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Inverted Yin-Yang?

A

Anonymous

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Does an inverted yin-yang have any different meaning?
 
How can you invert them - the two are definite (immuntable) states.
 
A regular yin-yang symbol has white pointing up, and black pointing down, so an inverted one would have black pointing up, and white pointing down.
 
I'm not sure if an inverted symbol means anything.
 
eldritch69 said:
A regular yin-yang symbol has white pointing up, and black pointing down, so an inverted one would have black pointing up, and white pointing down.
Click to expand...
I still can't tell if the Union Jack is being flown the right way up, or not. And I don't really care. :)

unionjac.gif
 
In the fiction series by Robert Jordan the goodies display the symbol one way up as a flame. The baddies display it the otherway up as a fang.

http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/gs/Brand ... jordan.gif

has a picture. Looking again it can't be the other way up, just a different emphasis in the design.

I have not heard of there being a difference in real life. So there probably is!

M
 
I thought the only 'wrong' way of displaying the Yin-Yang was to have it 'flat', i.e. with the dividing line horizontal, as it could imply primacy of one aspect over the other. Having the centre flat can also imply stasis or stagnant equilibrium, which is kind of antithetical to its meaning.

Wasn't this one of the spooky 'reasons' given for Bruce Lee's death, that his dojo's symbol used an improper Yin-Yang, for which he was cursed?
 
I stumbled across this (it appears to be a complex issue with a lot of debate in feng shui circles but I'll let people dig into it if they are interested. The Ba Gua is an octagonal mirror):

For Black Sect Buddhists and other New Age types, their Bagua (or Ba Gua, Pa Kua) is a so-called "mystical octagon of symbolic correlations," This cafeteria-style approach to borrowed ideas was whipped into a lovely froth from Western cultural icons and concepts. The new bagua supposedly represents "eight fundamental life conditions" that correlate to "a different aspect of ourselves." Yet it was created within the last twenty years and marketed entirely to New Agers ignorant of Asian culture.

According to Ho Lynn's article in the execrable Feng Shui Anthology (published and edited by Jami Lin), this new Bagua was created by self-proclaimed "wandering impostor" Thomas Lin Yun, founder and spiritual leader of an American minority church called Black Sect Tibetan Buddhism. The new bagua is marketed as a "revolutionary" and "innovative" step in Chinese philosophy. In fact, it is so "revolutionary" that Asians laugh it off and the few sinologists aware of it snort derisively at its mention. As one Korean-American practitioner of martial and healing arts said, "This is the sort of thing that Asians would use to make money off non-Asians." The theories are labeled "Mutationist" for good reason.

According to the Feng Shui Anthology, Lin Yun took the Taiji (the Primordial, Great Unity or "Yin Yang symbol," as everyone calls it) and set it spinning in its opposite direction. The Taiji and its corresponding systems move clockwise. A left-spinning Taiji — that is, one spinning counterclockwise — correlates with global culture's views of aberrant behavior, misfortune, and necromancy.

Left (lyft: "weak," "worthless" in Old English) still retains its primordial associations with antisocial behavior and disaster, the concept of sinister ("left hand," "unlucky side"), in Sanskrit sauvastika ("all is evil," movement which upsets the whole of nature). The Tibetan Bon religion uses symbols flowing counterclockwise to indicate black magic and opposition to Buddhism. A movement withershins ("against-direction"), nirrita, or cartua-sul traditionally begins and ends in irreverence, heterodoxy, perversity, death, infertility, and black arts.
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www.qi-whiz.com/McFengshui/Mcbagua.html

The article has more links to pages dealing with Lin Yun and also Black Sect Tibetan Buddhism.

The two ways of the yin yang:
http://www.qi-whiz.com/images/baguas.gif

At left: The traditional Primordial or Taiji is shown flowing clockwise. Lin Yun's counterclockwise version is at right.
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