Annotation - Chapter 7, Page 43

• (43:3) "3 stroaks for Eusa"

One of many significant appearances of the number three. As shown in Chapter 16, adding one stroke changes the E to a Z.

In Russell Hoban: Faithful to the Strange, Graeme Wend-Walker points out that the symbol ☰ is identical to the trigram Qian or Ch'ien (Heaven) in the divination system of the I Ching. He notes that the common English translation of I Ching as Book of Changes has a suggestive similarity to the Master Chaynjis—one of the central concepts in Riddley's religion—and describes this particular trigram's significance as

...(among other things) the force of the creative, which is the force running through the novel and through its image of history, perpetually susceptible to transforming into something destructive. (p. 149) GW

The three lines that make up a trigram in the I Ching can each be either broken or solid; these correspond respectively to yin and yang, so ☰ is the only trigram that is entirely yang. The yin/yang concepts are symbolically correlated with, among many other things, feminine and masculine gender—and Riddley has just joined an entirely male priesthood, after formally becoming a man—but yang also more generally connotes action in either a physical or creative sense. EB