The front cover illustration depicts the "Star of Ishtar or Ashtarte" combining the eight-fold symmetry of the Yi Jing with the eight-rayed star of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.
Her association with the number eight is ancient, as evidenced by clay tablets dating to around 3,000 BCE found at the city of Uruk, which connect her Sumerian name Inanna with the eight-pointed star. This link stems from the fact that her planet (now commonly known as Venus) has a repeating cycle that takes almost exactly eight years.
The Yi Jing is famously derived from the eight 'trigrams' of Fu Xi, who traditionally wrote them down around the year 3,320 BCE, and which are frequently referred to as denoting the eight points of the compass rose. The similarity of dates is highly suggestive of a common source although it must be noted that Fu Xi is a legendary figure, and no depictions of the trigrams have been unearthed in the archaeological record for this period.
Appropriately for a diagram that bridges the celestial and the mundane, the mysterious and the known, the trigrams for Heaven and Earth are found above and below the central image. And these complementary opposites are further celebrated by the union of the square and the circle, symbols regarded in China and elsewhere as respectively representing Earth and all-encompassing Heaven.
It may be a complex picture, drawing as it does on traditions spanning many millennia, and merrily leap-frogging political and ideological boundaries, but the overall design is cohesive and compelling - and the same may be said of the book itself.
Rather like Heraclitus who commented that you cannot step into the same river twice, I fancy this is a book that cannot be read twice because its effect is cumulative - almost poetical in places - and each re-reading conveys a greater breadth of insight, kindling a deeper understanding every time.
In short, the writings of Paul Martyn-Smith are a revelation.
