Further reading: • Color your own Tarot cards • Runes- The Alphabet of Odin

Related Resources • Taoism • What is the Tao Te Ching?

From Other Guides • Divination tools: I Ching

Further Reading: • Books about Taoism

Alternative Religion/ features/ Taoism

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is one of the oldest and most respected works of Chinese philosophy, and influenced Eastern philosophy for millenia. The I Ching was composed more than three thousand years ago, by a student of Taoism, and has influenced a number of important philosophers of the East, including Lao Tse, Sun Tzu and Confucius, who reorganized it into its current form. Today, as in the past, it is often used as a divination device, similar to the tarot in its complexity. Confucius gives divination directions based on the following ideas:

Change has a limit, which produces two polarities; yin and yang. (In this system, yang is represented by a solid line: ; yin is represented by an open line: )

These polarities produce four forms, yin, yang, changing yin, and changing yang. A changing form is one which has neared its limit and is expected to change soon.

These forms in turn produce eight trigrams; these determine fortune. The eight trigrams are as follows:

Sky
Lake
Thunder
Fire
Earth
Mountain
Water
Wind

The 64 combinations of these basic symbols, and their respective interpretations, form the body of the Book of Changes. It is traditional to familiarize oneself with the entire book before using the oracle.

Each consultation of the I Ching is accomplished by selecting a pair of trigrams, forming a pair of hexagrams. Symbols are chosen by their relation to factors in the reading, such as personalities or events. They can also be determined via a random tossing of coins, or a slightly more complex divination using a set of yarrow sticks. We will be using coins, because they are the easiest system to utilize.

Consulting the I Ching using coins:

Items need:
Coins
Paper and pencil

Select three identical coins with clear heads/tails markings, and have a paper and pencil handy. Find a quiet space, and hold the coins while you meditate on your query.

Next, toss your coins six times and record the results for each toss. Heads are valued as 2, tails as 3. Add together the numbers from each toss- as an example, a toss yielding two heads and one tail will add up to a value of seven. Throwing the coins six times will generate six numbers.

You will now construct your first hexagram. Begin from the bottom with your first toss, and build upward. Draw a yin line or a yang line using the following guide for each toss:

6	changing yin	(make a small 'x' to denote a changing line)
7	young yang
8	young yin
9	changing yang

This gives you your first hexagram, which is the current circumstances of your query. To generate the second hexagram, the possible future outcome of the situation, you must convert all of your changing lines- an 'old,' or changing yin, for example, changes into a yang.

When you have finished creating your hexagrams, consult the table below, and click on the number for each one- a new window will open with the interpretation:

	1	43	34	14	11	26	5	9
	10	58	54	38	19	41	60	61
	25	17	51	21	24	27	3	42
	13	49	55	30	36	22	63	37
	12	45	16	35	2	23	8	20
	33	31	62	56	15	52	39	53
	6	47	40	64	7	4	29	59
	44	28	32	50	46	18	48	57