On the I Ching & Yi-Globe in Relation to Light & Sound

Terrence McKenna thought of the I Ching as representing elements in the Chinese physics of Time. He said, while the Western mind was focused on what things are made of, the Chinese were more concerned with why things happen as they happen. In other words, the Western mind was focused on matter, while the Chinese were focused on the flux of matter—the change as matter moves from one state to the other: Time.

When we think of sound, we often consider it as a phenomenon rooted in matter—a vibration through a medium—but what if we start to view sound in relation to time? In many ways, sound gives us a temporal dimension to reality. Music, for instance, requires time to “function.” The affect of music is only possible to experience through time, as it is the perception of change from one note to the other. Just as film tells a story through a series of sequential frames, music unfolds in time, as the affect we experience when listening to music is inextricably linked to the experience of time progressing.

Without time, music would lose its structure. The lack of time would result in an explosion of notes occurring all at once, producing a cacophony of noise—a disturbing simultaneity that we cannot make sense of. Instead, music’s power lies in its sequential nature, where past notes blend into present ones, and the listener is constantly anticipating what comes next. This creates a feeling of movement through time, much like how our broader human experience unfolds as a continuous narrative.

In a more material sense, sound is often described as vibrations, a wave motion through a medium like air, liquid, or solid. Physically, sound isn’t a “thing” but an effect—a process, a relationship between pressure and matter. McLuhan’s phrase, “The medium is the message,” takes on new meaning here: the medium (the air or material that carries sound) shapes the experience of sound itself. Sound doesn’t just pass through the medium—it is the medium in motion, manifesting as a wave of pressure that we experience through our senses.

Therefore, sound, much like time, is not a static entity but an ongoing transformation: a temporal flux that connects our perception of the material world with the process of change. In the context of the material world, sound would be better linked with a thing’s form rather than a thing’s material make up, as form is more so about the relationship between elements of matter rather than the matter itself. It’s like in the context of architecture, light (or particles of matter) would be the building blocks, and sound would be the relationship and proportions between the building blocks. We might confuse the building blocks of being the form itself, but it is really the space which allows the form to exist at all. Space is separation which can only exist in three-dimensions through time. What we consider to be form is a particular way in which a thing exists or appears; a manifestation. In short, things are made up in a particular configuration which is experienced over time.

This notion of light and sound in the context of matter and form is quite interesting when you conflate them with ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ focus on the Sun and Moon respectively. To McKenna’s earlier point,