Page 567 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

HUOHOU 527

Fig. 44. Diagram of the "fire phases" (huohou) by *Yu Yan (1258-1314).
From the inner circle: the Northern Dipper (*beidou); the four emblem-
atic animals (see *siling); the four seasons; six of the eight trigrams
(*bagua); the twelve Earthly Branches (dizhi J1!1. 2:; see *ganzhi); the
twelve "sovereign hexagrams" (bigua ll'i".Il; see *bagua); the twenty-
four periods of the year (or" energy nodes," jieqi flil *0; the thirty
days of the lunar month, indicated by the moon phases; sixty of the
sixty-four hexagrams; the twenty-eight lunar mansions (*xiu). Hu Wei
iiJJ m (1633-1714), Yitu mingbian !,h III UJj j;}f (Clarifications on Diagrams
Related to the Book of Changes; 1706), j. 3. For similar diagrams, see
Needham 1983, 56, and Despeux 1994, 167- See also table 13.

For example, each hexagram represents a particular feature of the universe.
An early Han exegetic tradition of the Yijing attributed to Meng Xi ;Ktf{ (fl.
69 BCE) and Jing Fang ~(Jj (77-37 BCE) associates temporal phases with the
hexagrams in a pattern called guaqi H ~ or "breaths of hexagrams." In this
pattern, four of the sixty-four hexagrams are correlated with the four seasons
(or to the two equinoxes and the two solstices): kan:fJ-: ~~, li ~ ==, zhen fit ~~
and dui }t ==. Their twenty-four lines match the twenty-four divisions of the
tropical year (thejieqi fin~( or "energy nodes," each of which lasts fifteen days).
The other sixty hexagrams represent the growth and decline of Yin and Yang
during the year. Each hexagram corresponds to about six days, so that a set of
five hexagrams corresponds to one month. These five hexagrams are called
"duke" (gong ~), "sovereign" (bi ,£j'f:), "marquis" (hou {x), "high official" (daft