Feminine Wisdom and the World-Soul

There is certainly timeless beauty, elegance and truth to the yin-yang symbol. I learned about it in my history class in sixth grade and I found it a great metaphor for life but I found it hard to grasp the underlying principle. Are those cosmic (physical) forces? Biological forces (chi). Psychological principles? Or just an abstract philosophical idea? Were those just random opposites, as it often seemed to me, or was there much more to it? Female (yin) and male (yang) are often used to explain the underlying principles and that does make sense to some extent. This principle has been used by David Kibbe among others to categorise body types from most feminne to more masculine (see above). However, as a teen I did find the female - male distinction more puzzling than explanatory. Why should the female yin be associated with darkness and night and not light, when it’s women who give birth and men who often destroy it. Why was yang order, when women tend to be more orderly than men? Why was the unknown associated with yin, when men venture out into the unknown more often than women? It’s not that the male-female idea seemed wrong, but only a part of a bigger story.

Cultural and Religious Studies, 2018

The traditional way of thinking about women in ancient Chinese philosophy was grounded on the concepts of Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are the basic principles of the being, the interrelation and interaction between which provide the original force for the emergence of all beings in the world. In the traditional family construction, men as Yang master the affairs outside the family, and women as Yin master the affairs inside the family (男主外， 女主内), which means that women normally had no voice in the social affairs. Her field was limited inside the family. Furthermore, according to Confucian doctrine "husband guides wife" (夫为妻纲), husband is the decision maker of a family, as a king in a state. The prejudice against woman has persisted to the present. This paper will show that within the Confucian tradition, the ontological principles of Yin and Yang have been abused to a certain degree, and women became the sacrifice of the interpretation with this prejudice. The author will argue in this paper, that the Yin-yang principle itself is very flexible. It contains much richer possibilities of interpretation than that had been interpreted in the Confucian tradition. The author's argument is that if we recognized that each person is a complete Yin-Yang system, we would understand that every human being is a complete and independent person with both virtues of Yin and Yang. Yin is not a substance which restricts women, neither Yang to men. From this perspective, every woman has the potentiality to reach her universality and individuality. The author's claim is that in building feminism with the resource of ancient Chinese thought, the concepts of Yin and Yang can be revived and given a new life if we think about them in a functional way. In this framework, Yin and Yang are correlative functions in social and family operation. The properties of Yin and Yang are determined only in each particular affair. People practicing functions are Yin or Yang in temporality.

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n Traditional Chinese Medicine we learn the theories of yin and yang and the relationships between the two: (1) opposition: that all things have two aspects; (2) interdependence: yin and yang create each other; (3) mutual consumption: yin and yang control each other; (4) inter-transformation: yin and yang transform into each other. These relationships can arise in health and in illness when Yin and Yang have been left in an unbalanced state for a period of time. However, when the balance is impaired for a long enough time another possibility occurs: the loss of relationship between Yin and Yang, and their separation. It is this process and stage that is often poorly understood. Many assume that once this happens, death is the inevitable result. Contemporary Oriental Medicine® (COM) and Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis (CCPD) are used to diagnose this 'separation' in its many varied stages from mild to moderate to severe and can intervene accordingly to reestablish the re...

Integrative Medicine Research, 2021

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Psychology and Developing Societies, 2011

A silent discourse pervades psychology regarding how its theories are framed. This framing process needs to be brought more to the fore to challenge the traditional frames in Western psychology and to explore frames drawn more from Eastern traditions. Two primordial archetypal symbols, yin/yang and the mandala were partially developed by Jung in his attempt to employ Eastern frames for psychological understanding. Both symbols are highlighted as offering a prelinguistic discourse of implication requiring further examination. A relational discourse of assumed connection and assumed separation, expressed through concentric and diametric structures of relation underlying yin/yang and the mandala, are argued to be meaningful for psychology. Jung's attempts to embed psychological theory with Eastern symbolic frames can be construed as the first wave of this process for psychology, and a new wave of interpretation of these primordial symbols offers fresh insights for a culture-inclusive and context-sensitive psychology.

The yin-yang principle is not, therefore, what we would ordinarily call a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity.