Regardless of whether we believe the perceived world is an illusion, or whether illusions represent the real physical world, illusions can only exist in our sensory perception, for they need to be experienced through our visual senses.
The sinuous serpent body designs of Warring States period jades are often accompanied by unobtrusive legs of uncertain number. For such jade artifacts, when the heads of their designs are viewed in combination with legs of different orientation, dynamic illusions of varying tension, slackness, movement, and stillness can thus appear. As for Han era jade artifacts with beast designs, physiological principles such as forelegs at the chest and hind legs at the abdomen must be adhered to, in accordance with the rules for visual acceptability. However, by distorting the bodies of the beasts so that the chest and abdomen each face in a different direction, the orientations of the attached legs can also be adjusted, to create a dynamic illusory effect.
Jades from the Warring States period and the Han Dynasty respectively adopted the serpent paradigm and beast paradigm for their designs, and although the creative techniques involved may differ, each work is able to achieve dynamic illusion in its own perfect way. These effects are akin to the stroboscopic phenomenon utilized by modern filming, in which repeated exposures of continuous movement are taken at very short intervals. When viewing such works, human vision can automatically draw together differently oriented heads and limbs, to produce illusions with a rich sense of motion and speed.
When we observe wave patterns, even if short branches extend from the body of the wave, our discernment of the main wave shape is not affected, and this is known in psychology as "the principle of visual continuity." Now, take a look at these jade dragons, each with their own jutting claws or twists and turns. Is your perception of the main body for each divine dragon affected in any way by these branching designs?
The technique of "visual obstruction" consists of bisecting the center of a twisting beast body, for the purpose of obstructing our line of sight and thereby reducing the discordance stemming from the distorted orientation of the front and hind sections of these beasts. With this principle in hand, the creative impulses of individual designers are allowed to flow freely; for example, the Jade Bi Disc of Chang Le uses the outer rim of the jade bi disc itself to bisect the body of the divine beast located at upper left, while the designer of this jade she thumb ring-shaped pendant concealed the central section of the divine beast depicted within the body of the she thumb ring design. Both these designs display an extraordinary level of ingenuity.
Right angles generate stability in visual perception, but considering that the aesthetic goal of Han era jades was to achieve dynamism, when faced with jade material containing right angles, what corrective measures did jade craftsmen of the time employ? The designer of this jade she thumb ring-shaped pendant slightly rotated the original jade material, elevating the main right angle to the upper right by a fraction to achieve dynamism through imbalance. Such ingenious adjustments did not require extensive work to achieve a sublimating effect, and this work serves an awe-inspiring exemplar of creativity for future generations.