Hexagram47and48
Hexagram 47 and 48
You are the tree
Your mind is like a tree, its roots reaching deep down inside into the spring of life,
the waters of inspiration and love and wonder. Its branches reach into the world,
offering shelter and shadow and finding light and air. If this tree reaches all the
way from the deep waters to the high heavens, it is a real tree of life.
Hex.47: Let the branches move freely on the winds, supple and without any
frustration. The tree needs the water of hex.48 so it can grow and live. Likewise all
your actions and contacts in the world need your own inspiration. If you just follow
habits or customs your tree will wither.
Hex.48: let the roots go deeper than deep, where they will find the primeval
waters. The picture of the hexagram name resembles the magic square, one of the
mandalas representing cosmic order. Many peoples have this image in varying
forms. The waters from the well are connected with cosmic values, they bring up
myth. Therefore their working is inspiring, they encompass much more than
thought can imagine.
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placed in four or five layers on top of each other. Together, their shape
agrees entirely with that of the character for well.
Cecilia Lindqvist, "China, empire of living symbols". 1989, ISBN 0201
570092, AddisonWesley Publishing Company, Inc.
In the works of the philosopher Mencius (g74 28g) there is a description of a system for dividing up
land used at the beginning of the Zhou period. Every piece of land was carefully measured and divided
into nine different sections. It was looked after by eight families, each of whom had the right to
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cultivate one field for their own needs, and together they looked after the middle field on behalf of the
ruler, as a kind of tax. When the population increased, new land was cultivated and divided in the
same way.
This way of dividing up land is usually called the wellfield system because of the similarity to the
character for well.
It is mentioned in songs and poems as early as 8oo B.C., but whether it really existed and functioned
as Mencius describes it is one of the mostdiscussed questions in Chinese history. Was it simply an
ideal, or was it a real system for the division of land?
It has been said that, to Mencius, it was probably a utopian dream of a just society in which everyone
had his living secured. Then he tried to convince his contemporaries that the utopia had once been
reality and could be so again.
In Xu Guangqis seventeenthcentury book on agricultural techniques, the system is presented like
this: eight men, in the middle the rulers public field.
When Mencius described the system in the fourth century B.C., land was already beginning to pass
into private hands. Iron plows and improved use of manure brought with them an increase in the
productivity of agriculture, so it was important for the rulers to try to reduce the private land and
increase the public. Increased resources could, for instance, be used to build irrigation installations
and roads, which would further increase the rulers power and the opportunity to control the country
and perhaps expand it.
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