I Ching

Origin

Chinese tradition attributes the eight original trigrams to the mythical emperor Fu Xi around 2800 BCE, who is said to have discovered them on the back of a turtle emerging from the Luo river. Modern scholarship locates the earliest written I Ching, the Zhouyi or Changes of Zhou, in the late Shang and early Zhou dynasties around 1000 BCE. King Wen of Zhou, while imprisoned at Youli by the last Shang king, is credited with arranging the 64 hexagrams in their classical sequence. His son the Duke of Zhou added the line texts called Yao Ci.

Around 500 BCE, Confucius and his school added the Ten Wings, philosophical commentaries that transformed the divinatory manual into a Confucian classic. The Han dynasty made the I Ching one of the Five Classics and the foundational text of Chinese cosmology. The book entered the European intellectual world through Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, especially Joachim Bouvet, who corresponded with Leibniz. Leibniz noted the correspondence between Yin-Yang and his binary arithmetic in 1703. Richard Wilhelm, a German missionary in China, published his complete translation in 1923, with a foreword by Carl Gustav Jung that introduced the I Ching to twentieth-century Western psychology.

Meaning and method

The I Ching is built from two foundational symbols: the unbroken Yang line and the broken Yin line. Three lines combine into a trigram, of which there are eight: Qian (heaven), Kun (earth), Zhen (thunder), Kan (water), Gen (mountain), Xun (wind), Li (fire), Dui (lake). Two trigrams stacked produce a hexagram, of which there are 64. Each hexagram has a name, a Judgement, an Image, and six line texts read from bottom to top. The names range from Qian (the Creative) and Kun (the Receptive) to Wei Ji (Before Completion) and Ji Ji (After Completion).

The 64 hexagrams form a complete map of situations in human life. Hexagram 11 Tai (Peace) shows earth above and heaven below, an image of harmony. Hexagram 12 Pi (Stagnation) reverses the lines and shows separation. Hexagram 24 Fu (Return) shows the return of light after the winter solstice. Hexagram 64 Wei Ji (Before Completion) closes the book with the image of a fox crossing a frozen river, caution at the threshold of success. The order of the hexagrams was set by King Wen and is studied as a sequence of related transformations, called the King Wen order.

In practice

The classical method of consultation uses 50 yarrow stalks, set aside in a precise ritual described in the Great Treatise. The procedure takes about 20 minutes for a single hexagram and produces lines marked as 6 (old Yin, changing), 7 (young Yang, fixed), 8 (young Yin, fixed), or 9 (old Yang, changing). The yarrow method is preferred for serious consultation because the probability distribution of the four numbers reflects an ancient cosmology. The faster three-coin method, in which three coins are tossed six times, produces a comparable result and is the standard for modern practice. Use the I Ching oracle to perform a digital coin throw.

After casting, you record the primary hexagram and identify any changing lines. Changing lines transform into their opposite, producing a second derived hexagram that shows the direction of movement. You read the Judgement, the Image, and any changing line texts of the primary hexagram, then the Judgement of the secondary hexagram. The practice is meditative, not predictive in a simple sense. The I Ching answers a question by describing the configuration of forces around it, leaving the choice of action to you. Combine with numerology by reducing the hexagram number to a digit, or with tarot for cross-cultural readings.

Symbolic depth

The I Ching rests on the doctrine of Yin and Yang, the two complementary principles whose interaction produces all phenomena. Yang is creative, light, active, masculine, heavenly; Yin is receptive, dark, quiet, feminine, earthly. Neither is good or evil; together they constitute the Tao, the way. The 64 hexagrams catalogue every possible interaction of these two principles across six lines, producing a complete grammar of change. The Chinese title Yi Jing means literally Classic of Change, and the entire book is a meditation on how to live well within constant transformation.

Carl Gustav Jung described his use of the I Ching as an experiment in synchronicity, his concept of meaningful coincidence between psyche and matter. The hexagram that falls is held to mirror the configuration of forces in the questioner at the moment of casting. The book is therefore a tool for self-knowledge as much as for divination. Continue with Hexagram, Trigram, Yin and Yang, Bagua, and Taoism for the philosophical context. The full glossary and oracle hub hold further reading.

Also known as

• Yijing
• Book of Changes
• Zhouyi
• Classic of Changes
• Chinese Oracle Book