Dear MJ,
Sorry your question went unanswered for so long. I think Heaven/Yang and Earth/Yin, is one of the rare occurrences
where y/y are looked at the same, in both Chinese and Japanese Yin/Yang. Heaven is considered a powerful spiralic descending force. Earth is considered a nurturing, spiralic ascending force. These are best represented by Heaven/Yang/Male and Earth/Yin/Female (ie. Mother Earth /
Heavenly Father). As you can well imagine, thunder results when the two meet. This subject gets excellent treatment in Michio Kushi's book, "The Gentle Art of Making Love".
A comprehensive article on this website, treating the historical origins of y/y theory, is Roy Collins, "The Origin of Yin/Yang" or "On the Trail of Fu Xi". This includes reasons why Macrobiotic/Japanese y/y is considered true y/y and why
changes affected Chinese y/y. Roy has also written a book on the subject, "Fire Over Heaven". Click on "Articles" on the Cybermacro Menu or this will link you to it:
http://www.cybermacro.com/articles21.html
Nancy
How many marriages do you know depicted like this? --
yin/yang
