Yang-Yang-Yang-Yang
The yang breath sprouts in secret in the Yellow Palace.
Nothing true is anywhere but the center.
1
Kunlun spreads without edge or seam.
Nothing in it has yet been named.
The dark is where thinking keeps its root.
2
Spirits give battle inside the mystery.
They draw up yin and yang in ranks.
Good and evil put on the same armor.
3
The dragon comes out of the center.
Head and tail unbend; it can be used.
What was being made is now visible.
4
Low ground, empty, with nothing beneath it.
Onto this they load the mandate of a life.
The floor is not the foundation.
5
The sun stands square at the top of the sky.
Use this hour; be the one who decides.
Noon does not ask permission.
6
The full moon is already breached.
Better the small light opening in the west.
Water settles in the pit; the marsh grows fat.
7
The brew is ripe, the great ladle turns to the jaw.
Water takes everything into its arms.
What it cannot hold has refused to be held.
8
Yellow that is not yellow.
Autumn’s constancy is overturned.
The center color has left the center.
9
The spirit reaches the summit and topples.
Breath and form turn back on each other.
The hour would not hold it up.
THE IMAGE
The sacred Yellow Palace stepped altar terrace enclosed by sacred peaks, with a central bronze incense burner giving rise to swirling golden qi dragon smoke connecting earth and heaven.
COMMENTARY
Return to the heart of the matter. Too much attention may have gone to circumstances, other people’s reactions, competing possibilities, or the desire to make something happen. This oracle asks what remains true when those things are stripped away.
There is real power available now, but it comes from alignment rather than force. Find the principle around which the rest of the situation can organize itself. Once that is clear, decisions become simpler because you are no longer trying to satisfy every demand at once.
Center also warns against confusing a powerful moment with a permanent one. What reaches noon eventually begins to decline; what becomes full begins to empty. Use clarity while it is present, but do not cling to the position from which you received it. The deepest stability comes from remaining connected to the center even as circumstances turn.
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.