1. Pre‐Heaven: The Fundamental 2‐World Dimensions
- Two Orthogonal Splits
- In Pre‐Heaven, you have two fundamental dichotomies (e.g., Heaven vs. Earth and additional yin–yang axes) that yield a “2‐world” viewpoint.
- These “dimensions” define the overall relational field — the cosmic or timeless structure.
- Children & Mediators Not Prominent
- In Pre‐Heaven, Fire (☲) and Water (☵) lie horizontally, overshadowed by Heaven (☰) and Earth (☷).
- The “four children” trigrams exist in symmetrical pairs (Thunder–Wind, Mountain–Lake, etc.) but do not fully express how they enact usage and selection yet.
- Conceptually, it’s a static blueprint: the “2‐world” is laid out, but you don’t yet see the application flows.
2. Post‐Heaven: A New Abstraction Layer (The “Application”)
- Same Dimensions, New Usage
- In Post‐Heaven, you still have the same two fundamental splits from Pre‐Heaven, but they get rearranged around Fire and Water as the vertical axis.
- This rearrangement is a higher‐order usage of the same “2‐world” dimensional logic, but repurposed for time‐based or “ephemeral” cycles.
- Mediators Are Now Primary
- Fire (☲) and Water (☵) become the main vertical axis.
- Each mediates a triangle that uses one dimension in full and “forays” into the other dimension at one corner.
- Hence, each triangle’s “job” can be described as: “I represent Dimension A, but I do a brief incursion into Dimension B.” This is the “triangle’s foray” in Bagua terms.
- Four Children
- The four children trigrams are now recognized as corners (“departments”) of these two triangles, each shaped by whether it’s an initial or final vantage, and which dimension it’s bridging from or to.
- Their previous identity (in Pre‐Heaven) shifts to a new function in the Post‐Heaven synergy: each child is part of a mediator triangle that effectively “applies” those two fundamental dimensions in a task‐oriented manner (e.g., Thunder or Lake fulfilling a corner role in Fire’s triangle).
3. Two Triangles = Two Dual‐Parent–Child Forays
- Class Triangle (Pre‐Heaven Self‐Objectification)
- One triangle (e.g., Fire) encloses and objectifies the original 2‐world dimension from Pre‐Heaven—turning it into a blueprint or “Class” vantage.
- It effectively merges stable usage of the old 2‐world dimension with a brief “dip” into the other dimension, culminating in a triadic synergy.
- Instance Triangle (Post‐Heaven “Application”)
- The second triangle (Water) is the in‐time application of that blueprint.
- It references the same 2‐world dimension (because it “lives” in the same cosmic field), but it centers on ephemeral flow.
- Together, they form a dual synergy: each triangle is a parent vantage that forays into the complementary domain, bridging a child vantage from the “other dimension.”
Hence, the “two dual‐parent‐child forays” connect at a pivot: Fire and Water become the main vertical axis, each hooking into two child vantage corners that reflect partial bits of the original Pre‐Heaven layout.
4. Self‐Objectified Within Itself
Because one triangle (Class) stems from the old 2‐world concurrency as a stable blueprint, and the other (Instance) is the “new” ephemeral usage of that blueprint, the entire dual is self‐objectified:
- Class triangle → “I represent the concurrency logic (2‐world) as a thing (a blueprint).”
- Instance triangle → “I apply that blueprint in ephemeral events, referencing it as a parent vantage but also feeding back new info.”
In Bagua terms, that means we have a layout (Pre‐Heaven) that spawns a new arrangement (Post‐Heaven) which uses the same fundamental dimension set, but now with Fire–Water as mediators pivoting ephemeral usage. So the whole system re-uses its own dimension splits, turning the old 2‐world into a “Class object” and forging ephemeral “Instance” flows from it.
5. Fire–Water Polarity: The Central Theme of Two Arrangements
In the Bagua tradition, Fire (☲) and Water (☵) occupy a unique position across the two circular trigram arrangements—Pre‐Heaven (Fu Xi) and Post‐Heaven (King Wen). These two arrangements reveal different faces of the same basic polarity:
- Pre‐Heaven (Horizontal Placement)
- Fire and Water appear horizontally opposite one another, bridging the pure poles of Heaven (☰) and Earth (☷).
- They stand as the first active pair amid Heaven–Earth’s cosmic extremes. From this vantage, Fire–Water remain balanced in a more object‐like sense, part of a static or “timeless” cosmic arrangement. This is the outer face of Fire–Water: each sees itself in a universal setting, aligned along a horizontal axis that represents the cosmic or structural dimension.
- Post‐Heaven (Vertical Pivot)
- Fire and Water pivot from that horizontal stance to form the vertical axis, overshadowing Heaven–Earth (which recede off to the extremes).
- Now they become the active “parents” in the in‐time, operational domain—Fire at the top, Water at the bottom—mediating real‐time flows. This is the inner face of Fire–Water: each seizes a control vantage (in 4QX terms) to unify wave–particle or stable–ephemeral usage.
- Here they’re no longer “just” part of a static balance, but the true pivot around which daily concurrency runs.
5.1 Why Fire–Water Anchor the Mechanism
In 4QX, these two arrangements map onto the Layer 2 → Layer 3 evolution:
- L2 (Pre‐Heaven‐like) sets up a bare concurrency with pure extremes (Heaven/Earth as pure “unmanifest corners”) and Fire–Water existing in “horizontal” equilibrium.
- L3 (Post‐Heaven‐like) sees Fire (Class mediator) and Water (Instance mediator) become the vertical bridging corners, each heading a cybernetic triangle (Class or Instance). Their polarity drives the entire wave–particle synergy, overshadowing the pure poles (Heaven/Earth) in actual usage.
Hence, Fire–Water are the central polarity that the two Bagua arrangements highlight in distinct ways:
- Horizontally (Pre‐Heaven) to show cosmic or object-level balance,
- Vertically (Post‐Heaven) to show in-world concurrency or agentic synergy.
Each arrangement captures a different face of Fire–Water—outer vs. inner, timeless vs. active—and the 4QX model unifies both, revealing how Fire and Water become the heart of stable–ephemeral concurrency once we shift from the cosmic perspective to the real-time, fractal perspective.
6. Summary
- Pre‐Heaven provides the fundamental 2‐world dimension.
- Post‐Heaven reuses those same dimensions differently—Fire and Water anchor two “triangles,” each handling an entire dimension plus a “foray” into the other.
- This yields four children (two per triangle) whose roles are new, “applied” forms of the original vantage corners.
- The two triangles connect in a pivot relationship (Fire–Water), forming a dual synergy.
- Thus, the entire Bagua is a self‐objectified system: the original 2‐world concurrency is “reflected upon” and “applied” in ephemeral usage, forging a stable–ephemeral swirl (Class & Instance) within itself.
In short, the Post‐Heaven arrangement is the operational “application” of the Pre‐Heaven dimension splits, with each triangle handling one dimension fully and “foraying” briefly into the other. That dual‐triangle swirl is exactly how Bagua enacts a self‐objectifying synergy—mirroring 4QX’s “Class & Instance” architecture at the next level.