This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
乙
In brief: saving the people of the world with the Great Law
Common reading
The second of the heavenly stems, used as a name for second in order. Shuowen: “乙: plants coming out bent and crooked; pictographic.” Baihutong: “乙: things flourishing, bent and jointed, about to come out.” Lu Ji, “Rhapsody on Literature”: “Thoughts come out haltingly (乙乙), as if drawn out.” Shiji, “Treatise on Pitch-pipes”: “Among the ten mothers it is 甲乙. 甲 is the myriad things splitting their husks (甲) and coming out; 乙 speaks of the myriad things growing with effort.”
Design reading
The long horizontal on top depicts the Great Law, joined to a left-falling-turn-bend-hook: the left-falling stroke goes left, outward, and the bend-hook shows saving others so that they rise. The whole stroke, component and character express saving the people of the world with the Great Law. After the Great Law was taught, the first step was the stage of personal cultivation, and the second the stage of cultivation in the Fa-rectification. So 甲 (the first stage, first) stands for personal cultivation and rising, and 乙 (the second stage, second) for saving the people of the world.
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.