I Ching — the Book of Changes — is an ancient Chinese oracular system with 64 hexagrams. You pose a question and toss three coins six times, forming a hexagram. The primary hexagram and any moving lines that generate a secondary hexagram are identified. Each hexagram receives a complete interpretation: name, image, judgment, line commentary and practical advice for your situation.
Where it comes from
The I Ching, the Book of Changes, is among the oldest books still in use. Its core — sixty-four hexagrams with short judgements — took shape in the Western Zhou period, roughly the ninth century BC, out of an older practice of reading cracks in heated turtle shells. The commentaries known as the Ten Wings were added later and are traditionally credited to Confucius. The book reached Europe through Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century; Leibniz noticed that the broken and unbroken lines map onto binary notation. The translation most Western readers know is Richard Wilhelm's, rendered into English by Cary Baynes in 1950 with an introduction by Carl Jung.
How the method works
A hexagram is six stacked lines, each either solid or broken. Sixty-four combinations are possible, and each has a name, a judgement and an image. The common method is three coins thrown six times, once for each line from the bottom up: heads counts three, tails two, and the sum of the three coins gives six, seven, eight or nine. Seven and eight are stable lines. Six and nine are moving lines — they are read in their own right and then flip, producing a second hexagram. The pair is read as a situation and what it is turning into. The older yarrow stalk method gives different probabilities for the moving lines and takes considerably longer.
What a reading covers
A reading gives the first hexagram with its name, judgement and image, then each moving line separately, then the resulting second hexagram. The moving lines are usually where the answer sits — they name the part of the situation that is unstable. The I Ching answers in images rather than instructions, and a reading works by applying the image to the question rather than by extracting a verdict.
Common questions
- What if no lines move?
- Then there is one hexagram and no second. That is read as a situation that is stable for now — the answer is the judgement itself, without a direction of change.
- Coins or yarrow stalks?
- Both are traditional. Coins give each moving line a one in eight chance; yarrow stalks weight them differently, making a moving yin line rarer than a moving yang line. Readings come out slightly differently, and neither is considered wrong.
- Which translation should I trust?
- Wilhelm is the most widely used and the most interpretive. Translations by Richard Rutt and Edward Shaughnessy work from earlier manuscripts and read more archaically. The differences are substantial enough that a reading should name its source.