Hexagram Design tuned to Nature’s Archetypal Energies

For The Creative Force hexagram design to be effective as a energetic piece of art, it is required to be energetically aligned. The artist’s love of ancient traditions such as feng shui and harmonia has inspired the artist to create an intuitively woven hexagram arrangement known to scholars as Fu Xi‘s pre-heaven arrangement. This is the foundation of the Connector Art Series piece we call “The Creative Force”.

In the beginning there was as yet no moral or social order. Men knew their mothers only, not their fathers. When hungry, they searched for food; when satisfied, they threw away the remnants. They devoured their food hide and hair, drank the blood, and clad themselves in skins and rushes. Then came Fu Xi and looked upward and contemplated the images in the heavens, and looked downward and contemplated the occurrences on earth. He united man and wife, regulated the five stages of change, and laid down the laws of humanity. He devised the eight trigrams, in order to gain mastery over the world.— 

Ban Gu, Baihu tongyi

Energies of Heaven & Earth

The bagua design is based on a longitudinal wave and utilizing a grid, eight by eight. We filled in the matrix using ‘hard’ or rigid archetypal energies of nature at the edges to ‘soft’ or  malleable archetypal energies of nature towards the center. The two most polarized energies are of heaven (masculine) and of the earth (feminine). 

The  pair of thirty-two hexagrams energies were then arranged clockwise. If studied, you will note from the longitudinal axes at the top, the hexagrams arrange themselves from the polarized or ridged to the to the rarefied and from the rarefied to the ridged. The motion goes: very ridged – somewhat ridged- somewhat rarified- very rarified=very rarified – somewhat rarified – somewhat ridged – very ridged OR very rarified – somewhat rarified – somewhat ridged – very ridged = very ridged – somewhat ridged- somewhat rarified -very rarified.  It just depends on the motion, if it is expressing a counter-clockwise motion or clock-wise motion to the arrangement.

Then, the two rigid archetypes rejoin again by way of the longitudinal axis (the North South axis) or Heaven (male energies) and Earth (female energies).  When one builds the circular hexagrams this way, the energies are as if you are the stars looking down on earth or the Universal Energies.  To achieve the human view the artist flipped the arrangement of the hexagram design 180º to mirror the cosmos.   It is the old: 1/x = x/1 = 1.  

Lessons of the Fu Xi Arrangement

This inverse arrangement now more closely resembles the traditions of Harmonia and Feng Shui.  Ironically, the hexagram design is known as the Fu Xi Arrangement or  Pre-Heaven Arrangement or the Xiantian Bagua and the He Tu.  So yes! Nothing new has been invented. The arrangement is at the very least over four thousand centuries old. That is a long precedent! It is a very strong verification for the foundation of this hexagram design. 

Keep in mind, while artist is proud of this re-discovery, this is not the only bagua design. There are other classic arrangements of the hexagrams  known as the King Wen Arrangement or the Lo Shu for instance. What makes the Pre-Heaven Arrangement’s particular sequence so unique is it’s accurate positioning of the primordial archetypes. We have implemented it into our piece because it has a more finely-tuned, natural fit to our holistic design practice.