Olympic Tarot (4) - Chinese Perspective

Olympia takes place this year - 2004 - in Greece, in 4 years it will be in China. Considering specifical contents of Greek mythology, this is a historical joke.

What does the mythical Greek origin theory tell:

22 Elements:

* Uranus = heaven - of course, that's Yang
* Gaia = earth - that's Yin

Yin and Yang are the base mathematical body of I-Ching

* 3 Cyclopes = that are 3 Yang-lines of an I-Ching-Trigram
* 3 "100-arms" = that are 3 Yin-lines of an I-I-Ching-Trigram

3-Yang and 3-Yin-lines form the 8 Trigrams of I-Ching, that's a natural perspective.

* 6 female Titans = that are the 6 Yin-lines of an I-Ching-Hexagram
* 6 male Titans = that are the 6 Yang-lines of an I-Ching-Hexagram

The 6 Yin- and Yang-lines form the mathematical body of the I-Ching.

* Who is "Aphrodite": She is the aspect of "Love" - She is the Tao and she is all - she unites all, by "Love".

* Who are the "3 Erinyen": They present the counter-aspect to "Love" (Aphrodite), and that's "Justice". They are 3, cause the I-Ching (and comparable systems) are based on 3 basic ideas (begin-middle-end for instance as "motion", or earth-man-heaven in the Chinese system or above-middle-below and Heaven - earth - ocean in the Greek system).

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This means: Hesiod - who lives far enough from China to have never heard in his life from this country and its people and the I-Ching theogony - uses just the same mathematical program as the I-Ching in a similar context. Beside the divinatory context as an oracle-book the I-Ching also wanted to explain, how "the world was made or originated" and that's also the interest of Hesiod.

In the greater order it seems, that Hesiod (or probably better: "the community of the Greek poets of the time") showed an interest to reach the number 64 - although, as far it is known to me, they never tell in open form from the number 64.

The Greek loved instead to show the number 50, mostly in a 49+1-structure - that's a "hidden" way to announce the number 64 (7 trigrams x 7 trigrams + 1 "holy" trigram, which contains 15 other possibilities of the system of the 64).

The reason for the Greek "hiding the 64" might have been a trivial poets-trick to disguise the mathematical scheme, that they used (talking of Uranos and Gaia and Kentaurs etc. was also just a "hiding trick" to expose a theory without showing the mathematical content).

In China the 49+1-scheme was also known and used (in the oracle-technique 50 elements are used, one of the 50 is taken aside; the "50" is known in China as "number of heaven"), but they didn't take care to hide the 64.

Divinatory books (like the I-Ching) were also known in Greek, but here they were regarded as "cheap oracle", complicated "mysterious cults like Delphi, Dodona etc.. were more accepted.