A sample case born under the influence of two Chinese hours and symbols
As a sample, here's one of the really famous persons from the site author's native Sweden: now deceased film director Ingmar Bergman who made a substantial name for himself internationally. Known for his angst ridden films, he often dealt with topics such as death, the problem of guilt and existence itself.
Bergman was of course very interested in human psychology and its darker recesses. In his native country, there was mocking references to "my inner demons," echoing Bergman himself. He certainly seems to have been a very nervous side, like hyper observant and alert persons often have. He was also known for being attracted to lovely ladies and his resume shows a succession of marriages to beautiful and artistic women. Would such a hypersensitive and composite character in a convincing way be reflected by the birth symbol? Well it better, because else there is not much to this system! Each Chinese hour corresponds to two Western and experience has shown that in a given case you can often notice the traits of the upcoming hour or a lingering of the time segment just closed. Predictably, Bergman is such a dual nature causing us problems since we get TWO birth symbols which must be considered jointly. His main birth sign is "The Gradually Progressing" (number 53):
But there may be parts of his character and life better described by the secondary theme, "The Lonely Wanderer" (number 56):
Actually, both these symbols fit Bergman very well and here's why. "Gradual Progress" says quite a bit about the ability to bring a drawn-out project (like creating a movie) to a successful conclusion. It has much to do with keeping the goal in sight and not allow the initial idea to start drifting. The hexagram of gradualism consists of the symbols for "mountain" and above that the sign for "wind" (or a tree). The slow growth is to be understood as caused by the harsh climate to which a tree on top of a mountain is exposed. There may be something of Bergman's childhood hinted at in this (a childhood so often revisited for material for his films). It is important to understand we are here dealing with symbols operating on both a micro and a macro level - "gradual progress" expresses Bergman as a person as well as the general trend of his life. His rise to fame was not rapid, but eventually he became a world famous director. One may even go so far as to speculate whether this type of personality ever involves itself in projects not promising a "gradual," almost natural organic development. The result of such work is durable and tightly knit without loose ends - their work is the out reflection of the "essence" of their birth hour. This astrology is so simplistic one wonders whether this can actually be the final word - are we living this life/going through this incarnation on earth for the express purpose of becoming an expert in just one "motion"? Or perhaps two? As noted, Bergman like many others, are born with two completely different symbols which will sometimes broaden the palette. But as the trigram Sun has its double representation of wind as well as wood - the idea of "penetration" being the central concept behind both phenomena - we can also read the symbol as "penetrating winds," e.g. directions via communication going forth from the mountain. And the mountain in China is of course the most direction giving phenomenon there is! This trigram is associated with control and the "firm grip of the hand" - certainly very fitting for a director and literally true in the case of world famous Swedish tennis player Bjorn Borg too! In his day, he was known for using a peculiar two hand grip on his tennis racket. Borg and Bergman both speak very slowly and it appears a lot of mental organization goes prior to the words coming out of their mouths. They thus may seem a little slow, but again check the title of this birth pattern: "the gradually progressing"! I have even contributed an alternative for these pages "The Circumstantial" which is very much to the point - people with the mountain present in their birth symbols like to arrange and structure things, and so I have found this trigram to be excessively common with Hollywood movie stars, sometimes doubled so that the person is almost a caricature of the "firm, taciturn but reliable mountain." Need I say more than Clint Eastwood (hexagram 52, mountain doubled) to bring this point across? But back to Bergman again and now the hexagram ruling the hour closest to his actual birth hour. Again we find the mountain at the base, something which might be interpreted as an omen by itself. Keeping things (and persons?) in their proper places obviously is very important here. But then the coherence seen in "Gradual Progress" goes missing, for on top of this mountain we don't find a slowly growing tree but a volatile fire burning of the vegetation on the mountain slopes. Fire on top of the mountain is the symbol of the "Traveler" of a restless moving about, of a person not rooted anywhere but free to move about. And as the fire is associated with the eye it is not hard to visualize the movie director moving about, either mentally or physically, to get various perspectives on the same scene, represented by the formulaic and formalistic mountain. The "traveling light/fire" thus turns into a very intellectual type of hexagram, dealing with conscious (fire) perceptions! The downside is that the volatility of this hexagram may sometimes denote a very unsettled and nervous personality - just as we initially noted Bergman to be! The, in a sense, destructive nature of fire is to burn off the grass on the mountain and thus forcing it to move on to find new fuel. In this we may perhaps seen a compulsive creativity but also a consumption of people and wives! Fire is conscious apprehension but it continuously needs new raw material to recreate in conscious representations. Students of these symbols in their original context of the I Ching knows that The Traveler is "he with few friends." They consume people! In Sweden, Bergman is literally known as a loner or recluse. Besides being correlated with natural phenomena, the eight trigrams all cover different portions of human experience. Noticing that world famous psychologist Carl Gustav Jung was born under the trigram of streaming water - fire's opposite - one may wonder why Berman, with his keen interest in human nature did not have water as part of his symbolism. This brings us to a vulnerability of this particular form of astrology: the overlap between symbols is such that many times it is very difficult to make a case for "this" hexagram being a better description than "that." It should be noted though, that the "Chinese water" relates more to the subconscious and the instincts, while fire indicates the conscious mind which patterns and arranges all impressions to make a graspable whole out of the sense impressions. Thus fire fits Bergman much better than Jung's birth "under water," showing the latter's immense interest in what happens "below the arranged surface." In a sense, Jung is the deeper of the two by water being "light within darkness" while fire is "darkness within light," and part of the Bergmanian "nervousness" may just be because of the emphasis on fire's proclivity for arranging the external world. The Chinese character "li," to which fire has been associated in this system, actually means a "trapping net" which is a very good simile for the way our conscious minds acts upon and alters true reality (whatever that is!) in order to present us with an arranged and thereby understandable world. In the I Ching, fire also occurs in connection with hexagrams dealing with the arrangement of society and the relations between people and this is very close to one of Bergman's standing theme in his movie making! One last and important observation. We have here discussed the doubled birth symbolism one symbol at a time. But in reality these two hexagrams and their four trigrams "inhabit" one person and the outcome of any given mix may be very hard to predict! In Bergman's case the situation is somewhat simplified since both symbols agree on the basis: the mountain, the "hand that grips," the firm and even stubborn and inflexible. But look at the "upper" aspect of the symbols and try to superimpose wood on fire (or vice versa). Now things start happening and we may get a glimpse of Bergman's obsession with death and the impermanence of all things. Students of Chinese thought of course knows that "fire conquers or destroys wood" and the very attempt to house these elements in the very same spot (or within the span of one life on earth) will of course mean combustion! In Bergman's case, it has led to the refining effects of fire since there has always been wood (fuel) there to keep the fire of his clear sight burning! We now enter upon the part of this system that has a lot to do with informed speculation. Given a thorough knowledge of the components involved (shouldn't be too hard since there is only 8 trigrams combinable into 64 signs), we are well equipped to produce various likely predictions concerning some "typical" traits. Bergman's configuration of fire and wood in the upper position brings to mind hexagram 50, "The Sacrificial Caldron," a truly remarkable symbol dealing with authority (movie director?) and stability. But by reversing the order of the trigrams we get number 37, "Family Relations." And this, if anything, is the heart of the subject matter of Bergman's life and film productions! So just go ahead. In cases of a doubled birth symbol you can more fully create your own story from the highly suggestive skeleton provided by the I Ching when used as a somewhat fatalistic system of birth omens! |
