The problem with trying to figure things out is that sometimes what humans are up to is contradictory. The I Ching symbol system tries to do more than one thing, some of what it does is simple and at a single level of organization, the Early Heaven version of the trigrams, some of it is very complex, the Late Heaven version and the hexagrams and the Chinese notion of five elements.
Talk about everything, metaphysical talk, is not parsimonious like physical talk, like physics. Sometimes, as Kant points out in the eight dogmatic points of view, infinite against finite, simple to complex, ends up being so complex that in the end you can not say much at all. My conclusion is that you can describe these as processes, the metaphysician finds himself, herself describing some kind of process, thus, the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead with its eternal objects (set points of the Wind trigram in our system) and its actual occasions (phenotypes of the Earth trigram in our system) and its nexus points (complexes of the Lake trigram in our system) and its processes (breaks in the system in the Flame trigram in our system).
Julius Kovesi in Moral Notion shows these to be built into the language system and its way of forming ideas out of what Kovesi calls “Material Elements” (Earth trigram in our system) and “Formal Elements” (Wind trigram in our system). The notions themselves would be Mountain trigram (analysis and the mental process, the formation of impressions) and the multilevel aspect where a moral notion is an idea that refers back to the person as one of the authors of the system that generates formal elements, values, thus, having special status, this whole system of language based rules would be the Water Pit trigram in our system. Any attempt to combine it and append it to other systems would be the Lake trigram. Its breakdown would be Flame; its sources in the environment would be Heaven. Its use and contingent expression would be Thunder. So much of our assumptions, our symbolism, our temper, and our metaphysics are language system based.
Where our society is at in a particular situation can be shown by its symbols. Oswald Spengler, in his “Decline and Fall” shows how this developed in the phase of the development of the Greek city state, what Spengler calls the “Apollonian.” The idea of a temple made of pillars on a hill, probably suggested an olive grove on a hill to the Greeks. The separate pillars of a temple on a hill may have suggested the turn of mind that characterized the Greeks at that time. The desire to isolate and withdraw and yet maintain the integrity of each of the important members of their city state system, thus the separate pillars, the notion of a council of the gods on top of Mount Olympus. This is a Mountain trigram stage of the society’s development. It is analytic and isolative; it involves what Toynbee called “withdrawal and return.”
Spengler describes this Apollonian idea as gradually giving way to what he calls the “Magian” and the “Faustian.” For, Toynbee, this is the gradual disintegration of the Hellenic civilization and its entering an interregnum out of which what he calls Orthodox (Spengler’s Magian) and Western civilization (Spengler’s Faustian) will emerge.
You can watch the process as the temple on the hill moves down the hill and becomes one of several temples and buildings around a central square, the Roman forum. Around these forms large buildings will collect. Some of them amphitheaters like the Coliseum, others enormous baths and basilicas. The Pantheon is a great drum holding a dome with an opening in the center. The forum stage may show a movement toward a realistic temper, toward the Earth trigram phase of this system. The Pantheon, baths, etc., the developing Magian stage seems to symbolize a universal tent, a universal state, the movement of the Hellenic civilization toward an inclusive system, toward the temper we associate in our approach with the Baroque, with the Water Pit trigram stage.
Later, once the civilization has passed through its vulgarization, its disintegration, perhaps symbolized by the Thunder trigram, by the open pit of spectacles that was the Coliseum, these buildings will become more mountain like, and then seem to reach up into the air and develop spires and bell towers. This Romanesque seems to be a movement from a late Baroque toward a new idealism, from Earth to Water Pit to Wind to Heaven trigram, and finally a new magical mentality as the Gothic cathedral develops in its creative glory (Heaven trigram) and you get the source of the new Western civilization in its primitive aboriginal Gothic Romantic beginnings, what Spengler calls Faustian.
The civilization of the Islamic area will develop in a different direction, seen in the gardens of the Alhambra and the Taj Mahal. In the East civilization will remain in the Water Pit stage, or move toward Lake and the notion of an enclosed pool or garden. This symbolism will be found often in civilizations that are basically involve in the maintenance of the status quo through withdrawal and recombination, through adjustments to accommodate external and internal proletariats, thus, the symbolism of an enclosed compound, lake, pool, garden found in China, Japan, North Africa, and Central Asia.
The Buddhist civilization of Asoka symbolizes the universal state in its cave tent that is the early temple. Gradually, the dominant minority will triumph and the cave tent will become the symbolic mountain temple, the Mount Meru that symbolizes the social pyramid that is the caste system with the dominant gods of the dominant minority place at the high points on the Wind trigram mountain, air blowing across the adaptive peaks, that symbolizes the triumph of these upper classes and their withdrawal from any forces that would cause deep change.
Ankor Wat will combine these features of the Lake and Water Pit and Wind trigrams to symbolize a caste system that brings all parts together in service of a ruling minority.
But, symbolically the Water Pit of the West will shatter on the pyramids of the Aztec civilization in the valley of Mexico. These symbols of bleeding volcanoes will be the Flame trigram elements, the external barbarian elements that Western civilization will attempt to assimilate by a return to its Romantic and Symbolic tempers, to Lake and Heaven trigram creative mutation and recombination phases, but this will fail and Western civilization will tumble into the disintegration and vulgarization phase, the Thunder symbolize by its great sports pavilions, the expressionist temper of its emergence.
Even so, its is not that simple. The Faustian civilization of the West disintegrates in order to give birth to new and higher levels of organization as industrial, electronic, and program levels of organization replace the old system rooted in oral and written language.