This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
巳
In brief: the snake, which spies on heaven's principles
Common reading
“To resemble.” There are two views of its form in oracle-bone and bronze script: one says it depicts a fetus (Takada Tadachika), a child in the womb, from which 包 derives (Zhu Junsheng, Shuowen Tongxun Dingsheng); the other says it depicts a snake. Shuowen: “In the fourth month yang qi has already come out and yin qi has already hidden; the myriad things appear and form patterns; so 巳 is the snake. Pictographic.” Lunheng: “巳 is fire; its animal is the snake.” The sixth of the earthly branches, belonging to the snake.
Design reading
The vertical-bend-hook extends further up and joins the top horizontal on the left. The snake is just such a special animal: when resting, a snake sometimes holds its tail in its mouth, forming a circuit of the meridians within its body; over a long time it may gain gong and open its wisdom, come to know a little of the low-level principles of the Fa, and even cultivate. But it does not know how to cultivate xinxing, so once it gains gong it is struck down by heaven. Because the shape of its body lets it spy on heaven’s principles, in keeping with the rationale of 巳, 巳 belongs to the snake; this is also why 巳 (sì) sounds like 死 (sǐ, “death”).
Related characters
About this entry
This entry is taken from the edited manuscript of LI Xutong’s Exploring the Design Mysteries of Chinese Characters. The common reading follows traditional philology, the Shuowen Jiezi and other classics, and modern dictionaries; the design reading recovers the rationale of the character’s formation from the meanings of its strokes, the pairing of yin and yang, and the nine-palace layout, following the New Six Scripts. The premise of the design reading, that the generative mechanism of Chinese characters was designed, is an axiom of this system and differs from the evolutionary account usual in philology; the two readings are kept apart, as surface and depth.