The spirit of the Valley never dies —
it is called the Creative Spirit.
The gateway of the Creative Spirit
is the foundation of the Market.

Abstract and delicate, it hardly seems plausible,
yet in practice, its productivity is inexhaustible.

 

An important theme in the original Dao De Jing is the repeated image of the dark/mysterious feminine. I’m afraid I’ve given it short shrift throughout most of TWotC — this is one of the cases where I feel kind of sad about abusing the material 😦

[note: by request, I am now putting the comments and chapter notes above the fold, unless they happen to be extremely long…]

chapter notes:

The chapter title identifies “the Valley” as Silicon Valley.

This is also the first case where “the feminine” appears in the original, and is converted to “the creative”.