2022/06/30

I Ching - Wikipedia Book of Changes 《역경》(易經)《주역(周易)》

I Ching - Wikipedia

I Ching

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I Ching (Yijing)
I Ching Song Dynasty print.jpg
Title page of a Song dynasty (c. 1100) edition of the I Ching
Original title
CountryZhou dynasty (China)
LanguageOld Chinese
GenreDivinationcosmology
PublishedLate 9th century BC
Original text
 at Chinese Wikisource
I Ching
Book of Changes / Classic of Changes
I Ching (Chinese characters).svg
"I (Ching)" in seal script (top),[note 1] Traditional (middle), and Simplified (bottom) Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese易經
Simplified Chinese易经
Hanyu PinyinYì Jīng
Literal meaning"Classic of Changes"

The I Ching or Yi Jing (Chinese易經, Mandarin: [î tɕíŋ] (listen)), usually translated as Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC), the I Ching was transformed over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500–200 BC) into cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "Ten Wings".[1] After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought.[2]

As a divination text, the I Ching is used for a traditional Chinese form of cleromancy known as I Ching divination, in which 

bundles of yarrow stalks are manipulated to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each of the 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram, which can be looked up in the text. The hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence

The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching has been endlessly discussed and debated over the centuries. 

Many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision making as informed by ConfucianismTaoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing.

The divination text: Zhou yi[edit]

History[edit]

The core of the I Ching is a Western Zhou divination text called the Changes of Zhou (Chinese周易pinyinZhōu yì).[3] Various modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form.[4] Based on a comparison of the language of the Zhou yi with dated bronze inscriptions, the American sinologist Edward Shaughnessy dated its compilation in its current form to the last quarter of the 9th century BC, during the early decades of the reign of King Xuan of Zhou (r. c. 827 – 782 BC).[5] A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum corpus of bamboo and wooden slips (discovered in 1994) shows that the Zhou yi was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC, but still contained small variations as late as the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC).[6] It is possible that other divination systems existed at this time; the Rites of Zhou name two other such systems, the Lianshan and the Guicang.[7]

Name and authorship[edit]

The name Zhou yi literally means the "changes" () of the Zhou dynasty. The "changes" involved have been interpreted as the transformations of hexagrams, of their lines, or of the numbers obtained from the divination.[8] Feng Youlan proposed that the word for "changes" originally meant "easy", as in a form of divination easier than the oracle bones, but there is little evidence for this. There is also an ancient folk etymology that sees the character for "changes" as containing the sun and moon, the cycle of the day. Modern Sinologists believe the character to be derived either from an image of the sun emerging from clouds, or from the content of a vessel being changed into another.[9]

The Zhou yi was traditionally ascribed to the Zhou cultural heroes King Wen of Zhou and the Duke of Zhou, and was also associated with the legendary world ruler Fu Xi.[10] According to the canonical Great Commentary, Fu Xi observed the patterns of the world and created the eight trigrams (八卦bāguà), "in order to become thoroughly conversant with the numinous and bright and to classify the myriad things." The Zhou yi itself does not contain this legend and indeed says nothing about its own origins.[11] The Rites of Zhou, however, also claims that the hexagrams of the Zhou yi were derived from an initial set of eight trigrams.[12] During the Han dynasty there were various opinions about the historical relationship between the trigrams and the hexagrams.[13] Eventually, a consensus formed around 2nd-century AD scholar Ma Rong's attribution of the text to the joint work of Fu Xi, King Wen of Zhou, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius, but this traditional attribution is no longer generally accepted.[14]

Structure[edit]

A turtle shell inscribed with primitive Chinese characters
Oracle turtle shell featuring the ancient form (貞-oracle-alt.svg) of zhēn () "to divine"

The basic unit of the Zhou yi is the hexagram ( guà), a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines ( yáo). Each line is either broken or unbroken. The received text of the Zhou yi contains all 64 possible hexagrams, along with the hexagram's name (卦名 guàmíng), a short hexagram statement ( tuàn),[note 2] and six line statements (爻辭 yáocí).[note 3] The statements were used to determine the results of divination, but the reasons for having two different methods of reading the hexagram are not known, and it is not known why hexagram statements would be read over line statements or vice versa.[15]

The book opens with the first hexagram statement, yuán hēng lì zhēn (Chinese元亨利貞). These four words, translated traditionally by James Legge as "originating and penetrating, advantageous and firm," are often repeated in the hexagram statements and were already considered an important part of I Ching interpretation in the 6th century BC. Edward Shaughnessy describes this statement as affirming an "initial receipt" of an offering, "beneficial" for further "divining".[16] The word zhēn (, ancient form 貞-oracle-alt.svg) was also used for the verb "divine" in the oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty, which preceded the Zhou. It also carried meanings of being or making upright or correct, and was defined by the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan as "to enquire into the correctness" of a proposed activity.[17]

The names of the hexagrams are usually words that appear in their respective line statements, but in five cases (2, 9, 26, 61, and 63) an unrelated character of unclear purpose appears. The hexagram names could have been chosen arbitrarily from the line statements,[18] but it is also possible that the line statements were derived from the hexagram names.[19] The line statements, which make up most of the book, are exceedingly cryptic. Each line begins with a word indicating the line number, "base, 2, 3, 4, 5, top", and either the number 6 for a broken line, or the number 9 for a whole line. Hexagrams 1 and 2 have an extra line statement, named yong.[20] Following the line number, the line statements may make oracular or prognostic statements.[21] Some line statements also contain poetry or references to historical events.[22]

Usage[edit]

A bundle of thin sticks
Fifty yarrow (Achillea millefolium) stalks, used for I Ching divination.

Archaeological evidence shows that Zhou dynasty divination was grounded in cleromancy, the production of seemingly random numbers to determine divine intent.[23] The Zhou yi provided a guide to cleromancy that used the stalks of the yarrow plant, but it is not known how the yarrow stalks became numbers, or how specific lines were chosen from the line readings.[24] In the hexagrams, broken lines were used as shorthand for the numbers 6 () and 8 (), and solid lines were shorthand for values of 7 () and 9 (). The Great Commentary contains a late classic description of a process where various numerological operations are performed on a bundle of 50 stalks, leaving remainders of 6 to 9.[25] Like the Zhou yi itself, yarrow stalk divination dates to the Western Zhou period, although its modern form is a reconstruction.[26]

The ancient narratives Zuo zhuan and Guoyu contain the oldest descriptions of divination using the Zhou yi. The two histories describe more than twenty successful divinations conducted by professional soothsayers for royal families between 671 BC and 487 BC. The method of divination is not explained, and none of the stories employ predetermined commentaries, patterns, or interpretations. Only the hexagrams and line statements are used.[27] By the 4th century BCE, the authority of the Zhou yi was also cited for rhetorical purposes, without relation to any stated divination.[28] The Zuo zhuan does not contain records of private individuals, but Qin dynasty records found at Shuihudi show that the hexagrams were privately consulted to answer questions such as business, health, children, and determining lucky days.[29]

The most common form of divination with the I Ching in use today is a reconstruction of the method described in these histories, in the 300 BC Great Commentary, and later in the Huainanzi and the Lunheng. From the Great Commentary's description, the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi reconstructed a method of yarrow stalk divination that is still used throughout the Far East. In the modern period, Gao Heng attempted his own reconstruction, which varies from Zhu Xi in places.[30] Another divination method, employing coins, became widely used in the Tang dynasty and is still used today. In the modern period; alternative methods such as specialized dice and cartomancy have also appeared.[31]

In the Zuo zhuan stories, individual lines of hexagrams are denoted by using the genitive particle zhi (), followed by the name of another hexagram where that specific line had another form. In later attempts to reconstruct ancient divination methods, the word zhi was interpreted as a verb meaning "moving to", an apparent indication that hexagrams could be transformed into other hexagrams. However, there are no instances of "changeable lines" in the Zuo zhuan. In all 12 out of 12 line statements quoted, the original hexagrams are used to produce the oracle.[32]

The classic: I Ching[edit]

In 136 BC, Emperor Wu of Han named the Zhou yi "the first among the classics", dubbing it the Classic of Changes or I Ching. Emperor Wu's placement of the I Ching among the Five Classics was informed by a broad span of cultural influences that included ConfucianismTaoismLegalismyin-yang cosmology, and Wu Xing physical theory.[33] While the Zhou yi does not contain any cosmological analogies, the I Ching was read as a microcosm of the universe that offered complex, symbolic correspondences.[34] The official edition of the text was literally set in stone, as one of the Xiping Stone Classics.[35] The canonized I Ching became the standard text for over two thousand years, until alternate versions of the Zhou yi and related texts were discovered in the 20th century.[36]

Ten Wings[edit]

Part of the canonization of the Zhou yi bound it to a set of ten commentaries called the Ten Wings. The Ten Wings are of a much later provenance than the Zhou yi, and are the production of a different society. The Zhou yi was written in Early Old Chinese, while the Ten Wings were written in a predecessor to Middle Chinese.[37] The specific origins of the Ten Wings are still a complete mystery to academics.[38] Regardless of their historical relation to the text, the philosophical depth of the Ten Wings made the I Ching a perfect fit to Han period Confucian scholarship.[39] The inclusion of the Ten Wings reflects a widespread recognition in ancient China, found in the Zuo zhuan and other pre-Han texts, that the I Ching was a rich moral and symbolic document useful for more than professional divination.[40]

Arguably the most important of the Ten Wings is the Great Commentary (Dazhuan) or Xi ci, which dates to roughly 300 BC.[note 4] The Great Commentary describes the I Ching as a microcosm of the universe and a symbolic description of the processes of change. By partaking in the spiritual experience of the I Ching, the Great Commentary states, the individual can understand the deeper patterns of the universe.[25] Among other subjects, it explains how the eight trigrams proceeded from the eternal oneness of the universe through three bifurcations.[41] The other Wings provide different perspectives on essentially the same viewpoint, giving ancient, cosmic authority to the I Ching.[42] For example, the Wenyan provides a moral interpretation that parallels the first two hexagrams, 乾 (qián) and 坤 (kūn), with Heaven and Earth,[43] and the Shuogua attributes to the symbolic function of the hexagrams the ability to understand self, world, and destiny.[44] Throughout the Ten Wings, there are passages that seem to purposefully increase the ambiguity of the base text, pointing to a recognition of multiple layers of symbolism.[45]

The Great Commentary associates knowledge of the I Ching with the ability to "delight in Heaven and understand fate;" the sage who reads it will see cosmological patterns and not despair in mere material difficulties.[46] The Japanese word for "metaphysics", keijijōgaku (形而上学pinyinxíng ér shàng xué) is derived from a statement found in the Great Commentary that "what is above form [xíng ér shàng] is called Dao; what is under form is called a tool".[47] The word has also been borrowed into Korean and re-borrowed back into Chinese.

The Ten Wings were traditionally attributed to Confucius, possibly based on a misreading of the Records of the Grand Historian.[48] Although it rested on historically shaky grounds, the association of the I Ching with Confucius gave weight to the text and was taken as an article of faith throughout the Han and Tang dynasties.[49] The I Ching was not included in the burning of the Confucian classics, and textual evidence strongly suggests that Confucius did not consider the Zhou yi a "classic". An ancient commentary on the Zhou yi found at Mawangdui portrays Confucius as endorsing it as a source of wisdom first and an imperfect divination text second.[50] However, since the Ten Wings became canonized by Emperor Wu of Han together with the original I Ching as the Zhou Yi, it can be attributed to the positions of influence from the Confucians in the government.[51] Furthermore, the Ten Wings tends to use diction and phrases such as "the master said", which was previously commonly seen in the Analects, thereby implying the heavy involvement of Confucians in its creation as well as institutionalization.[51]

Hexagrams[edit]

In the canonical I Ching, the hexagrams are arranged in an order dubbed the King Wen sequence after King Wen of Zhou, who founded the Zhou dynasty and supposedly reformed the method of interpretation. The sequence generally pairs hexagrams with their upside-down equivalents, although in eight cases hexagrams are paired with their inversion.[52] Another order, found at Mawangdui in 1973, arranges the hexagrams into eight groups sharing the same upper trigram. But the oldest known manuscript, found in 1987 and now held by the Shanghai Library, was almost certainly arranged in the King Wen sequence, and it has even been proposed that a pottery paddle from the Western Zhou period contains four hexagrams in the King Wen sequence.[53] Whichever of these arrangements is older, it is not evident that the order of the hexagrams was of interest to the original authors of the Zhou yi. The assignment of numbers, binary or decimal, to specific hexagrams, is a modern invention.[54]

Yin and yang are represented by broken and solid lines: yin is broken () and yang is solid (). Different constructions of three yin and yang lines lead to eight trigrams (八卦) namely, Qian (乾, ☰), Dui (兌, ☱), Li (離, ☲), Zhen (震, ☳), Xun (巽, ☴), Kan (坎, ☵), Gen (艮, ☶), and Kun (坤, ☷).

The different combinations of the two trigrams lead to 64 hexagrams.

The following table numbers the hexagrams in King Wen order.

1
Iching-hexagram-01.svg
乾 (qián)
2
Iching-hexagram-02.svg
坤 (kūn)
3
Iching-hexagram-03.svg
屯 (zhūn)
4
Iching-hexagram-04.svg
蒙 (méng)
5
Iching-hexagram-05.svg
需 (xū)
6
Iching-hexagram-06.svg
訟 (sòng)
7
Iching-hexagram-07.svg
師 (shī)
8
Iching-hexagram-08.svg
比 (bǐ)
9
Iching-hexagram-09.svg
小畜 (xiǎo xù)
10
Iching-hexagram-10.svg
履 (lǚ)
11
Iching-hexagram-11.svg
泰 (tài)
12
Iching-hexagram-12.svg
否 (pǐ)
13
Iching-hexagram-13.svg
同人 (tóng rén)
14
Iching-hexagram-14.svg
大有 (dà yǒu)
15
Iching-hexagram-15.svg
謙 (qiān)
16
Iching-hexagram-16.svg
豫 (yù)
17
Iching-hexagram-17.svg
隨 (suí)
18
Iching-hexagram-18.svg
蠱 (gŭ)
19
Iching-hexagram-19.svg
臨 (lín)
20
Iching-hexagram-20.svg
觀 (guān)
21
Iching-hexagram-21.svg
噬嗑 (shì kè)
22
Iching-hexagram-22.svg
賁 (bì)
23
Iching-hexagram-23.svg
剝 (bō)
24
Iching-hexagram-24.svg
復 (fù)
25
Iching-hexagram-25.svg
無妄 (wú wàng)
26
Iching-hexagram-26.svg
大畜 (dà xù)
27
Iching-hexagram-27.svg
頤 (yí)
28
Iching-hexagram-28.svg
大過 (dà guò)
29
Iching-hexagram-29.svg
坎 (kǎn)
30
Iching-hexagram-30.svg
離 (lí)
31
Iching-hexagram-31.svg
咸 (xián)
32
Iching-hexagram-32.svg
恆 (héng)
33
Iching-hexagram-33.svg
遯 (dùn)
34
Iching-hexagram-34.svg
大壯 (dà zhuàng)
35
Iching-hexagram-35.svg
晉 (jìn)
36
Iching-hexagram-36.svg
明夷 (míng yí)
37
Iching-hexagram-37.svg
家人 (jiā rén)
38
Iching-hexagram-38.svg
睽 (kuí)
39
Iching-hexagram-39.svg
蹇 (jiǎn)
40
Iching-hexagram-40.svg
解 (xiè)
41
Iching-hexagram-41.svg
損 (sǔn)
42
Iching-hexagram-42.svg
益 (yì)
43
Iching-hexagram-43.svg
夬 (guài)
44
Iching-hexagram-44.svg
姤 (gòu)
45
Iching-hexagram-45.svg
萃 (cuì)
46
Iching-hexagram-46.svg
升 (shēng)
47
Iching-hexagram-47.svg
困 (kùn)
48
Iching-hexagram-48.svg
井 (jǐng)
49
Iching-hexagram-49.svg
革 (gé)
50
Iching-hexagram-50.svg
鼎 (tǐng)
51
Iching-hexagram-51.svg
震 (zhèn)
52
Iching-hexagram-52.svg
艮 (gèn)
53
Iching-hexagram-53.svg
漸 (jiàn)
54
Iching-hexagram-54.svg
歸妹 (guī mèi)
55
Iching-hexagram-55.svg
豐 (fēng)
56
Iching-hexagram-56.svg
旅 (lǚ)
57
Iching-hexagram-57.svg
巽 (xùn)
58
Iching-hexagram-58.svg
兌 (duì)
59
Iching-hexagram-59.svg
渙 (huàn)
60
Iching-hexagram-60.svg
節 (jié)
61
Iching-hexagram-61.svg
中孚 (zhōng fú)
62
Iching-hexagram-62.svg
小過 (xiǎo guò)
63
Iching-hexagram-63.svg
既濟 (jì jì)
64
Iching-hexagram-64.svg
未濟 (wèi jì)

Interpretation and influence[edit]

The sinologist Michael Nylan describes the I Ching as the best-known Chinese book in the world.[55] In East Asia, it is a foundational text for the Confucian and Daoist philosophical traditions, while in the West, it attracted the attention of Enlightenment intellectuals and prominent literary and cultural figures.

Eastern Han and Six Dynasties[edit]

During the Eastern HanI Ching interpretation divided into two schools, originating in a dispute over minor differences between different editions of the received text.[56] The first school, known as New Text criticism, was more egalitarian and eclectic, and sought to find symbolic and numerological parallels between the natural world and the hexagrams. Their commentaries provided the basis of the School of Images and Numbers. The other school, Old Text criticism, was more scholarly and hierarchical, and focused on the moral content of the text, providing the basis for the School of Meanings and Principles.[57] The New Text scholars distributed alternate versions of the text and freely integrated non-canonical commentaries into their work, as well as propagating alternate systems of divination such as the Taixuanjing.[58] Most of this early commentary, such as the image and number work of Jing FangYu Fan and Xun Shuang, is no longer extant.[59] Only short fragments survive, from a Tang dynasty text called Zhou yi jijie.[60]

With the fall of the Han, I Ching scholarship was no longer organized into systematic schools. The most influential writer of this period was Wang Bi, who discarded the numerology of Han commentators and integrated the philosophy of the Ten Wings directly into the central text of the I Ching, creating such a persuasive narrative that Han commentators were no longer considered significant. A century later Han Kangbo added commentaries on the Ten Wings to Wang Bi's book, creating a text called the Zhouyi zhu. The principal rival interpretation was a practical text on divination by the soothsayer Guan Lu.[61]

Tang and Song dynasties[edit]

At the beginning of the Tang dynastyEmperor Taizong of Tang ordered Kong Yingda to create a canonical edition of the I Ching. Choosing Wang Bi's 3rd-century "Annotated Zhou-dynasty (Book of) Changes" (Zhōuyì Zhù周易注) as the official commentary, he added to it further commentary drawing out the subtler details of Wang Bi's explanations. The resulting work, the "Right Meaning of the Zhou-dynasty (Book of) Changes" (Zhōuyì Zhèngyì周易正義), became the standard edition of the I Ching through the Song dynasty.[62]

By the 11th century, the I Ching was being read as a work of intricate philosophy, as a jumping-off point for examining great metaphysical questions and ethical issues.[63] Cheng Yi, patriarch of the Neo-Confucian Cheng–Zhu school, read the I Ching as a guide to moral perfection. He described the text as a way to for ministers to form honest political factions, root out corruption, and solve problems in government.[64]

The contemporary scholar Shao Yong rearranged the hexagrams in a format that resembles modern binary numbers, although he did not intend his arrangement to be used mathematically.[65] This arrangement, sometimes called the binary sequence, later inspired Leibniz.

Neo-Confucianism[edit]

The 12th century Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, cofounder of the Cheng–Zhu school, criticized both of the Han dynasty lines of commentary on the I Ching, saying that they were one-sided. He developed a synthesis of the two, arguing that the text was primarily a work of divination that could be used in the process of moral self-cultivation, or what the ancients called "rectification of the mind" in the Great Learning. Zhu Xi's reconstruction of I Ching yarrow stalk divination, based in part on the Great Commentary account, became the standard form and is still in use today.[66]

As China entered the early modern period, the I Ching took on renewed relevance in both Confucian and Daoist studies. The Kangxi Emperor was especially fond of the I Ching and ordered new interpretations of it.[67] Qing dynasty scholars focused more intently on understanding pre-classical grammar, assisting the development of new philological approaches in the modern period.[68]

East Asia[edit]

Like the other Chinese classics, the I Ching was an influential text across East Asia. 

In 1557, the Korean Neo-Confucianist philosopher Yi Hwang produced one of the most influential I Ching studies of the early modern era, claiming that the spirit was a principle (li) and not a material force (qi). Hwang accused the Neo-Confucian school of having misread Zhu Xi. His critique proved influential not only in Korea but also in Japan.[69] 

Other than this contribution, the I Ching—known in Korean as the Yeok Gyeong (역경)—was not central to the development of Korean Confucianism, and by the 19th century, I Ching studies were integrated into the silhak reform movement.[70]

In medieval Japan, secret teachings on the I Ching—known in Japanese as the Eki Kyō (易経)—were publicized by Rinzai Zen master Kokan Shiren and the Shintoist Yoshida Kanetomo during the Kamakura era.[71] I Ching studies in Japan took on new importance during the Edo period, during which over 1,000 books were published on the subject by over 400 authors. The majority of these books were serious works of philology, reconstructing ancient usages and commentaries for practical purposes. A sizable minority focused on numerology, symbolism, and divination.[72] During this time, over 150 editions of earlier Chinese commentaries were reprinted across Edo Japan, including several texts that had become lost in China.[73] In the early Edo period, Japanese writers such as Itō JinsaiKumazawa Banzan, and Nakae Toju ranked the I Ching the greatest of the Confucian classics.[74] 

Many writers attempted to use the I Ching to explain Western science in a Japanese framework. One writer, Shizuki Tadao, even attempted to employ Newtonian mechanics and the Copernican principle within an I Ching cosmology.[75] This line of argument was later taken up in China by the Qing politician Zhang Zhidong.[76]

Early European[edit]

A circular diagram of I Ching hexagrams
A diagram of I Ching hexagrams sent to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from Joachim Bouvet. The Arabic numerals were added by Leibniz.

Leibniz, who was corresponding with Jesuits in China, wrote the first European commentary on the I Ching in 1703. He argued that it proved the universality of binary numbers and theism, since the broken lines, the "0" or "nothingness", cannot become solid lines, the "1" or "oneness", without the intervention of God.[77] This was criticized by Hegel, who proclaimed that binary system and Chinese characters were "empty forms" that could not articulate spoken words with the clarity of the Western alphabet.[78] In their commentary, I Ching hexagrams and Chinese characters were conflated into a single foreign idea, sparking a dialogue on Western philosophical questions such as universality and the nature of communication. The usage of binary in relation to the I Ching was central to Leibniz's characteristica universalis, or universal language, which in turn inspired the standards of Boolean logic and for Gottlob Frege to develop predicate logic in the late 19th century. 

In the 20th century, Jacques Derrida identified Hegel's argument as logocentric, but accepted without question Hegel's premise that the Chinese language cannot express philosophical ideas.[79]

Modern[edit]

After the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, the I Ching was no longer part of mainstream Chinese political philosophy, but it maintained cultural influence as China's most ancient text. Borrowing back from Leibniz, Chinese writers offered parallels between the I Ching and subjects such as linear algebra and logic in computer science, aiming to demonstrate that ancient Chinese cosmology had anticipated Western discoveries.[80] 

The Sinologist Joseph Needham took the opposite opinion, arguing that the I Ching had actually impeded scientific development by incorporating all physical knowledge into its metaphysics. However with the advent of quantum mechanics, physicist Niels Bohr credited inspiration from the Yin and Yang symbolisms in using intuition to interpret the new field, which disproved principles from older Western classical mechanics. The principle of complementarity heavily used concepts from the I Ching as mentioned in his writings.[81] 

The psychologist Carl Jung took interest in the possible universal nature of the imagery of the I Ching, and he introduced an influential German translation by Richard Wilhelm by discussing his theories of archetypes and synchronicity.[82] 

Jung wrote, "Even to the most biased eye, it is obvious that this book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one's own character, attitude, and motives."[83] The book had a notable impact on the 1960s counterculture and on 20th century cultural figures such as Philip K. DickJohn CageJorge Luis BorgesTerence McKenna and Hermann Hesse.[84] It also inspired the 1968 song While My Guitar Gently Weeps by The Beatles.

The modern period also brought a new level of skepticism and rigor to I Ching scholarship. Li Jingchi spent several decades producing a new interpretation of the text, which was published posthumously in 1978. Modern data scientists including Alex Liu proposed to represent and develop I Ching methods with data science 4E framework and latent variable approaches for a more rigorous representation and interpretation of I Ching.[85] Gao Heng, an expert in pre-Qin China, reinvestigated its use as a Zhou dynasty oracle. Edward Shaughnessy proposed a new dating for the various strata of the text.[86] New archaeological discoveries have enabled a deeper level of insight into how the text was used in the centuries before the Qin dynasty. Proponents of newly reconstructed Western Zhou readings, which often differ greatly from traditional readings of the text, are sometimes called the "modernist school".[87]

In Fiction[edit]

The I Ching features significantly in Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (an alternate reality novel where the Axis Powers won World War II), where various characters in the Japanese-controlled portion of America base their decisions on what it tells them.

I Ching is also in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials where it guides the physicist Mary Malone on her interactions with Dust/Dark Matter and leads her to another dimension.

The episode "Grand Deceptions" (episode 4, season 8) of Columbo show the Yi Jing.

In The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently buys an electronic calculator that contains a badly-translated version of the I Ching, and uses it to decide if he should buy a new fridge.

In the Discworld novel Mort, Cutwell the wizard uses a similar divination technique called the Ching-Aling.

Translations[edit]

The I Ching has been translated into Western languages dozens of times. The earliest published complete translation of the I Ching into a Western language was a Latin translation done in the 1730s by the French Jesuit missionary Jean-Baptiste Régis that was published in Germany in the 1830s.[88] 

Historically, the most influential Western-language I Ching translation was Richard Wilhelm's 1923 German translation, which was translated into English in 1950 by Cary Baynes.[89] Although Thomas McClatchie and James Legge had both translated the text in the 19th century, the text gained significant traction during the counterculture of the 1960s, with the translations of Wilhelm and John Blofeld attracting particular interest.[90] Richard Rutt's 1996 translation incorporated much of the new archaeological and philological discoveries of the 20th century. Gregory Whincup's 1986 translation also attempts to reconstruct Zhou period readings.[91]

The most commonly used English translations of the I Ching are:[88]

  • Legge, James (1882). The Yî King. In Sacred Books of the East, vol. XVI. 2nd edition (1899), Oxford: Clarendon Press; reprinted numerous times.
  • Wilhelm, Richard (1924, 1950). The I Ching or Book of Changes. Cary Baynes, trans. Bollingen Series 19. Introduction by Carl G. Jung. New York: Pantheon Books. 3rd edition (1967), Princeton: Princeton University Press; reprinted numerous times.

Other notable English translations include:

  • McClatchie, Thomas (1876). A Translation of the Confucian Yi-king. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press.
  • Blofeld, John (1965). The Book of Changes: A New Translation of the Ancient Chinese I Ching. New York: E. P. Dutton.
  • Lynn, Richard John (1994). The Classic of Changes. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-08294-0.
  • Rutt, Richard (1996). The Book of Changes (Zhouyi): A Bronze Age Document. Richmond: Curzon. ISBN 0-7007-0467-1.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. (1996). I Ching: The Classic of Changes. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-36243-8.
  • Huang, Alfred (1998). The Complete I Ching. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions Press. ISBN 0-89281-656-2.
  • Redmond, Geoffrey (2017). The I Ching (Book of Changes): A Critical Translation of the Ancient Text. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-4725-1413-4.
  • Adler, Joseph A. (2020). The Original Meaning of the Yijing: Commentary on the Scripture of Change [by Zhu Xi]. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-19124-1.

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. Jump up to:a b The *k-lˤeng (jing , "classic") appellation would not have been used until after the Han dynasty, after the core Old Chinese period.
  2. ^ The word tuàn () refers to a four-legged animal similar to a pig. This is believed to be a gloss for "decision," duàn (). The modern word for a hexagram statement is guàcí (卦辭). Knechtges (2014), pp. 1881
  3. ^ Referred to as yao () in the Zuo zhuanNielsen (2003), pp. 24, 290
  4. ^ The received text was rearranged by Zhu Xi. (Nielsen 2003, p. 258)

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Kern (2010), p. 17.
  2. ^ Redmond 2021Adler 2022chs. 1,6,7.
  3. ^ Smith 2012, p. 22; Nelson 2011, p. 377; Hon 2005, p. 2; Shaughnessy 1983, p. 105; Raphals 2013, p. 337; Nylan 2001, p. 220; Redmond & Hon 2014, p. 37; Rutt 1996, p. 26.
  4. ^ Nylan (2001), p. 218.
  5. ^ Shaughnessy 1983, p. 219; Rutt 1996, pp. 32–33; Smith 2012, p. 22; Knechtges 2014, p. 1885.
  6. ^ Shaughnessy 2014, p. 282; Smith 2012, p. 22.
  7. ^ Rutt 1996, p. 26-7; Redmond & Hon 2014, pp. 106–9; Shchutskii 1979, p. 98.
  8. ^ Knechtges (2014), p. 1877.
  9. ^ Shaughnessy 1983, p. 106; Schuessler 2007, p. 566; Nylan 2001, pp. 229–230.
  10. ^ Shaughnessy (1999), p. 295.
  11. ^ Redmond & Hon (2014), pp. 54–5.
  12. ^ Shaughnessy (2014), p. 144.
  13. ^ Nielsen (2003), p. 7.
  14. ^ Nielsen 2003, p. 249; Shchutskii 1979, p. 133.
  15. ^ Rutt (1996), pp. 122–5.
  16. ^ Rutt 1996, pp. 126, 187–8; Shchutskii 1979, pp. 65–6; Shaughnessy 2014, pp. 30–35; Redmond & Hon 2014, p. 128.
  17. ^ Shaughnessy (2014), pp. 2–3.
  18. ^ Rutt 1996, p. 118; Shaughnessy 1983, p. 123.
  19. ^ Knechtges (2014), p. 1879.
  20. ^ Rutt (1996), pp. 129–30.
  21. ^ Rutt (1996), p. 131.
  22. ^ Knechtges (2014), pp. 1880–1.
  23. ^ Shaughnessy (2014), p. 14.
  24. ^ Smith (2012), p. 39.
  25. Jump up to:a b Smith (2008), p. 27.
  26. ^ Raphals (2013), p. 129.
  27. ^ Rutt (1996), p. 173.
  28. ^ Smith 2012, p. 43; Raphals 2013, p. 336.
  29. ^ Raphals (2013), pp. 203–212.
  30. ^ Smith 2008, p. 27; Raphals 2013, p. 167.
  31. ^ Redmond & Hon (2014), pp. 257.
  32. ^ Shaughnessy 1983, p. 97; Rutt 1996, p. 154-5; Smith 2008, p. 26.
  33. ^ Smith (2008), p. 31-2.
  34. ^ Raphals (2013), p. 337.
  35. ^ Nielsen 2003, pp. 48–51; Knechtges 2014, p. 1889.
  36. ^ Shaughnessy 2014, passim; Smith 2008, pp. 48–50.
  37. ^ Rutt (1996), p. 39.
  38. ^ Shaughnessy 2014, p. 284; Smith 2008, pp. 31–48.
  39. ^ Smith (2012), p. 48.
  40. ^ Nylan (2001), p. 229.
  41. ^ Nielsen (2003), p. 260.
  42. ^ Smith (2008), p. 48.
  43. ^ Knechtges (2014), p. 1882.
  44. ^ Redmond & Hon (2014), pp. 151–2.
  45. ^ Nylan (2001), p. 221.
  46. ^ Nylan (2001), pp. 248–9.
  47. ^ Yuasa (2008), p. 51.
  48. ^ Peterson (1982), p. 73.
  49. ^ Smith 2008, p. 27; Nielsen 2003, pp. 138, 211.
  50. ^ Shchutskii 1979, p. 213; Smith 2012, p. 46.
  51. Jump up to:a b Adler, Joseph A. (April 2017). "Zhu Xi's Commentary on the Xicizhuan 繫辭傳 (Treatise on the Appended Remarks) Appendix of the Yijing 易經 (Scripture of Change)" (PDF).
  52. ^ Smith (2008), p. 37.
  53. ^ Shaughnessy (2014), pp. 52–3, 16–7.
  54. ^ Rutt (1996), pp. 114–8.
  55. ^ Nylan (2001), pp. 204–6.
  56. ^ Smith 2008, p. 58; Nylan 2001, p. 45; Redmond & Hon 2014, p. 159.
  57. ^ Smith (2012), p. 76-8.
  58. ^ Smith 2008, pp. 76–9; Knechtges 2014, p. 1889.
  59. ^ Smith (2008), pp. 57, 67, 84–6.
  60. ^ Knechtges (2014), p. 1891.
  61. ^ Smith 2008, pp. 89–90, 98; Hon 2005, pp. 29–30; Knechtges 2014, p. 1890.
  62. ^ Hon 2005, pp. 29–33; Knechtges 2014, p. 1891.
  63. ^ Hon (2005), p. 144.
  64. ^ Smith 2008, p. 128; Redmond & Hon 2014, p. 177.
  65. ^ Redmond & Hon (2014), p. 227.
  66. ^ Adler 2002, pp. v–xi; Smith 2008, p. 229; Adler 2020, pp. 9–16.
  67. ^ Smith (2008), p. 177.
  68. ^ Nielsen (2003), p. xvi.
  69. ^ Ng (2000b), pp. 55–56.
  70. ^ Ng (2000b), p. 65.
  71. ^ Ng (2000a), p. 7, 15.
  72. ^ Ng (2000a), pp. 22–25.
  73. ^ Ng (2000a), pp. 28–29.
  74. ^ Ng (2000a), pp. 38–39.
  75. ^ Ng (2000a), pp. 143–45.
  76. ^ Smith (2008), p. 197.
  77. ^ Nelson 2011, p. 379; Smith 2008, p. 204.
  78. ^ Nelson (2011), p. 381.
  79. ^ Nelson (2011), p. 383.
  80. ^ Smith (2008), p. 205.
  81. ^ Redmond & Hon (2014), p. 231.
  82. ^ Smith 2008, p. 212; Redmond & Hon 2014, pp. 205–214.
  83. ^ Smith (2012), pp. 11, 198.
  84. ^ Smith (2012), pp. 11, 197–198.
  85. ^ "I Ching Methods Represented with Big Data Science". Retrieved 20 May 2021.
  86. ^ Knechtges (2014), pp. 1884–5.
  87. ^ Redmond & Hon 2014, p. 122ff; Shaughnessy 2014, passim.
  88. Jump up to:a b Shaughnessy (1993), p. 225.
  89. ^ Shaughnessy 2014, p. 1; Redmond & Hon 2014, p. 239.
  90. ^ Smith (2012), pp. 198–9.
  91. ^ Redmond & Hon (2014), pp. 241–3.

Works cited[edit]

  • Adler, Joseph A., trans. (2002). Introduction to the Study of the Classic of Change (I-hsüeh ch'i-meng). Provo, Utah: Global Scholarly Publications. ISBN 1-59267-334-1.
  • Adler, Joseph A., trans. (2020). The Original Meaning of the Yijing: Commentary on the Scripture of Change. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-19124-1.
  • Adler, Joseph A. (2022). The Yijing: A Guide. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-007246-9.
  • Hon, Tze-ki 韓子奇 (2005). The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song Period, 960–1127. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-6311-7.
  • Kern, Martin (2010). "Early Chinese literature, Beginnings through Western Han". In Owen, Stephen (ed.). The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Volume 1: To 1375. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–115. ISBN 978-0-521-11677-0.
  • Knechtges, David R. (2014). "Yi jing" 易經 [Classic of changes]. In Knechtges, David R.; Chang, Taiping (eds.). Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature: A Reference Guide. Vol. 3. Leiden: Brill Academic Pub. pp. 1877–1896. ISBN 978-90-04-27216-3.
  • Nelson, Eric S. (2011). "The Yijing and Philosophy: From Leibniz to Derrida". Journal of Chinese Philosophy38 (3): 377–396. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6253.2011.01661.x.
  • Ng, Wai-ming 吳偉明 (2000a). The I Ching in Tokugawa Thought and Culture. Honolulu, HI: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-2242-0.
  • Ng, Wai-ming (2000b). "The I Ching in Late-Choson Thought". Korean Studies24 (1): 53–68. doi:10.1353/ks.2000.0013S2CID 162334992.
  • Nielsen, Bent (2003). A Companion to Yi Jing Numerology and Cosmology : Chinese Studies of Images and Numbers from Han (202 BCE–220 CE) to Song (960–1279 CE). London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-7007-1608-4.
  • Nylan, Michael (2001). The Five "Confucian" Classics. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-13033-3.
  • Peterson, Willard J. (1982). "Making Connections: 'Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations' of the Book of Change". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies42 (1): 67–116. doi:10.2307/2719121JSTOR 2719121.
  • Raphals, Lisa (2013). Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ISBN 978-1-107-01075-8.
  • Redmond, Geoffrey; Hon, Tze-Ki (2014). Teaching the I Ching. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-976681-9.
  • Redmond, Geoffrey (2021). "The Yijing in Early Postwar Counterculture in the West". In Ng, Wai-ming (ed.). The Making of the Global Yijing in the Modern World. Singapore: Springer. pp. 197–221. ISBN 978-981-33-6227-7.
  • Rutt, Richard (1996). The Book of Changes (Zhouyi): A Bronze Age Document. Richmond: Curzon. ISBN 0-7007-0467-1.
  • Schuessler, Axel (2007). ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-1-4356-6587-3.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward (1983). The composition of the Zhouyi (Ph.D. thesis). Stanford University.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward (1993). "I Ching 易經 (Chou I 周易)". In Loewe, Michael (ed.). Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley, CA: Society for the Study of Early China; Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. pp. 216–228. ISBN 1-55729-043-1.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward (1999). "Western Zhou History". In Loewe, Michael; Shaughnessy, Edward (eds.). The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 292–351. ISBN 0-521-47030-7.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward (2014). Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and Related Texts. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-16184-8.
  • Shchutskii, Julian (1979). Researches on the I Ching. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. ISBN 0-691-09939-1.
  • Smith, Richard J. (2008). Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: the Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and its Evolution in China. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-2705-3.
  • Smith, Richard J. (2012). The I Ching: A Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14509-9.
  • Yuasa, Yasuo (2008). Overcoming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4356-5870-7.

External links[edit]

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25 / Culture and Cultural Typology / Research, Theory, and History

Tags: alchemy, Buddhism, cauda pavonis, color symbolism, individuation, Intuition, Kiley Laughlin, mandala, psychoid, quaternity, Secret of the Golden Flower, Wolfgang Pauli, yoga
October 20156


Color Symbolism in the Typology of C. G. Jung

Jung viewed color as a primary component of human experience and symbolic of psychic processes. Because of their qualitative properties—a type of qualia—colors can say a great deal about the modes of consciousness. By the end of the 1920s, Jung had begun to correlate four primary colors with the four psychic functions—thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition—described in his theory of types. In Jung’s view, the colors—blue, red, green, and yellow—aptly symbolized the four functions (Figure 1) and comprised a color quaternity. Jung suggested that this color quaternity, alternatively called a rainbow tetrad, was not an arbitrary assertion but rather a formulation founded on the empirical observations derived from alchemical studies, mythology, literature, folklore, religion, and individual case studies (i.e., Mann and Pauli). What did Jung intend to convey with this scheme? It seems that he believed that colors symbolize dynamic psychic factors that evolve in lockstep with consciousness. An analysis of his color studies suggests that the psyche uses color as a way to distinguish different kinds (i.e., functions) of consciousness. Furthermore, the appearance of the four rainbow colors suggests that consciousness aims at a purposeful goal and evokes the alchemical symbol of the cauda pavonis, which announces the completion of the alchemical work. Jung explained the relationship of the cauda pavonis or peacock’s tail with its multitude of colors to individuation as follows:


Psychologically it means that during the assimilation of the unconscious the personality passes through many transformations which show it in different lights and are followed by ever-changing moods. These stages precede the coming birth. (1956/1963, CW 14, para. 430)

Jung’s thinking regarding the color quaternity was mainly predicated on two empirical sources. The first source was the array of dreams and visions that Jung initially observed in himself and later in his analysands. The second source was the archive of cross-cultural studies, which included his exploration of Eastern traditions. Jung does not seem to have arrived at a mature understanding of the color quaternity until late 1929, which coincided with the publication of his commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower, wherein he indirectly suggested a color quaternity. Yet, in this commentary the colors Jung (1929) alluded to are not red, yellow, green, and blue, but black, white, yellow (or gold), and red, which parallel the colors of the four alchemical stages—nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, and rubedo (CW13, para. 220, n. 108) (Figure 2).

In Jung’s commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower he included one of his own mandalas, which came from Liber Novus, image 105. Jung (1929) provided the following description of the image:


In the centre, the white light, shining in the firmament; in the first circle, protoplasmic life-seeds; in the second, rotating cosmic principles which contain the four primary colours [italics added]; in the third and fourth, creative forces working inward and outward. At the cardinal points, the masculine and feminine souls, both again divided into light and dark. (CW 13, p. A6)

Over 20 years later, Jung (1950) provided additional commentary on the same image in his essay “Concerning Mandala Symbolism,” wherein he wrote:


In the center is a star. The blue sky contains golden clouds. … The circle enclosing the sky contains structures or organisms that look like protozoa. The sixteen globes painted in four colors [italics added] just outside the circle derived originally from an eye motif and therefore stand for the observing and discriminating consciousness. (CW 9i, para. 682)

In his second commentary Jung refrained from calling them primary colors. Author John Irwin (1994) has suggested that at some point in Jung’s career his understanding of the color quaternity evolved.


As we noted earlier, one form that the quaternity symbol takes in alchemy is the four colors linked to the stages of alchemical work—black, white, yellow, and red. But Jung points out that there is another quaternity of colors associated with the marriage of the king and queen of heaven—yellow, red, green, and blue. (p. 68)

Irwin’s observations are further elucidated by Jung’s 1933 commentary:


The quaternity in alchemy, incidentally, was usually expressed by the four colours of the old painters, mentioned in a fragment of Heraclitus: red, black, yellow, and white; or in diagrams as the four points of the compass. In modern times the unconscious usually chooses red, blue (instead of black), yellow or gold, and green (instead of white). The quaternity is merely another expression of the totality. These colors embrace the whole of the rainbow. The alchemists said that the appearance of the cauda pavonis, the peacock’s tail, was a sign that the process was coming to a successful conclusion. (1940, p. 48)

The Missing Fourth

Jung suggested that sometime within the last 500 years, between the end of the Middle Ages (500 C.E.–1500 C.E.) and the beginning of the Modern Era (1600 C.E.–2000 C.E.), the color symbolism corresponding to the four functions underwent a transformation within the western psyche, which implies a major restructuring of collective psychic contents. Regarding the alchemical quaternity, Jung (1956/1963) further noted that:


Four stages are distinguished, characterized by the original colours mentioned in Heraclitus: melanosis (blackening), leukosis (whitening), xanthosis (yellowing), and iosis (reddening). This division of the process into four was called the quartering of the philosophy. Later, about the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the colours were reduced to three, and the xanthosis, otherwise called the citrinitas, gradually fell into disuse or was but seldom mentioned. … Whereas the original tetrameria corresponded exactly to the quaternity of elements, it was now frequently stressed that although there were four elements (earth, water, fire, and air) and four qualities (hot, cold, dry, and moist), there were only three colours: black, white, and red. (CW 12, para. 333)

In this way, Jung suggested that not only did the color symbolism change but also the corresponding number symbolism. An analysis of the foregoing passage indicates that the reduction of the colors from four to three corresponds to an omission of the fourth typological function, intuition—perception through the unconscious—which the alchemists rendered as citrinitas or xanthosis—the inner light of the soul. The gradual disappearance of citrinitas in the alchemical system suggests a undervaluing of intuition. Thus, Jung’s (1952) color quaternity, as opposed to a color trinity, highlights the problem of the three and the four, or what is also called the Axiom of Maria—“Out of the third, comes the One as the Fourth” (CW 8, para. 962). One of the central aims of Jung’s psychology was to compensate for the number four’s state of neglect during the Christian Era. The number four is a symbol of wholeness, as suggested by Socrates’ original question: “One, two, three—but where, my dear Timaeus, is the fourth?” (Cornford, 1937, p. 9). Although in Psychological Types Jung (1921/1971) does not mention a color quaternity—a tetrad of rainbow colors—that corresponds to the four functions, he does correlate three of the psychic functions to a Gnostic typology consisting of pneumatikoi (thinking), psychikoi (feeling), and hylikoi (sensation), but the Gnostic’s tripartite system omitted the fourth function or intuition. So the problem of the missing fourth is also present in Gnosticism.

Thus, between 1929 and 1950—when he published “Concerning Mandala Symbolism”—Jung’s thinking on the color quaternity changed. As previously suggested, his re-visioning of the color scheme seems predicated on the symbolism expressed in the dreams and fantasies of individuals on the one hand and Jung’s intense study of Eastern philosophy and religion on the other. Jung’s propensity to connect things together was bolstered by his syncretistic impulse.

Dreams and Visions

Throughout his long career, Jung gathered a plethora of analytic and clinical material which he used to support his theories. He incorporated a good deal of case material into his papers, including “A Study in the Process of Individuation.” Jung originally presented this paper at the 1933 Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland. Therein he first alluded to a color quaternity comprised of red, yellow, green, and blue. The paper dealt with a middle-aged female analysand, Miss X, who had reached an impasse in her life and found herself stuck. Her unconscious compensated for the inadequacies of her conscious attitude by producing elaborate archetypal dreams and fantasies. In addition to this imagery, she had a collection of 24 paintings that Jung viewed as charting the course of her individuation journey. It should be noted that Jung included one picture (i.e., Picture 9) from her collection in his commentary for The Secret of the Golden Flower. Jung encouraged Miss X to document her fantasies in an imagistic and aesthetic way, not unlike what he had done with his own Red Book material. During the span of their analytic sessions, Jung understood that colors could help activate the unconscious and encouraged her to creatively express them in pictures: “I also advised her not to be afraid of bright colours, for I knew from experience that vivid colours seem to attract the unconscious. Thereupon, a new picture arose” (CW 9i, para. 530). Miss X was later identified as one of Jung’s close colleagues, an American woman named Kristine Mann (1873-1945) (Kirsch, 2000, p. 65). Although we cannot say for certain, it seems that Mann began her analysis with Jung around 1928, which turned out to be a pivotal year in the development of Jung’s ideas. Her analysis with Jung apparently concluded in May 1938. Regarding the mandala pictures rendered by Mann, Jung (1934/1959) noted the same color quaternity:


This takes place in stages: a combination first of blue and red, then of yellow and green [italics added]. These four colours symbolize four qualities, as we have seen, which can be interpreted in various ways. Psychologically this quaternity points to the orienting functions of consciousness, of which at least one is unconscious and therefore not available for conscious use. (CW 9i, para. 582)

Jung observed that Mann herself correlated her colors with the four functions:


The inner, undifferentiated quaternity is balanced by an outer, differentiated one, which Miss X equated with the four functions of consciousness. To these she assigned the following colours: yellow = intuition, light blue = thinking, flesh pink = feeling, brown = sensation. (CW 9i, para. 588)

Elsewhere, Jung provided the following correlation in regards to the symbolism contained in Mann’s pictures: “Red means blood and affectivity, the physiological reaction that joins spirit to body, and blue means the spiritual process (mind or nous)” (CW9i, para. 555), and gold “expresses sunlight, value, divinity even” (CW 9i, para. 543). In a footnote on the same page, Jung (1934/1959) observed that, “The colour correlated with sensation in the mandalas of other persons is usually green” (CW 9i, p. 335, n. 134). Jung’s descriptions suggest that the color scheme was not universally applicable and could vary from person to person depending on a range of factors—culture, context, etc. In this way, Jung was not unequivocal about his color scheme, but he did say that, “It happens with some regularity that these colours are correlated with the four orienting functions of consciousness” (1942/1948, CW 11, para. 281). Furthermore, he was prone to insert conditional statements like “usually” when he encountering an exceptional case that deviated from the general scheme.

Another individual case study that played a major role in shaping Jung’s understanding of the color quaternity is found in the dreams, visions, and waking fantasies of the physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900 -1958), who underwent analysis between February 1932 and October 1934 (Gieser, 2005, p. 147). In 1931, Pauli was suffering from depression and frequently had disturbing dreams (Gieser, 2005, p. 142). Besides drinking heavily and embracing a roguish lifestyle, Pauli’s mother had died abruptly in 1927. In December 1929, he married Käthe Margarethe Deppner. The marriage quickly disintegrated resulting in a divorce less than a year later. One could say then that the late 1920s marked a period of personal upheaval and crisis for Pauli, who finally sought out Jung’s help through correspondence in late 1931. Jung, aware of Pauli’s reputation as a brilliant scientist, wished to avoid inadvertently influencing his analytical material or interfering with what would otherwise be an objective process. Jung initially assigned the task of analysis to one of his pupils, a female doctor named Erna Rosenbaum. Pauli worked with Rosenbaum for about five months until Jung took over his analysis. Jung and Pauli’s relationship eventually evolved into a highly creative intellectual partnership which yielded a number of original ideas, including that of synchronicity.

Jung included Pauli’s fantasy material in two major essays: “Psychology and Religion” and “Dream Symbols of the Process of Individuation,” which was later revised and renamed “Individual Dream Symbols in Relation to Alchemy” and published in Psychology and Alchemy. Jung presented this paper at the 1934 Eranos Conference. Pauli’s fantasy material was comprised of over one thousand dreams and visual impressions, although Jung only included a sampling consisting of 355 for his study (Gieser, 2005, p. 144). Jung selected only the dreams that dealt with what he considered mandala symbolism, which paralleled the Eastern motifs and ideas Jung had earlier encountered in The Secret of the Golden Flower. Jung (1940) added:


I have chosen the term “mandala” because this word denotes the ritualistic or magical circle employed in Lamaism and also in the Tantric yoga as a yantra or aid to contemplation. The Eastern mandalas used in ceremonial are formations fixed by tradition, and are not only drawn or painted, but are even represented bodily in certain ritualistic celebrations. I refer the reader to Zimmer’s exposition in Kunstform und Yoga im indischen Kultbild [Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India], as well as to Wilhelm and Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower. (p. 127)

That Jung felt it necessary to name Heinrich Zimmer’s work—Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India—alongside The Secret of the Golden Flower underscores its importance to Jung’s study of Eastern Philosophy and religion.

Pauli’s dreams and visions were strewn with number and color symbolism, which Jung found to roughly accord with his typological color quaternity. For instance, the following dream describes the same combination of the four colors:


23. Dream: In the square space. The dreamer is sitting opposite the unknown woman whose portrait he is supposed to be drawing. What he draws, however, is not a face but three-leaved clovers or distorted crosses in four different colours: red, yellow, green, and blue. (1944/1970, CW 12, para. 212)

Another one of Pauli’s fantasies presents the same color sequence:


39. Visual Impression: The dreamer is falling into the abyss. At the bottom there is a bear whose eyes gleam alternately in four colours: red, yellow, green, and blue. Actually it has four eyes that change into four lights. The bear disappears and the dreamer goes through a long dark tunnel. Light is shimmering at the far end. A treasure is there, and on top of it the ring with the diamond. It is said that this ring will lead him on a long journey to the east. (1944/1970, CW 12, para. 262)

Jung’s commentary on the foregoing dream is notable for his reliance on Eastern and alchemical amplifications:


This waking dream shows that the dreamer is still preoccupied with the dark centre. The bear stands for the chthonic element that might seize him. But then it becomes clear that the animal is only leading up to the four colours (cf. dream 23, par. 212), which in their turn lead to the lapis, i.e., the diamond whose prism contains all the hues of the rainbow. The way to the east probably points to the unconscious as an antipode. According to the legend the Grail-stone comes from the east and must return there again. In alchemy the bear corresponds to the nigredo of the prima materia, whence comes the colourful cauda pavonis. (1944/1970, CW 12, para. 263)

Thus, one could say that the appearance of the four colors in Pauli’s dreams symbolized the cauda pavonis (i.e., peacock’s tail), which suggests a completion of the alchemical opus and viewed in depth psychological terms is tantamount to knowledge of the self—the archetype of wholeness. Jung subsequently turns to another dream that alludes to the four colors:


51. Dream: There is a feeling of great tension. Many people are circulating around a large central oblong with four smaller oblongs on its sides. The circulation in the larger oblong goes to the left and in the smaller oblongs to the right. In the middle there is an eight-rayed star. A Bowl is placed in the centre of each of the smaller oblongs, containing red, yellow, green, and the colourless water. The water rotates to the left. The disquieting question arises: is there enough water? (1944/1970, CW 12, para. 286)

In Jung’s extended commentary on the dream material, he correlated the four colors to the four functions of consciousness (1944/1970, CW 12, para. 287).

Pauli’s fantasy material culminates in the appearance of what he described as a “great vision,” which principally consisted of a “world clock” (Figure 3). The world clock is comprised of a vertical and a horizontal circle carried on the back of a black bird. The horizontal circle is divided by four sections and four colors, which Jung associated with his typological quaternity. It also merits mention that on the same circle stand four little men who hold pendulums (CW 11, para. 307). According to Jung (1938/1969), “The four little men of our vision are dwarfs or Cabiri. They represent the four cardinal points and the four seasons, as well as the four colours [italics added] and the four elements” (CW 11, para. 120). Given the relative regularity of the appearance of such number and color symbols in dreams of people like Kristine Mann and Wolfgang Pauli, Jung felt that the motifs could be best understood as spontaneous products of the objective psyche, which in his mind lent empirical support to his theories.

Parallels in Eastern Culture

As previously indicated, prior to 1933, there is no explicit mention of Jung’s rainbow color quaternity. The first reference of it ostensibly appeared in the 1933 Eranos conference which was followed by Jung’s 1934 presentation of Pauli’s dreams. Jung published both papers in the 1940 book The Integration of Personality. During the late 1920s, Jung’s interests began to shift to areas where he could find broader cross-cultural and archetypal consensus for his psychological theories.

By 1928, Jung’s preoccupation with The Red Book and Black Books was winding down and around the same time he received Wilhelm’s manuscript of The Secret of the Golden Flower, which Jung found profoundly meaningful, even synchronistic. In his autobiography, Jung (1961/1989) indicated that he received Wilhelm’s Taoist-alchemical manuscript in 1928 (p. 204). Jung described this serendipitous encounter in a margin note in The Red Book, Jung (2009) wrote:


1928. When I painted this image, which showed the golden well-fortified castle, Richard Wilhelm sent me from Frankfurt the Chinese, thousand-year-old text of the golden castle, the embryo of the immortal body. Ecclesia catholic et protestantes et seclusi in secreto. Aeon finitus. [The Catholic Church and the Protestants and those secluded in secret. The end of an aeon.]. (p. 163)

According to E.A. Bennet (1985), after Jung wrote “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious” in 1928 his interest in Chinese thought intensified, which coincided with his reading of Wilhelm’s manuscript on The Secret of the Golden Flower, for which he would later write a commentary. Jung viewed his typology as a western parallel to the Chinese notion of Tao (p. 71).

Around the same time Jung started his dream analysis seminar, which took place between November 7, 1928 and June 25, 1930. During this time period, Jung was still working through a stack of fantasy material that originated both from analytic encounters and cross-cultural studies. In the seminar, Jung indicated that he had already read Zimmer’s Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India, which was instrumental to Jung’s psychological understanding of Eastern traditions and likely informed his reading of the Shri-chakra-sambhara Tantra.

In the foreword of Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India, Joseph Campbell (1984) wrote that, “The crucial moment was of Jung’s reading of Indologist Heinrich Zimmer’s Kunstform und Yoga” (p. xvi). Thus, the importance of this work in regards to Jung’s understanding of mandala symbolism should not be understated. Jung indicated that he first read the book after writing his commentary for Richard Wilhelm’s translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower (1929) and before he met Zimmer: “I first met Heinrich Zimmer at the beginning of the thirties. I had read his fascinating book Kunstform und Yoga and long wished to meet him in person” (Jung as cited in Campbell, 1984, p. xix). Jung actually met Zimmer in May 1932. The fact that Jung (1984) mentioned Zimmer in his dream analysis seminar on February 26, 1930 (p. 492) suggests that he read it around January 1930. Based on the contents of Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India, one can infer that the material informed his dream analysis seminar in regards to Jung’s understanding of Eastern philosophy and symbolism.

In a lecture dated February 12, 1930, Jung discussed the parallels between his typology and Tantric Buddhist symbolism, with reference to the architecture of a Buddhist monastery:


Extraversion means going out through the gates of the courtyard. The inside square is divided like this: and each of the triangles is characterized by a different colour and represents particular philosophical conceptions. Red is the north below, the cardinal points of the horizon being all reversed: A most interesting book, the Bardo Thodol, or the Tibetan Book of the Dead, has been translated recently by an American named Evans-Wentz. There the coloured triangles are explained, and one can identify them with the four functions as we know them in our Western Psychology, the basis of our consciousness, the four qualities of our orientation in space, and therefore identical with cardinal points of the horizon. One leaves the gates through the different functions or habitual attitudes. The man who leaves through the south gate will live in the southern world, and the man who goes out through the gate of thinking will live in the thought world. But when they return, the functions do not matter; only as long as they are outside are the functions important. When he enters the courtyard of the monastery, he approaches the place where all the functions meet; in the very centre he goes into the void where there is nothing. We cannot say that it is unconsciousness, it is a consciousness that is not. (1984, p 467)

The foregoing passage is prescient on three points: 1) Jung (1935/1953) would eventually write a commentary for Evans-Wentz’ (1927/2000) translation of the said work which he apparently read between the date it was published and 1930 (1984, p. 467); 2) the color quaternity—red, yellow, green, and blue—would eventually be imported into his typology; and 3) in 1938 and 1939 Jung gave three lectures on the symbolism of Tantric Buddhism that closely paralleled his abovementioned commentary.

In another lecture in the same month as the previous one, on February 19, 1930, Jung discussed a Tibetan mandala, which he described at length, and he further elaborated on the comparisons between his typological system and the four functions:


I have brought you today the picture of which I spoke last week, the reproduction of the Tibetan mandala. It is a yantra, used for the purpose of concentration upon the most philosophical thought of the Tibetan Lamas. It shows in the innermost circle the diamond wedge or thunderbolt, that symbol of potential energy, and the white light symbolizing absolute truth. And here are the four functions, the four fields of colour, and then the four gates to the world. Then comes the gazelle garden, and finally the ring of fire of desirousness outside. (1984, p. 479)

The passage above demonstrates not only Jung’s interest in the East, but that as early as 1930 he recognized definite parallels between the structure of Western and Eastern mandalas such as the Tibetan yantra. At this time, Jung had already written his commentary for Wilhelm’s The Secret of the Golden Flower, and his attention began to drift to other fields and disciplines (i.e., alchemy, Kundalini yoga, Tantric Buddhism, etc.).

In Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India Zimmer provided extensive commentary on an obscure tantric text called the Shri-chakra-Sambhara Tantra. Zimmer (1926/1984) described this work as a “product of an era in Buddhism’s development in which the main stream of the Buddha doctrine in its course through time acquired an influx from the tributaries of Hinduism [such] that its content became virtually indistinguishable from Hinduism” (p. 81). The Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra has its roots in the diamond vehicle (Vajrayana) doctrine of Tantric Buddhism and consists of a series of instructional mantras—meditational techniques—informed by Tantric doctrine and teachings. Shri Chakra translates to the “Circle of Bliss” (Zimmer, p. 90) and is visualized as a circular mandala consisting of four gates, which evoke Jung’s four functions. The adept or Yogin focuses on the mandala and visualizes a god. The god (Devata) represents the “guru-essence” which could be interpreted psychologically as emanations or projections originating from the background activity of the psyche. Zimmer suggested that the culminating point of the ritual is the attainment of the vajrasattva (diamond essence), which would be analogous to the alchemical lapis. Zimmer added:


Then the adept develops internally the feeling proper to his awareness of the undifferentiated sameness of all phenomena. In the Emptiness that constitutes their essence … he sends out rays in every direction, colored according to the cardinal points–blue, green, red, and yellow [italics added]. Their colors are a surety that his feeling of Total Compassion (karuna) permeates the entire cosmos. (p. 93)

Understandably, the color symbolism would have garnered Jung’s attention when he read the book early in 1930. Around the same time (1930-1931), Jung prepared a two-page manuscript headed “Tantric Texts” which he evidently used in preparation for his lectures at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Shamdasani, 1996, p. xxxiv, n. 66). Shamdasani further indicated that the source material for these manuscripts was Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India (pp. 2-87), wherein can be found Zimmer’s exposition of the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra.

Jung’s study of the Tantric texts culminated in his 1938 and 1939 lectures at ETH, where he presented psychological commentary on the material in its most lucid form. In these ETH lectures, Jung (1958) provided a historical and etymological overview in accordance with his own hermeneutic understanding. In his commentary, Jung (1958) cited the following passage: “From the Mantra ‘Hum’ rays of blue, green, red and yellow light shoot forth through the four heads of the Devata and gradually fill the whole universe” (p. 48). Jung added:


The Yogin is in the centre, saying “Hum,” the first quality of consciousness, the world principle. The four colours emanate from the centre, the four qualities of consciousness, that is the four functions of consciousness, the four possibilities of consciousness. (p. 48)

Thus, Jung tried to correlate the four colors with his four functions of consciousness, and in a syncretistic turn, proceeded to associate the principal skandhas—the basic building blocks of the phenomenal world in Buddhist tradition—mentioned in the text with his four functions: Rupa skandha (thinking), Vedana skandha (sensation), Samjna skandha (feeling), and Sangskara skandha (intuition). The skandhas are reminiscent of the four classical elements—earth, air, fire, and water—found in ancient philosophy. The text also identifies a fifth skandha or function, Vijnana which Jung equated with a kind of centralized knowledge which united all four functions. Jung (1958) wrote: “The aggregate of cognition (knowledge) is the Buddha, the enlightened diamond essence. The highest essence proceeds out of the four functions as the final result” (p. 51). What seems to emerge from the combination of all functions is the quintessence of Buddha consciousness, made available to us through the mediating service of the Buddhist master, or yogi: “The quaternity is dissolved in the essence of the Yogin, and the fourfold image of consciousness disappears” (p. 51). In his analysis, Jung interpreted the phenomenon as follows:


Then he assimilates all beings into the mandala. One could say that the Yogin hangs like a spider in its web, and draws all beings through the rays of light into the mandala of his personality. He establishes himself as the centre of the world. The light, which emanated from the “Hum,” is withdrawn and absorbed by the Self. (1958, p. 55)

Just as the Yogin may achieve the diamond body through the fifth skandha, the western adept may realize the self by integrating the four functions into a fifth. Thus, one could say that in vijnana (i.e., wisdom) one reconciles the opposites and the self. Vijnana is the path to the center or the self. As mentioned, one could also compare the idea of the vajrasattva to the alchemical lapis, which Jung also viewed as a symbol of the self. Jung’s commentary in the ETH Lectures demonstrates his most mature understanding of the color quaternity. The breadth of his commentary suggests that it took him nearly a decade to work through his analytic material and cross-cultural studies before he was able to synthesize a symbolic understanding of the four functions which he represented by color (Figure 4). In the same lecture, Jung attributed the discovery of the functions to the Chinese “centuries ago” (1958, p. 105). Elsewhere in the ETH Lectures, Jung provided a primer for his color code:


The four colours attributed to the functions are based on certain feeling values. Feeling is red, this is connected with blood and fire, with passion and love which is supposed to be warm and glowing. Sensation is green, this is connected with the earth and perceiving reality. Thinking is white, or blue, cold like snow and Intuition is gold or yellow because it is felt to shine and radiate. (1958, p. 78)

The fact that Jung uses white interchangeably with blue warrants some explanation. In his book Secret Doctrines of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, author and Buddhist scholar Detlef Ingo Lauf (1977) points out that in Buddhism, blue and white are frequently used interchangeably (p. 129). Furthermore, in his commentary for the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Jung (1935/1953) correlated the color white with thinking:


It gradually becomes clearer that all these deities are organized into mandalas, or circles, containing a cross of the four colours. The colours are co-ordinated with the four aspects of wisdom: (1) White = the light-path of the mirror-like wisdom; (2) Yellow = the light-path of the wisdom of equality; (3) Red = the light-path of the discriminative wisdom; (4) Green = the light-path of the all-performing wisdom. (CW 11, para. 850)

Thus, one could say that what was most essential for Jung was not establishing a universally valid psychological schema predicated on color symbolism but empirically demonstrating a semi-regular chromatic pattern which more or less indicated the same psychological meaning. Jung accepted that there would always be some variation in the way the psyche expressed color symbolism.

The Psychoid Factor

Why in modern times does the unconscious select the colors red, yellow, blue, and green? Although addressing such a question presents a difficult task, Jung left behind a few conceptual clues that may provide at least a partial answer. In On the Nature of the Psyche Jung (1947/1954) introduced the concept of the psychoid factor, which one may define as the part of the psyche that is incapable of consciousness and thus only quasi-psychic in nature. In the same work, he employed the analogy of a color spectrum as an analogy to describe his psychoid concept.


Using the analogy of the spectrum, we could compare the lowering of unconscious contents to a displacement towards the red end of the colour band, a comparison which is especially edifying in that red, the blood colour, has always signified emotion and instinct. (CW 8, para. 384)

With his introduction of the psychoid concept, Jung seems to have expanded his original color scheme into the deep unconscious. Just as the electromagnetic spectrum extends far beyond the limited range of visible light, a psychophysical continuum would comprise a broader range of psychic and physiological phenomena than does consciousness and its four functions (Figure 5). Jung extended this metaphor as follows: “The dynamism of instinct is lodged as it were in the infra-red part of the spectrum, whereas the instinctual image lies in the ultra-violet part” (CW 8, para. 414). Thus, if we were to read the color symbolism in the appropriate context, we could suppose that the psychoid concept is a natural progression of Jung’s typological system. Accordingly, typology comprises the four functions of consciousness whereas the psychoid concept subsumes the totality of unconscious psychic states. Jung’s psychoid concept is understandably difficult to grasp and merits some further explanation. Jung viewed psychic processes as analogous to the concept of an electromagnetic spectrum (Figure 5) on which consciousness slides to the left and to the right. To the left one finds the instincts grounded in somatic processes whereas to the right one encounters the archetypes found in images and ideas. However, either side of the spectrum eventually reaches a threshold that is inaccessible to both image and instincts. On both ends of the spectrum, instinct and archetype gradually fade into the psychoid domain. In Jung’s later work he opined that the archetypes originated from this psychoid domain, which rests on a transcendental substrate. Jung believed however that although psychoid processes are inaccessible to consciousness, through the image-making faculty of the human mind we could expand our reach into those heretofore untrodden regions of the psychoid domain just as through the advent of the telescope our ancestors learned to extend the reach of the eye.

The color symbolism also seems to parallel the alchemical idea of the cauda pavonis, for Jung (1934/1959) suggested that “we may expect the miracle of the cauda pavonis, the appearance of “all Colours,” the unfolding and realization of wholeness, once the dark dividing wall has broken down” (CW 9i, para. 685). Thus, one could associate the color symbolism of Jung’s typology with the appearance of the cauda pavonis—a symbol of wholeness. The cauda pavonis seems to herald the gradual broadening of the total representable bandwidth accessible to the human species. Because Western consciousness occupies but a narrow sliver of this bandwidth of psychic energy, Jung’s assertion that, “Psychic processes therefore behave like a scale along which consciousness ‘slides’” (CW 8, para. 408), suggests that the ego could be viewed as a pointer that can move freely, left and right, on a sliding scale of consciousness and thus could eventually access all the colors of the spectrum analogy alluded to earlier. Viewed in this way, the colors symbolize different modes of consciousness, which probably exceed a mere number of four.

Jung’s typology then, with its emphasis on four functions and four colors should not be viewed as a complete system for it seems possible, even probable, that the human species has the potential to extend the boundaries of consciousness into the psychoid domain and thereby develop heretofore latent functions within the psyche, whose distinct features can only be imagined. Toward the end of his long life, Jung (1956/1963) intimated that more colors, up to seven, could be included into his color scheme: “Consequently the synthesis of the four or seven colours would mean nothing less than the integration of the personality, the union of the four basic functions, which are customarily represented by the colour quaternio blue-red-yellow-green” (CW 14, para. 390).

References


Bennet, E.A. (1985). Meetings with Jung. Zurich, CH: Daimon.

Campbell, J. (1984). Preface. In H. Zimmer, Artistic form and yoga in the sacred images of India (pp. xvii-xxvii). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1926).

Cornford, F. (1937). Plato’s cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato translated with a running commentary. London: Routledge, & Kegan Paul, Ltd.

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. & Karma-Glin-Pa. (2000). The Tibetan Book of the Dead. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1927).

Gieser, S. (2005). The innermost kernel: Depth psychology and quantum mechanics. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer Verlag.

Irwin, J. (1994). The mystery to a solution: Poe, Borges, and the analytic detective story. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1929). Commentary on The secret of the golden flower. In R.F.C Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C. G. Jung. (Vol. 13). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (1940). The integration of personality. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., LTD.

Jung, C. G. (1948). A psychological approach to the dogma of trinity. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 11, pp. 106-165). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1942)

Jung, C. G. (1950). Concerning Mandala Symbolism. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 9i, pp. 355-384). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1952). Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle. In R.F.C Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C. G. Jung. (Vol. 8). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1953). Commentary on the Tibetan book of the dead. In R.F.C Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C. G. Jung. (Vol. 11). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1935)

Jung, C. G. (1954). On the nature of the psyche. In R.F.C Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C. G. Jung. (Vol. 8). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1947)

Jung, C. G. (1958). Modern psychology: The ETH lectures. Barbara Hannah (Ed.). Unpublished.

Jung, C. G. (1959). A study in the process of individuation. In R.F.C Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C. G. Jung. (Vol. 9i). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1934)

Jung, C. G. (1963). Mysterium coniunctionis. In R.F.C Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C .G. Jung. (Vol. 14). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1956)

Jung, C. G. (1969). Psychology and religion. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 11, pp. 5-105). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1938)

Jung, C. G. (1970). Psychology and alchemy. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 12). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1944)

Jung, C. G. (1971). Psychological types. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C.G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 6). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1921)

Jung, C. G. (1984). Dream analysis: Notes on the seminar given in 1928-1930 by C. G. Jung (W. McGuire, Ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1938)

Jung, C. G. (1989). Memories, dreams, reflections. Aniela Jaffé (Ed.) (Richard and Clara Winston, Trans.). New York: NY: Vintage Book. (Original work published 1962)

Jung, C. G. (1996). The psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the seminar given in 1932 by C. G. Jung. Sonu Shamdasani (Ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jung, C. G. (2009). The Red Book: Liber novus. Sonu Shamdasani (Ed.). Philemon Series. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.

Kirsch, T. (2000). The Jungians. Philadelphia, PA: Routledge.

Lauf, D. I. (1977). Secret doctrines of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

Zimmer, H. (1984). Artistic form and yoga in the sacred images of India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1926)

Images:

Hee Choung Yi, “In the Mountains,” (2010), Courtesy: Korean Art Museum Assoc.

Pietro Longhi, “The Alchemist,” (c. 1757). Courtesy: The Yorck Project.

Figure 3: W. Byers-Brown, “World Clock,” (1887). Appeared originally in Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind, (London, 1987), p. 19.

Figure 4: Reconstruction of Jung’s drawing, p. 104, ETH Lectures (1958).

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6 Comments

Erik Meyer
Oct 9, 2015, 5:25




Might Jung being alive today arrive to an even more evolved conclusion as to the comparison of heightened energy states of atoms emitting of photons at defined wave-lengths may also correlate to heighten states of consciousness in the “psychoid domain”? With differing photon wavelengths equaling the spectrum of visible color, might the mind’s energy level also equate to different levels of consciousness?



Kiley Laughlin
Oct 30, 2015, 7:45




Erik, thank you for the comment. Jung was very interested in atomic theory and quantum physics. He really didn’t get the mathematics but had a solid grasp of the philosophical implications. I think your thinking is headed in the right direction and thus, is on the mark. In Jung’s essay “On the Nature of the Psyche,” Jung uses the EM spectrum as an analogy to consciousness, which descends, as it were, into the psychoid domain. Jung recognized that what we view as unconscious may, from a different vantage point, actually be conscious. Consciousness after all suggests that somebody or something is conscious “of something.” Your question is highly relevant to the importance of models (and metaphors) in constructing our picture of reality. It’s always changing. Jung viewed analytical psychology as tantamount to a bridge from one weltanschauung to another. Again, thanks for taking the time to read the article. – Kiley



Ian
Feb 8, 2016, 0:57




I absolutely love this! So much information and patterns to trace. Thank you for providing such an article.

I was wondering if the image of the color spectrum with the functions labeled has an error. Is the red band “feeling” or sensation?

https://typeindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/typological-spectrum-Redux-250x.jpg

There is the image link for you.
And here is a nice resource that I am conferring as I read this:

http://www.terrapsych.com/jungdefs.html

Best, IAN!



Nader Khaghani
Aug 2, 2017, 9:02




As a painter/writer, I do appreciate your insightful scholarly article. Thank you for sharing.
As you know the color qualities are flexible things–not written in stone; we choose them to represent our feelings, thoughts, intuitions, and perceptions.
My preferred way of looking at intuition is the fire that cooks all the previous functions. I must admit my bias. I am an introvert intuitive type with the inferior function as a sensate.

Here is how I see it: Green: sensation/manifestation, Blue: feeling/formation, Yellow/creation, and finally Red of our being as emanation–the numinous–Spirit. The ultimate lightning that hits us from the blue yonder of consciousness

is Red of spirit and not yellow of thinking.

I am curious as to your informed thoughts.
Thanks again for sharing, that is what life is all about. We stand on each other’s shoulder and take a peek into the darkness of unconscious just like the trail blazer wise Jung that we all love.



Nader Khaghani
Aug 2, 2017, 9:05




Oh, by the way, I will be in Pacifica for the alchemy seminar coming up the end of August. Love to say hello and shake hands.

Nader



Carl Andrews
Sep 4, 2021, 23:56




I have only skimmed over a bit of this essay and already it helped me with what I was looking for and gave me insight on something profound in my life which I have wondered about for years. Thank you!


2022/06/29

프로이트 정신분석이론 - 마음의 지형학적 모델

로이트 정신분석이론 - 마음의 지형학적 모델


상담심리학 관련 이론들 ♡
프로이트 정신분석이론 - 마음의 지형학적 모델by 박뽀기 2020. 5. 3.


프로이트 정신분석이론 이제 하나씩 벗겨?보자 - 마음의 지형학적 모델







무의식!!!




올것이 왔다!!!










이걸 또 이렇게 그림으로 표현해서 설명을 해주신.....다.....




보이지 않는 마음을 가시화 시켜주심..




아.. 정말.. 천재이심....!!!















마음의 지형학적 모델 - 무의식의 세계




자유연상과 꿈 분석을 통해 무의식의 존재와 기능을 인식한 프로이트는 자신의 생각을 체계적인 이론으로 정리하여 발표하기 시작했다. 그는 1900년에 발표한 [꿈의 해석]에서 인간의 정신세계를 의식, 전의식, 무의식으로 구분하는 지형학적 모델 (topographical model)을 제시했다.




프로이트는 인간의 얼마나 의식할 수 있느냐에 따라 의식 수준 (conscious level), 전의식 수준 (preconscious level), 무의식 수준 (unconscious level) 등 세가지 수준으로 구분했다.





1. 의식 수준 (conscious level)은 인간의 현재 지각과 사고, 정서 경험 등을 말한다. 빙산으로 비유하자면 수면 위에 드러난 부분이라 할 수 있으며, '빙산의 일각'이라는 말처럼 인간의 전체 정신 세계 중 극히 일부분에 해당한다.




2. 전의식 수준 (preconscious level)은 의식 수준에 속하지 않았지만 조금의 노력으로도 자각할 수 있는 기억과 경험 등을 말한다. 전의식은 수면 바로 아래에 있는 빙산의 부분이라 할 수 있으며, 파도가 출렁이면 수면 위 빙산의 부분이 수면 아래로 가라앉거나 수면 아래 빙산의 부분이 수면 위로 드러나는 것과 같이 현재 순간의 의식은 다음 순간에 전의식에 속하게 되고 또 이전의 전의식은 순간 의식에 속하게 되는 서로 밀접한 관련성을 가지고 있다.




3. 무의식 수준 (unconscious level)은 의식하려고 노력하더라도 쉽게 자각하기 어려운 욕구, 충동, 소망, 동기 등을 말한다. 무의식은 수면 아래에 자리하여 빙산의 대부분을 차지하는 것이라 할 수 있는데, 의식이라는 수면 위에 잘 떠오르지는 않지만 인간의 생각과 감정, 행동에 거대한 영향을 미친다는 점에서 중요한 의미를 지닌다.








따라서 정신분석의 핵심은 무의식 속에 억압되어 있는 심리적 내용을 찾아내어 의식화 하는 것이다.

프로이트에 따르면 꿈은 무의식에 이르는 왕도이다.

꿈 해석은 무의식을 이해하는 대표적인 방법으로서 꿈 내용 속에 은밀하게 담겨 있는 무의식적 욕구, 소망, 갈등을 발견하는 것이다.

또한 일상적인 실수, 망각, 농담에도 무의식의 소망과 갈등이 위장되어 나타난다.

입밖으로 무심코 튀어나는 숨겨둔 무의식을... 프로이트의 말실수라고 하지요 ㅋㅋㅋ

은연중에 속마음이...ㅋ










무의식의 세계에는 개인이 자각할 경우 불쾌하거나 고통스럽게 느낄 수 있는 것들이 억압되어 저장된다. 따라서 과거 경험이란 의식되지 않는다고 해서 영원히 사라지는 것이 아니라 무의식 속에 남아 지속적인 영향을 미친다. 무의식에 저장된 심리적 요소들은 일치성이나 상충성에 따라 서로를 촉진하거나 억제하는 역동적인 관계를 지니는데 이를 정신역동 (psychodynamics)이라 한다. 프로이트는 이러한 무의식 세계의 구조와 작동원리를 밝히고자했다.




거 참.. 궁금하고 알고싶다고 이렇게 알아내고 그러신다....



The Imaginary (Sartre) - Wikipedia

The Imaginary (Sartre) - Wikipedia

The Imaginary (Sartre)

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The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination
L'imaginaire.jpg
Cover of the first edition
AuthorJean-Paul Sartre
Original titleL'Imaginaire: Psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
SubjectImagination
Published
  • 1940 (Gallimard, in French)
  • 1948 (Philosophical Library, in English)
Pages234 (Routledge edition)
ISBN0-415-11954-5 (Routledge edition)

The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination (FrenchL'Imaginaire: Psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination), also published under the title The Psychology of the Imagination, is a 1940 book by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, in which the author propounds his concept of the imagination and discusses what the existence of imagination shows about the nature of human consciousness.

Summary[edit]

Sartre argues that while some believe imagining to be like an internal perception, imagination is nothing like perception. Perception is our study over time of a particular object with our senses. It is necessarily incomplete; one can only see one side of a chair at a time, for example. Thus, perception involves observation. By contrast, imagination is total. In the chair that appears in our imagination, we have all sides of the chair given to us at once. However, Sartre points out that imaginary objects cannot teach us anything. The totality of the chair that appears in our imagination comes from a synthesis of our knowledge of the chair and our intention toward it. We expect the chair to be X or Y, therefore, in our imagination, it appears to us this way. Thus, Sartre calls what goes on when we picture something imaginary, "quasi-observation". Imaginary objects are a "melange of past impressions and recent knowledge" (The Imaginary 90). In short, imaginary objects are what we intend them to be. Because imaginary objects appear to us in a way which is like perception but is not perception, we have a tendency to treat them as if they were real. That is not to say we are deluded; we know that they're imaginary. But we tend to ascribe emotions, traits, and beliefs to these irreal objects as if they were real.

Throughout the book Sartre offers arguments against conceiving images as something inside a spatial consciousness. Sartre refers to this idea as the "illusion of immanence".

Sartre says that what is required for the imaginary process to occur is an analogon—that is, an equivalent of perception. This can be a painting, a photograph, a sketch, or even the mental image we conjure when we think of someone or something. Through the imaginary process, the analogon loses its own sense and takes on the sense of the object it represents. Again, we are not deluded. But at some level the photograph of my father ceases being merely colors on paper and instead stands in for my absent father. I then have a tendency to ascribe the feelings I have about my father to the picture of him. Thus, an analogon can take on new qualities based on my own intention toward it.

Ultimately, Sartre argues that because we can imagine, we are ontologically free. A consciousness that could not imagine, he points out, would be hopelessly mired in the "real", incapable of the perception of unrealized possibilities, and thus any real freedom of thought or choice. In order to imagine, a consciousness must be able to posit an object as irreal—nonexistent, absent, somewhere else and it does so always from a particular point of view. All of our engagements with the world have the potential to activate the imaginary process. And because the imaginary process relies on intentionality, the world is constituted not from the outside into our consciousness, but rather we constitute the world based on our intentions toward it.

English translation[edit]

The philosopher Thomas Baldwin writes that L'Imaginaire has been translated into English under the title The Psychology of Imagination. He describes the translation as "botched"실패.[1]

Editions[edit]

  • Sartre, Jean-Paul, L'Imaginaire: Psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination (Paris: Gallimard, 1940)
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul, The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination Translated by Jonathan Webber, (London and New York: Routledge, 2004)

References[edit]

  1. ^ Baldwin, Thomas in Honderich, Ted. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 834.

External links[edit]