Hexagram 3 is the first hexagram where the two kinds of line mingle, and so it’s associated with the very beginnings of life. The Sequence says,
‘There is heaven and earth, and so the ten thousand things are born.
Hexagram 3, Xugua
Overflowing the space between heaven and earth, the ten thousand things.
And so Sprouting follows: Sprouting means filling to overflowing;
Sprouting means the beginning of things’ birth.’
The long-standing ‘primordial soup theory’ of the origins of life on earth says that lightning strikes in surface water created more complex proteins that were the beginning of RNA.
If you squint a little at the trigrams of Hexagram 3 –
– zhen inside kan, or thunderbolt/ shock in the water, you might imagine this as the generative moment.
However, a new theory is catching on, that life began in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. Seismic activity in the depths: a perfect match to zhen within kan.
