Robinet, The World Upside Down: Essays on ... - The Golden Elixir

Role and Meaning of Numbersin Taoist Cosmology and Alchemy“Thou hast ordered all thingsin measure and number and weight.”Book of Wisdom, XI.20“He measured with his raythe boundaries of Heaven and Earth.”Ṛg-Veda, VIII.25.18INTRODUCTIONI will not dwell in this essay on the importance of numbers in Chinaand on the role that numbers play in the Chinese civilization. MarcelGranet has examined these subjects at length in his La penséechinoise, and I refer the reader to his discussion. I will not addresseither the role of numbers in divination, which is related to Taoismbut is not specifically part of it. On the other hand, I will take intoaccount several traditional data, to the extent to which the Taoistreflection on numbers and their manipulation is based on them. 1 Itgoes without saying that the limited scope of this essay will notpermit an exhaustive presentation, and I will merely provide some ofthe main data.1We can distinguish in this respect two main sources, even though inmost cases they merge with one another: the school of Yin-Yang and the fiveagents (yinyang wuxing), on the one hand, and the Yijing (Book of Changes),on the other. <strong>The</strong> difference between them consists mainly in the distinctionmade in the Yijing between odd and even numbers, and in the speculations onthe trigrams and the hexagrams related to the numbers. <strong>The</strong> influence of theYijing is more clearly visible in internal alchemy, whose first certain traces datefrom the eighth century CE.www.goldenelixir.com/press/tao_02_robinet.html