence or Matrix, at beginning, middle and end. In fact, this entire Matrix develops as space/time swings open and shut between these figures, which are described as “doors” that open and close. There is another sort of internal exchange characteristic of a Symmetrical Pair. Here each line connects horizontally rather than diagonally with its counterpart, effecting a direct conversion, a radical change of one thing to its opposite. These Symmetrical Pairs and their radical way of converting things is what anthropologists call a conversation or exchange between totemic or canonical categories that express the basic ways our mind organizes the flux of experience that surrounds us.
A further subset of four Pairs (11:12, 17:18, 53:54, and 63:64) change through both rotation and conversion. I characterize these as Sites of intense ritual activity that mediates between the visible and invisible worlds, connecting the primary powers to personal life.
Localized Zones of Radical Transformation
The final link in the in the dynamic of the Pairs weaves the transformative potential of the Primary Sites of Transformation into 12 Irregular Rotational Pairs. A normal Rotational Pair generates a regular set of other paired Figures across its Internal Matrix. However, there is a notable exception to this rule: sometimes two interconnected lines of a Rotational Pair change to produce the same hexagram; and when they do, the hexagram they produce is alwaysone of the 8 Symmetrical Figures (1:2, 27:28, 29:30, and 61:62).
This significant local irregularity in the normal process of change (hua) shows a place where radical transformation (bian) is possible because the material in question is “pulled back” through two Primary Sites of Radical Transformation. I call these powerful anomalies localized Zones of Radical Transformation as opposed to the Primary Sites of Radical Transformation. They occur at the limits (lines 1:6), the centers (lines 2:5) or the thresholds (lines 3:4) of 12 Pairs. When a reading includes any of these, it points at a specific place in our lives where we can effect a real transformation by sacrificing our old ways and participating in the Way of Change.
Reading the Pair
Here is an example of how using the Pair can amplify and deepen a reading. We asked a question to Change about how we can best read the answers it gives us.
Question: What would you (Change) like to say to us about reading your answers to our questions?The Answer was Hexagram 3 Sprouting as Primary Figure, with a Transforming Line in the first position, producing the Relating Figure 8 Grouping. The Answer is notated like this: Answer: 3.1 > 8 Grouping. Here is the basic information on the Pair 3:4 from the Pair Page, with interpretation and commentary following:
This Pair describes the birth and the secret growth of the new, hidden by the “covered sky.” At its center is the World Tree, the first manifestation of the coupling of Heaven and Earth. It combines the difficulties inherent in birth and the need to conceal and nurture the new guiding figure that emerges. It evokes the archaic potency of Wang Hai, First Herdsman and War God, and the birth of King Wu, the hero who will renew the time and acts as the Approach to Royal Centers of power in the first stage of life, when the child seeks to create a world in which to find a self. Core themes: 23:24 > 2, stripping away the old allows the return of the spirit, opening you to the primal power of realization.
This tells us that we are in an Inspiring phase (the function of Hexagram 3 in the Pair) when we enter a reading, seeking inspiring inner images, and that we are also in early childhood here, seeking a way to find an identity within the great world of Change. We must establish the deep foundations of Change within, enveloping and nurturing the “birth of the new” (its partner Hexagram 4 as Realization) for there is great hidden potency here, a possibility to “renew the time” and connect with deep animal powers, the beginning of a new world. If we strip away our old ideas (Core Theme: Hexagram 23) and conceptions this spirit can return (Core Theme: Hexagram 24), opening us to the deep feminine powers of the Dark Animal Goddess (Primal Core Theme: Hexagram 2) and her great stream of divinatory symbols. The disorder in our normal way of thinking this produces will be a conspicuous sign that the process is beginning.
If we want to look deeper, we can go into the connection of this Pair with other sites and themes in the overall Matrix or Sequence. Here is the entry from the Pair page. “Exchanging influence” and “Inner drive” refer to the Pairs generated by the interconnected limit lines of the two figures (1:6, 6:1). Center refers to the Pairs generated by lines 2:5 and 5:2. Threshold refers to the Pairs generated by 3:4 and 4:3.
This Pair centers on the individual struggle for emergence and the incubation of a new world. It exchanges influence with 7:8 (Launching the Armies and New Group that results). Its inner drive is 41:42 (The Offering and the Blessing that results). Center and threshold lines connect the process to 17:18 (Following the Spirit and Renovating the Ancestral Images); 23:24 (Stripping the Corpse and the Return of the spirit); 59:60 (Dissolution of the old self and Articulation of a new time); and 63:64 (the Burning Water and the final Crossings of the stream of life and death).
This tells us that the Pair of Figures 3:4, the dynamic model for our reading process, is exchanging information directly with a bigger change in culture described in the Pair 7:8 and its connection with a decisive moment in the history of the Change of the Mandate of Heaven. It is powered by the central paradigm of sacrifice and the blessing that results (41:42), showing that a sacrifice of our old ways of thought now can trigger a flow of blessing from the Ancestral Powers and a real rise in our spiritual status and power. This theme circles again and again in the different Decades or Stages of Life. It is a drive to follow the new spirit and renovate the parental and ancestral images of our culture at 17:18; a vital need to strip away our old ideas in order to let this spirit return at 23:24; and the final dissolution of a powerful and oppressive old identity that allows the articulation of a new ritual year, a return of the sacred cosmos at 59:60. And we may note that these are “final” or “burning” issues (63:64), real questions of life and death and what we can pass on to a new generation.
After this general look at the Pair we are involved with in a Reading, we can follow the thread farther by moving into the other functions the Pair generates: the Karmic Nodes that point at specific ages and events in a person’s life that may be relevant to the situation at hand and the Transforming Lines and Crossline Omens that show particular points where change is at work and the hidden pathways through which the possibilities of transformation can be realized. All these interconnections form a kind of “magical mathematics” through which a given Pair is connected with others in the overall Matrix, echoing backwards and forwards in the stream of time.
Crossline Omens and Karmic nodes are explored in other articles.