Beauty in the ruins (Hexagram 23)

Now that I have cooled to you
Let there be gold of tarnished masonry,
Temples soothed by the sun to ruin
That sleep utterly.


~ William Carlos Williams,
from 'Postlude'

     In the I Ching's sequence of its 64 principles, Hexagram 23, SPLITTING APART / DETERIORATION is placed between GRACE / BEAUTY and RETURN / RENEWAL. Beauty ascends, then withers, as Autumn follows Summer. Winter stills the earth ... and then Spring returns to breathe its green upon what has died ...
     The nuclear hexagram (the inner operating principle) of H23 is H2, THE RECEPTIVE / PURE YIN, symbolized by the Element of Earth ... and the fact of the Earth that is our home. All things emerge from what lives beneath and around us; be assured that after the cooling, the utter sleep, Life will turn over and reveal a new emergence ... 

'Postlude' in full is here.

Photos linked directly 

to their sources.