Big Dippers Interchangeable in I Ching Yin Yang Layouts

Dr. Steven B Halls | September 2026

This material was originally posted to Facebook on December 05, 2024 - view original post.

While collecting Yin Yangs, I realized that Big Dippers seemed to be interchangeable at the center of iChing layouts. How does that work? I never feel satisfied to stop search, after naming a constellation.

Image B and C have some extreme 'Dippers'. Others like D,E,F,and I are more ordinary. I see a square part and a curved part on those, and I see a square part and a spikey triangles part on image R and probably sun and moon symbols above them.

While collecting Yin Yangs, Big Dipper shapes prove interchangeable at the center of I Ching layouts, with square and curved parts acting as density-s

Image G looks more like the square (image H and I) variety of "Pleats" (like image Q and O), which is a barrier symbol separating one density torus/reality from another. Image N is more Yin Yang but it's like a smoother pleats. Image Q is also a pleats barrier (made of snake, but that's OK).

Image J is how modern people put labels on Yin and Yang, and image K is also modern and is labelled opposite of J. So moderns have confusion.

From Mesoamerica is image L, a variant of Yin Yang, and from Peru is image P, which a little like image L.

My point is pointing out that a Dipper and a Yin Yang can be placed at the center of a torus symbol, in it's core. Not shown, but Yin Yangs can also be appear in corners of a layout as diagonal portals. https://ca.pinterest.com/stevenbhalls/pleats/ https://ca.pinterest.com/stevenbhalls/yin-yang/ https://ca.pinterest.com/stevenbhalls/iching/

A "great forgetting" led to polluted book knowledge, which I'm happy to discard. We have a long way to go with rediscovering.

Where there is a barrier, one side will be higher density than the other, so we're not totally discarding the basic intuition about Yin Yang. And a swirly vortex along that border like image L, being a portal, also seems to match our intuition.