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

Isabelle <strong>Robinet</strong>multiplied themselves and generated the numbers, associated with themilfoil. 8 Taoist authors often quote this statement. 9<strong>The</strong> use of numbers to represent the world in its multiple aspectsand distributions is a fundamental feature of the science of xiangshu(“images and numbers”). This science is intimately linked to theexegesis of the Yijing (Book of Changes), and it is well known that theTaoists have drawn from it. <strong>The</strong> arithmetic manipulation of numberswas intended to account for the structure of situations and theirchanges, and thus to make the world understandable: knowing thestructure of numbers results in a better comprehension of the world.In this respect, the Taoists are fully in line with this tradition.For the Chinese, and especially for the Taoists, the numbersproduce the world. In the words of a fourteenth-century Taoistcommentator:Heaven and Earth circulate and operate by numbers, and the tenthousand beings are born by numbers. <strong>The</strong> numbers are themovement and the rest of Yin and Yang in the Great Ultimate(Taiji). 10According to Yuanyang zi, the numbers are spirits. 11 For the Hunyuanbajing zhenjing (True Scripture of the Eight Luminous Spirits of theInchoate Origin), when the numbers of Fire and Water were “complete”(manzu) they began to “coalesce into chaos” and “the OneBreath of the cosmos emerged” (here the numbers come even beforeUnity); when the numbers of Yin and Yang and the Sun and the Moonwere complete, stars and constellations were born; when the numbersof the revolutions of Yin and Yang and the five agents were complete,they could reach accomplishment; and the same is true of the alchemicalWork, where each of the five agents must attain the fullness of itsnumber. 128Couvreur, La chronique de la Principauté de Lou, vol. I, p. 306.9See, for example, Daode zhenjing jiyi, 2.6b; and Zhouyi cantong qi zhu,3.14a.10Wenchang dadong xianjing, 1.13a.11Yuanyang zi jinye ji, 10a.12For these four statements, see Hunyuan bajing zhenjing, 1.1a, 1.1b, 1.2a,and 4.2a-3b, respectively.48