Airy: white 37%, yellow 18%, pink 17%, ….
Heller (1989)

Semanticus F. Alpaerts suggests in De Denkbeeldige Ruimte (1980) that the I Ching or Book of Changes, originating from mythical antiquity, is the first semantic lexicon of mankind. In this Chinese classic, unquestionably one of the most influential books in the world’s literature, 64 chapters are coded with a double triplet line code called hexagrams.

Alpaerts used the Wilhelm (1971) translation to show a possible connection between the code lines from the I Ching and the codon encoding in the Semantic Colour Space. The open (- -) and closed (—) lines from the I Ching correspond with respectively the 0’s and 1’s from his semantic coding system. This way he could associate the concepts described in the 64 chapters of the I Ching, with the eight primary colours and their combinations (8×8) from his classification. Later, his hypothesis was confirmed by a comparative research he conducted on the similarities between his keyword-colour classifications, in which the concepts from the I Ching form an important part, and the empirical data from sociologist Eva Heller’s word-to-colour association study (Alpaerts, 1993).

The following list includes I Ching chapter titles with links to pages in the DSD (between brackets: if the title is not in the DSD, a synonym), chapter numbers, digital coding (hexagram), and colour combinations.

The striking cubic shape of the temple at Arkona is also found among the Celts. According to C. Schuchardt, the Slavs would have adopted this type of building from the Celts, while its radiation centre could be found in Byzantium and Armenia. The Temples of Garz were of the same square type. The outer walls of the temple of Arkona were made of carved and polychrome wood, on which rested a red roof.

Inside, curtains were stretched around four pillars, creating an enclosed space for the statue of Svetovit, the Slavic supreme god. (Vynke, 1969). He had four heads, facing the four corners of the globe, thus representing his all-encompassing and central power. This cubic temple had an oracle that predicted the future using a white horse and a dice. In the temple was the treasury of the tribe. Helmold situates this supreme god in heaven, but there is no evidence for this. On the contrary, the clear line that we can draw from nature worship to the temple cult proves that East Slavic religion has always remained bound to the earthly, material things (Vyncke, 1969).

This produces an interesting semantic construction that can be represented with the following coding in the Semantic Colour Space:

8-level

• earth, horse: 000
• four: 010
• wind, white: 110

64-level

• all-encompassing, centre of the world, cube, square, fortune, treasury: 010:000
• future predicting, white horse: 110:000
• die, fate, four corners of the globe, compass: 110:010

I. Michiels, red.