mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Chinese Cosmology The ancient Chinese world view, or cosmology , can be seen in script, art, and architecture. A round heaven atop a square earth is symbolized in the form of the turtle and situates China, the Middle Kingdom, as the center of the world. Looking at a Dragon Bone divination, scored by means of a hot iron scored into the turtle's breast bone, the plastron, a sage would derive Chinese logographs as answers to his hypotheses. Sacrifices including humans were placed in urns or vases. This plastron comes from a water turtle and metaphorically simulates the land mass of China, Jong Qua, the Middle Kingdom. Therefore, artifacts, like the turtle underbelly, symbolize China in the cosmos. Graves followed this same pattern, as does the ya logograph designating one's title, synonymous with the English word "Lord." The cross form in the ya, graves, and turtle design include five rectangles or squares: the center being China of the Shang Dynasty, with lands north, east, west, and south. Where the turtle's legs appear are the sources of winds from the northeast, northwest, southwest, and southeast. Interlarded in these relationships is the source of feng shua geomancy. These five landmasses constituted the Chinese world and echoed the five elements of Chinese philosophy. Chinese mytho-historical narratives, composed during the Zhou Dynasty from 1000-250 B.C.E., tell of two ancient dynasties, the Xia and the Shang. Dragon Bones are the sole literary artifacts from the Shang, which reigned from 1550 to 1000 B.C.E. The Xia probably is only a binary projection, mirroring the Shang: Xia can mean below; Shang, above. The Xia was populated with dragons and aquatic beasts and spirits like those found in Ch'eng-en's Monkey; the Shang, with humans and animals, a kind of Darwinian scheme. The sun or suns, for here were ten representing the days in the Shang week, rose in the east from a Mulberry Tree near the sacred mountain Taishan and set in the Ruo Tree in the east near Huashan, circling nightly via the Yellow Stream back to the east. (after S. Allen, _The Shape of the Turtle_) The Chinese world view valued balance, harmony, concord. Some scholars feel that these two dynasties, the Xia and the Shang, with their antagonistic opposites gave rise to the yin/yang philosophy central to Taoism.