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Concept
Taijitu
Summary
In Chinese philosophy, a taijitu () is a symbol or diagram () representing Taiji () in both its monist (wuji) and its dualist (yin and yang) aspects. Such a diagram was first introduced by Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhou Dunyi (周敦頤; 1017–1073) of the Song Dynasty in his Taijitu shuo (太極圖說).
The modern Taoist canon, compiled during the Ming era, has at least half a dozen variants of such taijitu. The two most similar are the "Taiji Primal Heaven" () and the "wuji" () diagrams, both of which have been extensively studied during the Qing period for their possible connection with Zhou Dunyi's taijitu.
Ming period author Lai Zhide (1525–1604) simplified the taijitu to a design of two interlocking spirals. In the Ming era, the combination of the two interlocking spirals of the taijitu with two black-and-white dots superimposed on them became synonymous with the He tu or "Yellow River diagram" (河圖). This version was reported in Western literature of the late 19th century as the "Great Monad", and has been widely popularised in Western popular culture as the "yin-yang symbol" since the 1960s. The contemporary Chinese term for the modern symbol is 太极兩儀图 "two-part Taiji diagram".
Ornamental patterns with visual similarity to the "yin-yang symbol" are found in archaeological artefacts of European prehistory; such designs are sometimes descriptively dubbed "yin yang symbols" in archaeological literature by modern scholars.
The taijitu consists of five parts. Strictly speaking, the "yin and yang symbol", itself popularly called taijitu, represents the second of these five parts of the diagram.
At the top, an empty circle depicts the absolute (wuji). According to Zhou, wuji is also a synonym for taiji.
A second circle represents the Taiji as harboring Dualism, yin and yang, represented by filling the circle in a black-and-white pattern. In some diagrams, there is a smaller empty circle at the center of this, representing Emptiness as the foundation of duality.
Official source
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