Gods & Goddesses of Ancient China by Britannica Educational Publishing

Author:Britannica Educational Publishing [Publishing, Britannica Educational]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62275-394-9
Publisher: Britannica Educational Publishing
Published: 2015-05-03T23:00:00+00:00

All parts of the cosmos are attuned in a rhythmical pulsation. Nothing is static; all things are subjected to periodical mutations and transformations that represent the Chinese view of creation. Instead of being opposed with a static ideal, change itself is systematized and made intelligible, as in the theory of the Five Phases and in the 64 hexagrams of the Yijing (Book of Changes), which are basic recurrent constellations in the general flux. An unchanging unity (the constant Dao) was seen as underlying the kaleidoscopic plurality.

Zhuangzi’s image for creation was that of the activity of the potter and the bronze caster: “to shape and to transform” (zaohua). These are two phases of the same process: the imperceptible Dao shapes the cosmos continuously out of primordial chaos; the perpetual transformation of the cosmos by the alternations of yin and yang, or complementary energies (seen as night and day or as winter and summer), is nothing but the external aspect of the same Dao. The shaping of the Ten Thousand Things by the Supreme Unity and their transformation by yin and yang are both simultaneous and perpetual. Thus, the sage’s ecstatic union is a “moving together with the Dao; dispersing and concentrating, his appearance has no consistency.” United with the constant Dao, the sage’s outer aspect becomes one of ungraspable change. Because the gods can become perceptible only by adapting to the mode of this changing world, their apparitions are “transformations” (bianhua); and the magician (huaren) is believed to be one who transforms rather than one who conjures out of nothing.

CREATION THROUGH EMANATIONS

The theme of emergence is related to theological and philosophical notions of emanations from a single principle and the idea of the transmutation of being. Ideas of this kind are found in “primitive” religion (Dogon, Polynesian), in Chinese thought, and in the Pre-Socratic philosophers Thales and Anaximander.

A pervasive theme in Chinese thought is that of a universe in a perpetual flux. This flux follows a fixed and predictable pattern either of eternal oscillation between two apparently opposed poles or of a cyclical movement in a close orbit. The oscillation pattern is expressed by the concept of yin-yang. In the theory of the Five Phases (wuxing), a cyclical movement is correlated with the five phases, each of which bears the name of a mineral: earth, wood, metal, fire, and water. These in turn form an equivalence with the third month of summer and with spring, autumn, summer, and winter, respectively. These parallelisms then form equivalences with the five directions, and they in turn with the five primary colours. Ancient Chinese thinkers never discuss an initial conscious act of creation. The cyclical movement itself produced the empirical and abstract form of the cosmos. The oscillation between yin and yang forms a correlation in all phenomena extending to the realms of time, space, number, and ethics.

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