Dualist Philosophy is seen across different cultures with different names, but there is lot of similarity in how they are perceived and arranged and interpreted.
1) Bagua uses 3 dual aspects thus forming 8 sets of trigrams
2) Geomancy uses 4 dual aspects(Fire, Air, Water, Earth) thus forming 16 sets of figures
3) Tattva uses 5 aspects (Akasha/Spirit, Vayu/Air, Tejas/Fire, Apas/Water, Prithvi/Earth)
4) IChing uses 6 dual aspects thus forming 64 hexagrams
Bagua - Trigrams
The bagua (Chinese: 八卦; literally: "eight symbols") are eight trigrams used in Taoist cosmology to represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of eight interrelated concepts. Each consists of three lines, each line either "broken" or "unbroken," representing yin or yang, respectively. Due to their tripartite structure, they are often referred to as "trigrams" in English.
The Limitless (Wuji) produces the delimited, and this is the Absolute (Taiji)
The Taiji produces two forms, named yin and yang
The two forms produce four phenomena, named lesser yin, great yin (taiyin also means the Moon), lesser yang, great yang (taiyang also means the Sun).
The four phenomena act on the eight trigrams (bagua), eight eights are sixty-four hexagrams.
Bagua in Feng Shui
The Bagua is an essential tool in the majority of Feng Shui schools. The Bagua used in Feng shui can appear in two different versions: the Earlier Heaven Bagua, used for burial sites and the Later Heaven Bagua, used for the residences.
Geomancy - Geomantic Figures
The 16 geomantic figures are the primary symbols used in the art of divinatory geomancy. Each geomantic figure represents a certain state of the world or the mind, and can be interpreted in various ways based upon the query put forth and the method used to generate the figures. When geomancy was introduced to Europe in the Middle Ages, the figures acquired astrological meanings and new forms of interpretation. Although geomancy has an African origin[citation needed], the figures bear superficial resemblance to the ba gua, the eight trigrams used in the I Ching, a Chinese classic text.
In Hindu esotericism and tantrism there are five tattvas creating global energy cycles of tattvic tides beginning at dawn with Akasha and ending with Prithvi:
1) Bagua uses 3 dual aspects thus forming 8 sets of trigrams
2) Geomancy uses 4 dual aspects(Fire, Air, Water, Earth) thus forming 16 sets of figures
3) Tattva uses 5 aspects (Akasha/Spirit, Vayu/Air, Tejas/Fire, Apas/Water, Prithvi/Earth)
4) IChing uses 6 dual aspects thus forming 64 hexagrams
Bagua - Trigrams
The bagua (Chinese: 八卦; literally: "eight symbols") are eight trigrams used in Taoist cosmology to represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of eight interrelated concepts. Each consists of three lines, each line either "broken" or "unbroken," representing yin or yang, respectively. Due to their tripartite structure, they are often referred to as "trigrams" in English.
The Limitless (Wuji) produces the delimited, and this is the Absolute (Taiji)
The Taiji produces two forms, named yin and yang
The two forms produce four phenomena, named lesser yin, great yin (taiyin also means the Moon), lesser yang, great yang (taiyang also means the Sun).
The four phenomena act on the eight trigrams (bagua), eight eights are sixty-four hexagrams.
Bagua in Feng Shui
The Bagua is an essential tool in the majority of Feng Shui schools. The Bagua used in Feng shui can appear in two different versions: the Earlier Heaven Bagua, used for burial sites and the Later Heaven Bagua, used for the residences.
Geomancy - Geomantic Figures
The 16 geomantic figures are the primary symbols used in the art of divinatory geomancy. Each geomantic figure represents a certain state of the world or the mind, and can be interpreted in various ways based upon the query put forth and the method used to generate the figures. When geomancy was introduced to Europe in the Middle Ages, the figures acquired astrological meanings and new forms of interpretation. Although geomancy has an African origin[citation needed], the figures bear superficial resemblance to the ba gua, the eight trigrams used in the I Ching, a Chinese classic text.
Each of the figures is composed of four lines, each line containing either one or two points. Each line represents one of the four classical elements: from top to bottom, the lines represent fire, air, water, and earth. When a line has a single point, the element is said to be active; otherwise, with two points, the element is passive. Because there are four lines, and since each line can be either active or passive, there are 24, or 16, different figures. The different combinations of elements yields different representations or manifestations of the figure's energy.
Each figure can be said to have a ruling element, whereby that element's energy and manifestations correlates most closely to the figure itself. With the exception of Populus, the ruling element for each figure is always represented as active (a single point in the corresponding line). For figures with only one active element, that element by default is its ruling element; other combinations of active and passive elements require more introspection to assign rulerships. Populus, consisting of all passive lines, is ruled by Water by its nature of being entirely passive and taking on the reflective qualities of water whenever an outside force acts upon it.
Tattva is a Sanskrit word meaning 'thatness', 'principle', 'reality' or 'truth'. According to various Indian schools of philosophy, a tattva (or tattwa) is an element or aspect of reality conceived as an aspect of deity.
The Samkhya philosophy regards the Universe as consisting of two eternal realities: Purusha and Prakrti. It is therefore a strongly dualist philosophy. The Purusha is the centre of consciousness, whereas the Prakriti is the source of all material existence. The twenty-five tattva system of Samkhya concerns itself only with the tangible aspect of creation, theorizing that Prakriti is the source of the world of becoming. It is the first tattva and is seen as pure potentiality that evolves itself successively into twenty-four additional tattvas or principles.
In Shaivite philosophy, the tattvas are inclusive of consciousness as well as material existence. The 36 tattvas of Shaivism are divided into three groups:
Shuddha tattvas
The first five tattvas are known as the shuddha or 'pure' tattvas. They are also known as the tattvas of universal experience.
Shuddha-ashuddha tattvas
The next seven tattvas (6–12) are known as the shuddha-ashuddha or 'pure-impure' tattvas. They are the tattvas of limited individual experience.
Ashuddha tattvas
The last twenty-four tattvas (13–36) are known as the ashuddha or 'impure' tattvas. The first of these is prakriti and they include the tattvas of mental operation, sensible experience, and materiality.
Shuddha tattvas
The first five tattvas are known as the shuddha or 'pure' tattvas. They are also known as the tattvas of universal experience.
Shuddha-ashuddha tattvas
The next seven tattvas (6–12) are known as the shuddha-ashuddha or 'pure-impure' tattvas. They are the tattvas of limited individual experience.
Ashuddha tattvas
The last twenty-four tattvas (13–36) are known as the ashuddha or 'impure' tattvas. The first of these is prakriti and they include the tattvas of mental operation, sensible experience, and materiality.
In Hindu esotericism and tantrism there are five tattvas creating global energy cycles of tattvic tides beginning at dawn with Akasha and ending with Prithvi:- Akasha (Spirit tattva) – symbolized by a black oval
- Vayu (Air tattva) – symbolized by a blue circle
- Tejas (Fire tattva) – symbolized by a red triangle
- Apas (Water tattva) – symbolized by a white moon
- Prithvi (Earth tattva) – symbolized by a yellow square
Every complete cycle is lasting two hours. This system of five tattvas which each can be combined with another, was also adapted by the Golden Dawn
The text of the I Ching is a set of oracular statements represented by 64 sets of six lines each called hexagrams (卦 guà).
Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻 yáo), each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 26 or 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.
The hexagram diagram is composed of two three-line arrangements called trigrams (卦 guà). There are 23, hence 8, possible trigrams. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Numerical sets greatly predate the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram system,
Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻 yáo), each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 26 or 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.
The hexagram diagram is composed of two three-line arrangements called trigrams (卦 guà). There are 23, hence 8, possible trigrams. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Numerical sets greatly predate the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram system,
The Zhouyi 周易, also called Yijing 易經, or, shortly, Yi 易, is one of the most important Confucian classics. The Zhouyi, as the core part of the book. is divided into two parts, the first includes the first 30 hexagrams, the second part the 34 others. The text to each hexagram is described in four parts: an illustration of the hexagram (guaxiang 卦象), the name of it (guaming 卦名), the corresponding dictum with an explanation of its meaning (guaci 卦辭), and an explanation of each particular line of it (yaoci 爻辭). The dictum (guaci) includes direct statement about the auspicious (ji 吉), profitable (li 利), unlucky (jiu 咎) or non-auspicious (xiong 凶) character of a divination result.
Source: Wikipedia, ChinaKnowledge
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