| Chapter 1: | Uproarious Prologue |
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Lakes or swamps are also images the concept of the trigram Dui conveys. Concepts showing open plane surfaces, surrounded by low, form-fitting rims, resemble Tarascan shape-classifying morphemes discussed by Friedrich (Language, Context and the Imagination, 391–401), similarly focusing on openings or lips onto plane surfaces—shores around lakes, borders around holes, and so forth—a kind of topological awareness not easily mobilized in English but highlighted in some other languages and symbolisms.2
The dui image-concept (110) is liquid, low, bounded, presenting an open expanse to above. The feature of topmost openness is important for ancient Chinese sacred experience. A shrine might have walls but not a roof; shrines of defeated dynasties were roofed over, cutting off communication with those on high.3 Images of upturned face and open-mouth praying, or the emphasized image of splitting open one’s face in laughter (
), signified religious experience. Similarly, the classical word “speak” ( yue 
) depicts some sort of container (some say an overturned bell, others a box supporting a branch upon which prayer messages hang) with its top open and some sort of inserted content (tongue, clapper, message, etc.) as a single line in the open top.4
The Classic of Changes appendix emphasizes breaking open or breaching a container in its attribute list, accomplished by the yielding yin on the structure’s top.
Figure 3. Guai hexagram.
