Yin and Yang · 陰陽

The first cut of the uncarved block: from the nameless one comes two — yin (shadowed, yielding, receptive, the valley) and yang (sunlit, active, giving, the ridge) — and from their endless interplay, everything. They are not warring opposites but a single turning whole: each carries the seed of the other, and at its extreme each becomes the other, dusk into dawn into dusk. The Tree draws the same polarity as two pillars — Chesed, loving expansion, and Gevurah, restraining severity — but resolves them differently: not by rotation but by a third thing, the middle pillar that holds them in balance. A circle that turns, against a pillar that reconciles.