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Taoist Symbol Index
The taijitu, the eight trigrams, the River Chart and the Luo Writing, the Northern Dipper, the gourd of the immortals: the index gives each figure in an original drawing, with the period its form is securely attested and a short account of what it means.
Talismans are deliberately not shown.
11 figures, each drawn for this page
The index
All 11 figures
The tradition
Chinese cosmology and Daoist practice share a stock of figures: diagrams of polarity and change, number figures, the stars of the Dipper, characters written as charms, and emblems of the immortals. Many are older than the forms now printed for them, and many of those forms are later than they look.
This index gives each figure with the period its form is securely attested, a short account of what it means, and a note on how the drawing here relates to the historical forms.
Reading the instrument
- Filter by kind or search by name, character or meaning. Choose a figure to open it beside the index; on a phone it opens below.
- Every figure is an original drawing or a character in a standard face, made for this page. None is traced from a manuscript or presented as a reproduction of one.
- Talismans (fu 符) are left out on purpose: their forms, orientation and use belong to ordination lineages, and published examples are often miscopied.
Where it descends from
- Zhou Dunyi, Taiji tushuo (Explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate)
- The Song text that names the taijitu, for a different figure from the curved disc.
- Zhu Xi, Yixue qimeng
- The Song manual that fixed the He Tu and Luo Shu dot diagrams in the form now standard.
- Shuo Gua (Discussion of the Trigrams)
- The arrangement of the trigrams by direction, called Later Heaven.
- Hou Hanshu, Biographies of the Masters of Techniques
- The story of Fei Changfang and the old man of the gourd.
What this does not claim
The index describes; it does not reproduce historical artefacts, and its drawings should not be cited as evidence of any historical form. Dates give the earliest secure attestation of the form shown, which is often later than the tradition claims. Talismanic material is deliberately not shown.
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