The Book of Changes · 周易 · An Oracle of Three Thousand Years
Hold your question quietly in mind. Ask about the nature of a situation, not for a yes or no.
No readings yet this session. The blank page awaits the first cast.
The I Ching (Yìjīng), the Book of Changes, is among the oldest of the Chinese classics — a divination text whose core is over three thousand years old. It describes the world as ceaseless transformation between two poles: the light, active, creative 陽 (yang) and the dark, receptive, yielding 陰 (yin).
Each of the 64 hexagrams is a figure of six lines, solid (yang ⚊) or broken (yin ⚋), read from the bottom upward. A hexagram is a portrait of a moment — and because the moment is always turning into the next, some lines may be cast as changing lines: old yang (○) becoming yin, old yin (✕) becoming yang. These changes yield a second hexagram, the direction in which the situation moves.
Consulting the oracle is not fortune-telling but reflection: the text holds up a mirror in which the questioner may recognize the inner shape of their circumstances. Approach it with sincerity, read slowly, and let the images work on you.
Interpretations here are condensed in the spirit of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation (1950).