The Medicine Wheel of the Taoists
We open the underground archives of the Chinese diaspora, where the Taoist rituals are preserved, peering into the misty past to strip away the shroud of secrecy.
Secrets such as these and more were unknown and guarded until the New Age's revival. We humans are inquisitive beings who like having things demonstrated to us. We stood around fires or huddled in caves during a natural catastrophe trying to justify it until we had the tools of calculating or empirical understanding. Consider a planet where great Earth-moving and Heaven-rending phenomena like earthquakes, lightning, hurricanes, and flooding have wreaked havoc. As families formed into clans, tribes became states, and kingdoms became empires, plausible theories and myths spread and legends emerged.
According to one Taoist creation myth, the world started as an egg from which the primordial human, Pan Go, hatched. The lighter parts of the shell floated upward to form Heaven, while the heavy parts of the shell dropped to form Earth. Pan Go stood tall, arms embracing Heaven and feet stabilizing the Earth.
According to another legend, the Tao started when fire and water merged. Wu Chi, there was nothing but emptiness before that. The two facets of the cosmos that have been common buzzwords in the West over the past four decades: yin and yang, formed from the Original Source, referred to as the One.
The yang of fire entered the yin of water as lightning hit the sea, and life began. The Three Pure Ones were born from the union of yin and yang, and they gave rise to the five elements and ten thousand things.
The medicine wheel was seen by Taoist sages as a symbol of all life, including Wu Chi, the Three Pure Ones, yin and yang concepts, the five elements, the eight powers of the cosmos, the twelve Chinese zodiac power animals, and the sixty-four trigrams of the I Ching. The Taoist medicine wheel is the basis of most Chinese art, including acupuncture and herbalism, Chinese astrology and divination, Tai Chi Chuan, "the supreme ultimate" combining meditation and martial art, and the esoteric sexual practices taught to emperors by their female advisers to form the basis of Taoist alchemy: the search for immortality.
Wu Chi, the circle symbolizing emptiness or preparation, is at the center of the wheel. It can be interpreted in the therapeutic and martial arts as the blank sheet awaiting the artist's inspiration in words or pictures; in painting as the blank sheet awaiting the artist's inspiration in words or pictures; and in meditation as joining the void. It's like a spiritual theater's empty stage, waiting for the actors, words, or pictures to appear.
The next layer is the circle's interplay of yin and yang, with yin being yang and yang becoming yin, symbolising life's transition from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic alternation of wave and particle.
The yin/yang symbol contains the Three Treasures or Pure Ones: universal or celestial chi, higher-self or cosmic chi, and earth chi. The Three Pure Ones were traditionally depicted as three emperors who resided in the higher, middle, and lower tan tiens, or palaces or centers of the body. The power of shen, or spirit, binds the upper tan tien (which includes the third eye, crown, and whole head) to the universal chi. *1 The natural power of our spirit, known as chi, binds the middle tan tien to the heart and other organs. Chi is both the life force and the guiding philosophy running through all entities and creating their interconnectedness. Via the force known as ching, which provides continuity to the physical side of life, the lower tan tien (lower belly, located between the navel and the kidneys) binds the physical body, sexual energy, and Mother Earth.
The sages deduced the five elements that rule life in this earthly realm from the Three Pure Ones: fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. In the next layer of the wheel, they are represented by a pentacle.
Eight additional powers that shape human life are at work in the Taoist cosmos' rich symbology: heaven, planet, fire, water, wind, thunder, lake, and mountain. The pakua (pa means "eight," kua means "trigram"), which appeared in the pattern of the turtle or tortoise shell used in prehistoric shamanic divination, represents them.
The lines on the turtle's back were believed to be a divine map, with each side/corner of the compass diagram pointing to 1–8 (not 0–7) coded in binary. The drum and circle walking emerged from this shape, symbolizing the passage of time, from the first steps of spring to the blossoming summer, reaping life's harvest to sustain us through the autumn of retirement and the freezing winter of death.
The pakua (or bagua) depicts the universe's eight powers as eight trigrams. The trigram Kan, which is associated with the north, is placed at the bottom of the pakua, while the trigram Li, which is associated with the south, is placed at the top. The pakua's trigrams are sometimes placed in the reverse order. Opposing elements are positioned next to each other.
The twelve zodiac signs, which are based on ancient totems, reflect twelve basic personality forms. Each is aligned with one of the five elements and is either yin or yang.
As the outer circle, the eight trigrams join to form the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching.
You may also want to read more about Shamanism here.
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