Chinese Legend tells how, around 3,320 BCE, the elderly sage Fu Xi was desperate to devise a way to transmit his lifetime's store of wisdom to his people and their descendents. His inspiration came when he was beside the Huang He, the Yellow River, and he saw a wondrous dragon-horse rising from its depths.
The creature, which some people identify as the qilin or Chinese unicorn, circled him slowly, and Fu Xi was fascinated by the curious markings on its back. It seemed somehow as if they were speaking to him. Just by looking at them he understood how to solve his problem.
As soon as the fabulous animal returned to the swirling waters of the Huang He, Fu Xi traced the strange markings from its pelt in the yellow alluvial soil. Tradition holds that this was the first writing, the source of the oldest living written language in the world: the pictograms and ideograms we recognise today as Chinese characters.
They were also the vision of sublime perfection that became known as Early Heaven.
The Early Heaven system of knowledge was actually suppressed in the 2nd millennium BCE following a military revolution in the heart of what is today known as the People's Republic of China.
Ji Chang, later known as King Wen, revised Fu Xi's teachings until they were utterly changed. He did this, around 1,050 BCE, while languishing in prison and plotting an insurrection to overthrow the degenerate Tyrant of Shang.
His sons were victorious in this endeavour, and they instituted their new beliefs throughout the kingdom; the earlier practices were relegated to the spiritual sidelines. It was at this time that the terms "Early Heaven" and "Later Heaven" were coined.
Although the political revolution was understandable, Chang's spiritual revisions to Fu Xi's vision were controversial and, arguably, wrong.
© Ken Taylor 2002 - 2006