This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
互
In brief: heaven and earth interacting through humans
Common reading
Each other, mutual: “mutual respect and love”, “mutual help and cooperation”, “exchanging what each has”. Interlocking: Wenxuan, Ji Kang, “Rhapsody on the Qin”: “Interlocking (互) ridges, steep and rugged.” Du Fu: “The four seasons are evenly divided, yet how the weather turns and interlocks (互).” Pictographic: a tool for twisting rope. Duan Yucai’s note: “Rope-twisters today still have this tool. From 竹, pictographic; the object looks like the character 工, and the middle depicts a hand pushing and gripping.” Book of Documents, “Canon of Yao”: “Spring and summer meet each other; autumn and winter interlock (互).”
Design reading
Heaven and earth unite to give birth to the three powers. The two horizontals above and below stand for heaven and earth, and the 口 in the middle for humanity; the left vertical of this 口 joins heaven and the right vertical joins earth, showing heaven and earth interacting (互) through humans. Lives born in heaven are reborn on earth as humans, and humans on earth can return to heaven through cultivation: this is the most essential interaction (互) in the universe, and so there is the character 互.
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.