Rén-Yang-Yin-Yang
The yin comes against them and turns them; the yang goes down with them and lets them be.
Things draw back, come down, and settle.
1
Something wild churning in the dark, and he folds his purpose over it.
He would like to roam wherever he pleases.
Heaven is not putting anything into it.
2
He folds it in down in the dark middle.
He looses the arrow straight.
What is given goes to whatever is straight.
3
He folds the food in, gulping and gulping.
He goes at the profit the way a dancer hits the beat.
Nothing about it is slow.
4
The bird folds its wings in.
That is how it gets up.
Somebody on each side of him lifts.
5
He folds everything into his own belly.
The grain goes elsewhere.
What a man keeps to himself leaves him.
6
A yellow heart and the wings of a swan.
It folds them in against the sky.
Everything under him is helping him up.
7
The line comes in around him, and it hurts.
He is folded up in the string.
The net was for something and it caught him.
8
He tears the net away, he cuts the noose.
Peril.
He got out, and it counted as getting out.
9
He shakes his horns and there is nothing else to gore.
He turns them on his own kind.
The horn finishes what the horn was for.
THE IMAGE
A bustling autumn harvest village where farmers load golden grain sacks onto ox carts, gather plump grapes into woven baskets, and store dried herbs and salted fish into deep earthen storehouses.
THE COMMENTARY
Energy is drawing inward. A situation may be contracting, settling, lowering itself, or gathering its wings after a period of outward movement.
Folding In can be preparation rather than defeat. Birds fold their wings in order to change direction, rest, or rise differently; people sometimes need to draw intention inward before their next outward act can become coherent.
But contraction can also become self-absorption or entrapment. Ask whether you are gathering strength, concentrating purpose, and allowing things to settle, or whether everything is simply being pulled into a center that consumes without returning anything.
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.