October 14, 2004

• Star Wars,
  continued

  The Eight

  Lest the reader of the previous entry mistakenly take Katherine Neville’s book The Eight
  more seriously than Fritz Leiber’s greatly superior writings on
  eightness, here are two classic interpretations of Leiber’s “spider” or
  “double cross” symbol:

  Aristotle: The 4 elements and the 4 qualities (On Generation and Corruption, II, 3)

  Richard Wilhelm: The 8 trigrams (Understanding the I Ching, 154-175)

  The Six

  Less impressive, but not
  completely without interest,
  is the six-pointed star:

  

  This symbol consists of
  two triangles
  
  representing
  male and female,
  fire and water,
  up and down,
  etc., etc., etc.

  For some deeper properties
  of the number eight, see a
  Log24.net entry of 4/4/03.

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