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Chapters From the Book ‘Yin and Yang’ By Frank Fiedeler

$4.00 – $18.00

By Frank Fiedeler
Translated by Gabriel Weiss

These original translations are chapters from the book Yin and Yang, by the late Prof. Frank Fiedeler, one of the best modern interpretors of the Yijing, and who is one of the few scholars who have made the symbolic methodology of Han and pre-Han dynasty thought accessible for the field of Chinese medicine.

  • Cosmological Thought in Europe and China, An Introduction
  • Image and Script
  • Heaven and Earth
  • The History of Heavenly Sacrifice
  • *All 4 Chapters

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From Yin and Yang: Cosmological Thought in Europe and China, An Introduction
4 pages

We are accustomed to thinking of the world in objective terms, i.e., as a world of objects and material things, that exist and relate to one another in a time-space continuum. The starting point of the yin-yang polarity is not the world of objective things but rather the world of appearances. The formulation of the great model upon which Chinese thought rests is fundamentally a pattern of appearances that represents the natural environment of human beings on the earth. Thus, Chinese thought provides a systematic starting point for a genuine and philosophically sound environmental consciousness which is rooted in the structure of the environment itself.

Originally published as “Yin und Yang (Yin and Yang),” Köln: Dumont, 1993.

From Yin and Yang: Image and Script
5 pages

In the earliest forms, the oracle, having evolved out of the sacrifice of animals,  was carried out with the help of cattle bones or tortoise shells. By heating these shells and  bones over a fire, cracks were produced, the forms of which were interpreted as  information from the heavenly deities. It was, so to speak, an experimental method to  determine the current influence of the heavens (of the solar fire) on the terrestrial material  (the cattle bones), in order to be able to predict the course of events. On these bones and turtle shells that have been excavated in great numbers, one now finds more detailed though still very terse inscriptions by which the fissures are explained, the so called jiaguwen (‘shell’ and bone script).

Originally published as “Yin und Yang (Yin and Yang),” Köln: Dumont, 1993.

From Yin and Yang: Heaven and Earth
8 pages

The heavenly mandate, the highest moral authority in traditional China, was no verbal revelation like the “word of God” in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Its most original form of expression was encountered in natural phenomena themselves. The culturally formative pattern of symbolic forms was developed in direct analogy to the phenomenal order of the heavens. Hence, in its basic structure, this model was a calendrical system. The establishment and ritual administrations of the calendar was the premiere function of the king and comprised the highest level of the state cult. At the same time, the establishment of mediation between heaven and earth, was also intended as a communication with the deities and divine spirits of the ancestors who inhabited heaven.

Originally published as “Yin und Yang (Yin and Yang),” Köln: Dumont, 1993.

From Yin and Yang: The History of Heavenly Sacrifice
4 pages

The guiding principle of the culture of the Xia was the moon’s shadowside, hence the ‘nodding’ of his black face. According to this archetype, Fuxi turns upward toward the heavens during the night and during the day toward the earth. For this reason, the sky appeared as the night sky, while looking into the blinding light of the sun was avoided. The decisive pattern from this ritual worldview was the ordered pattern of the night sky characterized by the moon and stars, that with the sinking of the gaze onto the day side was projected downward onto the dimensionality of the earth.

Originally published as “Yin und Yang (Yin and Yang),” Köln: Dumont, 1993.

Additional information

CHAPTER

*All 4 Chapters – $18.00, Cosmological Thought in Europe and China, An Introduction – $4.00, Heaven and Earth – $8.00, Image and Script – $5.00, The History of Heavenly Sacrifice – $4.00

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