Yin-Yin-Yin-Yin
The yang breath is at its limit above.
The yin stirs and sprouts below, and upper and lower answer each other.
1
Six trunks standing out in a row.
Five branches going their own ways.
Everything here is attached to something.
2
The calendar sets it out overhead.
The pitch-pipes answer from underneath.
If they are not the same thing, nothing sounds.
3
One line down, one line across.
Heaven’s net goes out very wide.
Warp and weft are both laid.
4
He takes up the nets.
He spreads the snares out across open country.
There is no kindness in any of it, and it is coming.
5
The dragon is flying at the top of the sky.
Upright, and every scale on it is shaking.
The highest thing is the one afraid of falling.
6
The blaze is holding up the whole sky.
Down in the ground, ice is sprouting.
This is the hour the light starts going back.
7
He puts strength into his own decline.
Many answer him, and straight ones.
He would rather not be one of the ruined kind.
8
Yang at the extreme calls yin up.
The day does not turn before the answer comes.
Whatever you take all the way sends for its opposite.
9
The great light stands at its furthest.
The gentleman answers it by leaning west.
Nothing was going to stop this.
THE IMAGE
A musician plucking a bronze zither inside an open pavilion, causing the strings of a matching unplucked zither across the courtyard to vibrate and chime in perfect harmonic resonance.
THE COMMENTARY
Something is calling and something else is answering. Events, people, emotions, or forces that seemed separate may now reveal themselves as parts of the same pattern.
The Answer concerns correspondence. What is above evokes something below; what is extended outward receives a response from somewhere else. This can bring confirmation, but it can also reveal the opposite that any extreme inevitably calls forth.
Listen carefully to what answers you. A response may show you the true nature of what you have set in motion more clearly than your original intention did. When the reply arrives, treat it as information about the whole relationship rather than merely as approval or resistance.
This figure is one of 81 in Taixuanjing for Today, a book by Joe Perez that renders Yang Xiong’s Canon of Supreme Mystery in original verse, with expanded commentary, essays, and full instructions for casting the oracle yourself.