AUTHOR’S NOTE: As I continue my exploration of the syncretism between the tarot and the I Ching, I encountered this I Ching mandala in Benebell Wen’s book, I Ching. the Oracle: A Practical Guide to the Book of Changes. The discussion involved a square of eight trigrams within a circle of 64 hexagrams, and since I’ve been relating the twelve zodiacal tarot trumps to these trigrams and, by extension, various hexagrams, I decided to bring the two together. (The I Ching text herein is from the Wilhelm-Baynes translation, copyright 1977, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.)

Drawing on my previous work, I made the following correlations:

The Emperor: Trigram Li (dominant Fire)
The Hierophant: Trigram K’un (subordinate Earth);
The Chariot: Trigram K’an (dominant Water);
Justice: Trigram Ch’ien (dominant Air as Heaven)
Death: Trigram Chen (subordinate Water as Thunder);
The Devil: Trigram Ken (dominant Earth as Mountain)
The Star: Trigram Sun (subordinate Air as Wind)
The Moon: Trigram Tui (dominant Water as Lake)

The layout of cards includes all four Cardinal trumps (Aries/Fire; Cancer/Water; Libra/Air; and Capricorn/Earth) which I’ve associated with the “dominant” (or upper) trigram of the hexagrams I created with them in a previous post. There are three Fixed trumps, one each in Water, Air and Earth (Scorpio/Water; Aquarius/Air; and Taurus/Earth); these I’ve equated to the “subordinate” (or lower) trigram of the related hexagrams. I included only one Mutable trump (Pisces/Water); because the Cardinal and Mutable trumps bracket the Fixed trumps in the zodiac, I also categorized the Mutable cards as being “dominant.” Although I’ve included no Fixed or Mutable Fire trumps, the image suggests a flame (the Emperor) rising above a vessel of lamp oil formed by the other three Cardinal trumps, giving Fire a commanding presence.

With the exception of the classical dualism of Fire and Water, I’ve tried to work with the dominant-and-subordinate opposites of the various elements in the display: Mutable and Fixed Water; Cardinal and Fixed Air; and Cardinal and Fixed earth. The opposites are the Emperor (Cardinal Fire) and the Chariot (Cardinal Water); the Moon (Mutable Water) and Death (Fixed Water); Justice (Cardinal Air) and the Star (Fixed Air); and the Devil (Cardinal Earth) and the Hierophant (Fixed Earth).

There are a number of other interesting correlations here. For example, I often think of the Chariot as the “mobile throne” of the Emperor when he goes to war, and uniting the energies of Fire and Water conveys the idea of “steam power;”

The Chariot corresponds with the Water sign Cancer, and in Chinese metaphysics Water is an “agent of change” with the connotation of “returning” (think of the endless natural cycle of evaporation and precipitation), so rather than “sallying forth in triumph” we could say that the Chariot suggests “circling back around to strike an unexpected blow from behind” (I believe there will be an essay on this one);

Justice and the Star are “numerological counterparts” since 17 equals 8 by Theosophical reduction (1+7=8);

The Hierophant and the Devil have been linked through their similar hand gestures, one a benediction and the other a malediction;

Cardinal Libra has been elevated to the status of “Heaven” since I think of it as “rarefied Air” when compared to the more commonplace “atmospheric” Air of Fixed Aquarius;

Death and the Moon are both ambiguous cards that form an equatorial boundary between the upper and lower hemispheres of the pattern; above them we have Earth, Wind and Fire (sorry, I couldn’t resist that pop-culture reference), and below a transposed version with Water replacing Fire, thereby producing a symmetrical six-card array that is dominated by Air and Earth.

I’ve used these pairs of opposites to create two hexagrams from each set: first with the “dominant” trump’s trigram in the upper position and the “subordinate” one below, then reversing this arrangement. Here is a list of the results:

The Emperor (Li) and the Chariot (K’an), first as Fire over Water, Hexagram 64, Wei Chi (Before Completion), then as Water over Fire, Hexagram 63, Chi Chi (After Completion)

The Devil (Ken) and the Hierophant (K’un), first as Mountain over Earth, Hexagram 23, Po (Splitting Apart/Disintegration), then as Earth over Mountain, Hexagram 15, Ch’ien (Modesty/Moderation)

Justice (Ch’ien) and The Star (Sun), first as Heaven over Wind, Hexagram 44, Kou (Coming to Meet), then as Wind over Heaven, Hexagram 9, Hsio Ch’u (The Taming Power of the Small/Restraint)

The Moon (Tui) and Death (Chen), first as Lake over Thunder, Hexagram 17, Sui (Following), and then as Thunder over Lake, Hexagram 54, Kuei Mei (The Marrying Maiden/Misfortune)

I am at the very beginning of this study and have yet to read the text for each of these hexagrams, but the descriptive phrases are intriguing when taken as opposite sides of the same coin. Should two of these trumps appear together in a tarot reading, even if they aren’t adjacent to one another, it may be possible to create an overarching motif from the pair and their hexagrams using the advice given in the Book of Changes.