Light and Darkness
Carried by eleven chapters
In the constellation
Light and darkness are the two primal powers of the Book of Changes in their cosmic and political struggle. A whole family of hexagrams tracks the calendar of their alternation: the light returns at the winter solstice in 24 Fu - Return (The Turning Point), approaches in 19 Lin - Approach, flourishes in 11 T'ai - Peace, retreats before the ascending dark in 33 TUN - Retreat, 12 P'i - Standstill (Stagnation), and 20 Kuan - Contemplation (View), is split away to a last line in 23 Po - Splitting Apart, and is wounded and hidden in 36 Ming I - Darkening of the light. Of the solstice hexagram the commentary says simply: "The time of darkness is past. The winter solstice brings the victory of light." Of Approach, the warning is equally calendrical: "spring does not last forever. In the eighth month the aspects are reversed."
The struggle is always also political. In Peace "the light principle" holds the center and "the dark principle is outside"; in Standstill "The dark power is within, the light power is without," and superior men can only withdraw. In Splitting Apart the alternation is declared beyond resistance: the conditions of the time "show an alternation of increase and decrease, fullness and emptiness. It is impossible to counteract these conditions of the time. Hence it is not cowardice but wisdom to submit and avoid action."
The counsel of Darkening of the Light is the book's deepest teaching on surviving a dark age:
The light has sunk into the earth:
The image of DARKENING OF THE LIGHT.
Thus does the superior man live with the great mass:
He veils his light, yet still shines.
One maintains the inner light "while remaining outwardly yielding and tractable," like Prince Chi feigning madness at the tyrant's court. And the consolation is built into the cycle itself: at the climax of the darkening, "evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the good, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration."
The Taoist parallel is Tao Te Ching 36, which teaches that to weaken something one must first let it grow strong, and chapter 41, whose bright way seems dark. The veiled light that still shines is the sage of the Tao Te Ching exactly: dim, unregarded, and inextinguishable.