The Macrobiotic perception of yin as expansive and yang as contractive is exactly opposite the reality! Read on for the explanation....
HOW COULD anything so simple be so complicated? But it is! For one thing, there are 2 different stories of how the concept of Yin and Yang even originated!
The prevalent story is this: A long, long time ago (no one seems to know exactly when), the concept of Yin and Yang arose in the mind of someone (no one seems to know exactly whom), as nothing more than the idea that: A sunny place in the natural environment could be described as Yang, and a shady place as Yin.
Time passed (Time itself being another concept, which had come into someone's mind, of course : ^ ). People were not content just to keep looking at Yin and Yang as a shady spot or a sunny spot. They felt compelled to look for other Yins and Yangs. The greatest yang they could think of, they called Heaven (the sky); and Earth was the greatest yin. So, then we had:
Heaven (sky) = Great Yang
Earth = Great Yin.
Heaven was seen as creative, generative, active -- so those characteristics became associated with yang in general. Earth was seen as receptive and passive -- and those characteristics became associated with yin in general.
THE OTHER story is the one told by Roy Collins, who has researched the subject more than anyone else I know of. He distinguishes 2 general schools of thought: the "physical school" and the "metaphysical school" of perceiving yin and yang. He says the physical school was the earliest, and the physical perception is the one taught in Macrobiotics. Here's a forum posting, in which Roy lists a great many people who have championed either system, throughout recorded history.
In case that whets your appetite, here's a long article detailing Roy's version of the story: "The Origins & Legacy of the Physical Concept of Yin and Yang".
Here's a very brief summary of it:
A guy named Fu Xi (or Fu Hsi) looked up at the sky one day, saw it as expansive, and called it "The Yielding" or Yin. Then he stamped his feet on Earth, saw it as solid, and called it "The Firm" or Yang.
[NOTE: Fu Xi himself was apparently another version of Noah! After the land was covered by a great flood, only Fu Xi and his sister Nüwa (hmmm, maybe she was Noah!) survived. They prayed for a sign from Heaven, to allow them to mate, so the human race would continue. They got the sign ... and here we are today!]
Looking carefully at these 2 stories -- and ignoring the terms "yin" and "yang" for the moment -- we see at first what appears to be agreement. Both are seeing sky/Heaven as expansive! But Fu Xi describes that expansiveness as "yielding" -- in other words, receptive or passive. The sky expands itself, in the process of yielding to the firmness of Earth!
In the other story, the expansiveness of sky/Heaven is seen as active and creative, out-going -- and the Earth (firm and compact) as passive and receptive (the familiar picture, in fact, of Earth as a creation of Heaven; created by contraction/compression).
The story of Fu Xi says he created, eventually -- from the understanding of sky as yielding, and Earth as firm -- the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. According to Roy Collins, Fu Xi had this viewpoint because, in those days, the people were Earth-worshippers. Therefore, it was natural for them to see Earth as active, Heaven (sky) as passive.
Later (in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, ending in 249 BCE), people became Heaven-worshippers. And that was when the system of yin and yang supposedly changed from physical to metaphysical. The Zhou ruler known as King Wen allegedly got hold of Fu Xi's hexagrams and really scrambled them! Among other things, he changed them so that "The Firm" came to represent Heaven (sky), and "The Yielding" came to represent Earth! (Hence, today's I Ching equates Heaven with "Great Yang" and Earth with "Great Yin".) This was also when Heaven became associated with maleness, and Earth with femaleness.
And -- you know how people are! -- they started applying the concept of Yin and Yang to absolutely everything! The Moon was yin, the Sun was yang. Female was yin, Male was yang. Night was yin, Day was yang.
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