Loading · 加载中
Loading · 加载中
易经 · the Book of Changes
Sixty-four hexagrams, each a map of transformation. For three millennia, the oldest oracle in continuous use has offered clarity, not by predicting fate, but by revealing the pattern beneath change.
The I Ching (易经), or Book of Changes, is the oldest of the Chinese classics, with roots stretching back over three millennia. It began as a divination manual during the Western Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–771 BCE) and evolved into a philosophical cornerstone that has influenced Confucianism, Daoism, and countless generations of Chinese thought.
What distinguishes the I Ching from other ancient oracles is its philosophical depth. It does not claim to predict the future. Instead, it describes the present moment in exquisite detail and illuminates the patterns of change already in motion. The hexagram you receive is not a sentence; it is a mirror. It shows you where you stand, not where you will land.
Three thousand years of commentators, Confucius among them, have written layer upon layer of interpretation. The text is not a single voice but a conversation across centuries. Each generation adds its understanding, and the book grows richer without losing its core.
The foundation of the I Ching is the Bagua (八卦), the Eight Trigrams. Each trigram is a stack of three lines, broken (Yin) or solid (Yang), representing a fundamental force:
Two trigrams combine, one above, one below, to form a hexagram of six lines. 8 × 8 = 64 possible configurations. Each hexagram is a complete microcosm: a snapshot of a moment in time, with its own name, judgment text, and line-by-line commentary. Together, the 64 hexagrams form a comprehensive map of human experience and natural change.
The Eight Trigrams do not have a single fixed arrangement. Two classical orderings have coexisted for over two millennia, each serving a different purpose. Together they form a 體用 (tǐ-yòng) relationship: one is the essence, the other is the function.
Attributed to the legendary sage Fuxi (伏羲), the Earlier Heaven arrangement expresses the ideal, cosmic, symmetrical order of the universe. It is governed by Yin-Yang theory: every trigram sits opposite its perfect complement. Qian (☰, Heaven, pure Yang) occupies the South. Kun (☷, Earth, pure Yin) occupies the North. Li (☲, Fire) in the East and Kan (☵, Water) in the West form the secondary axis. The remaining four trigrams fill the corners: Dui (☱) in the Southeast, Zhen (☳) in the Northeast, Xun (☴) in the Southwest, and Gen (☶) in the Northwest.
Source: Shuō Guà Zhuàn (说卦传), “Discussion of the Trigrams,“ one of the Ten Wings. The arrangement is encoded in the verse: “Heaven and Earth determine the positions; Mountain and Marsh exchange influences; Thunder and Wind arouse each other; Water and Fire do not combat each other“ (天地定位，山澤通氣，雷風相薄，水火不相射).
Attributed to King Wen of Zhou (周文王), the Later Heaven arrangement describes the manifest world of cycles, seasons, and human affairs. It is governed by Five Elements theory rather than pure Yin-Yang symmetry. Here the trigrams are arranged to follow the agricultural year. Zhen (☳, Thunder, Wood) rises in the East with spring. Xun (☴, Wind, Wood) follows in the Southeast. Li (☲, Fire) blazes in the South at summer's peak. Kun (☷, Earth) rests in the Southwest at late summer. Dui (☱, Lake, Metal) settles in the West with autumn. Qian (☰, Heaven, Metal) strengthens in the Northwest. Kan (☵, Water) sinks to the North with winter. Gen (☶, Mountain, Earth) completes the cycle in the Northeast.
Source: Shuō Guà Zhuàn (说卦传), Chapter 5: “The Divine emerges in Zhen, is brought to completion in Xun, manifests in Li, is nourished in Kun, rejoices in Dui, contends in Qian, toils in Kan, and reaches fulfillment in Gen“ (帝出乎震，齊乎巽，相見乎離，致役乎坤，說言乎兌， 戰乎乾，勞乎坎，成言乎艮).
In practice, the Earlier Heaven arrangement is used for understanding cosmic principles and in methods like Plum Blossom divination (梅花易數 Méi Huā Yì Shù). The Later Heaven arrangement is the foundation of Feng Shui, Chinese medicine, and most practical divination. Both are correct; they answer different questions. The Earlier Heaven shows the ideal form. The Later Heaven shows the world as it actually moves. The Later Heaven arrangement is governed not only by trigram positions but by the Five Elements, each trigram carrying an elemental signature that determines its place in the cycle of seasons.
In 1973, archaeologists excavating a Han-dynasty tomb at Mawangdui (马王堆) in Hunan province unearthed a silk manuscript of the I Ching dating to approximately 168 BCE, the oldest substantially complete copy ever found. The discovery reshaped our understanding of the text in two fundamental ways.
First, the hexagram order is entirely different from the received (King Wen) version. Where the received text opens with Qian (☰) and Kun (☷) as a complementary pair, the Mawangdui manuscript groups hexagrams by their upper trigram: all hexagrams with Qian above appear together, then all with Kun above, and so on through all eight trigrams. This is a systematic, almost bureaucratic arrangement, suggesting that the Mawangdui text served a different purpose — perhaps as a reference manual rather than a philosophical treatise.
Second, the Mawangdui manuscript contains commentary texts absent from the received version, and omits some that later became canonical. The Ten Wings were still in formation in 168 BCE; the Mawangdui find reveals which commentaries were considered essential at that early stage and which were later additions. Together with the Guodian bamboo texts (郭店楚簡, discovered 1993), the Mawangdui manuscript confirms that the I Ching was not a single book delivered whole to history but a living tradition that grew, shifted, and was reorganized across centuries.
For accessible English scholarship on the Mawangdui texts, see Edward L. Shaughnessy, Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing (Columbia, 2014), and Richard Rutt, Zhouyi: The Book of Changes (Curzon, 1996).
Two traditional methods have been practiced for centuries. One is slow and meditative; the other is quick and accessible. Both produce a hexagram of six lines. Both require the same thing from the questioner: a clear mind and a sincere question.
The ancient, meditative approach. Fifty yarrow stalks are divided and counted through a series of eighteen operations to build the hexagram one line at a time, from the bottom up. The entire process takes twenty to thirty minutes. It is, itself, a form of meditation, slow, deliberate, deeply ritualistic. The time spent is not incidental to the result; it is the point. In those twenty minutes, the questioner sits with their question in a way that a quick toss of coins cannot replicate.
Three coins are tossed six times. Each toss determines one line: three backs is a moving Yang line (○), three fronts a moving Yin line (×), and mixed results produce stable lines. The method is quick, accessible, and the basis for our Liu Yao tool, whose coin faces follow the same convention. It trades ritual for speed but preserves the essential structure: six throws, six lines, one hexagram.
Each hexagram arrives with several layers of text. Learning to read them is learning to listen at multiple depths at once.
Every hexagram is a self-contained cosmos. The three below span the full arc of the I Ching: the first, the second, and the last. Together they form a quiet argument about the nature of action, receptivity, and the work that never ends.
Six solid lines. Pure Yang. No breaks, no shadows. The archetype of creative force at its most undiluted. The Judgment reads: “The Creative works sublime success, furthering through perseverance.“ Four words in the original Chinese: 元亨利貞, primordial, flourishing, advantageous, steadfast. Each word is a station on the path of any creative act, from inception to completion.
The hexagram is structured around the image of a dragon, the most Yang creature in Chinese symbolism, ascending through six stages. In the first line, the dragon is hidden beneath the waters: the potential is real but invisible, and any move now would be premature. In the second, the dragon appears in the field: the first public sign. The third line counsels vigilance ; the creative person, now visible, must work without self-consciousness through the long middle. The fourth: the dragon leaps at the edge of a chasm, the moment of maximum risk, where success and failure are equally possible. The fifth: the dragon flies in the heavens, the creative act at its zenith, fully realized. The sixth line is a warning: the dragon overreaches and there is regret. Even pure Yang, unchecked, contains the seed of its own collapse.
The teaching of Qian: initiative is sacred, but it must be matched with timing and restraint. The creative impulse without awareness of the moment is just noise.
Six broken lines. Pure Yin. Where Qian is the dragon, Kun is the mare: powerful, enduring, unshakeable, but never imposing. The Judgment: “The Receptive brings about sublime success, furthering through the perseverance of a mare.“ The addition of “of a mare“ is crucial; this is not passivity but responsive strength. The mare does not charge ahead; she follows, but in following she makes completion possible.
Kun teaches that receptivity is not weakness. The first line warns: “When there is hoarfrost underfoot, solid ice is not far off.“ Small neglects compound. The second line describes the ideal Yin action: “Straight, square, great. Without purpose, yet nothing remains unfurthered.“ Action that is not self-conscious, not angled for credit, that serves the work rather than the ego; this is the power of the receptive. The sixth line, like Qian's, warns of excess: “Dragons fight in the meadow. Their blood is black and yellow.“ Yin pushed to its extreme becomes Yang-like, but not in a generative way. It becomes combat, not complement.
The teaching of Kun: the receptive and the weak are not the same. True receptivity is the capacity to respond, to let the moment shape your action, to nurture what is already growing, to bring form to creative impulse without needing to own it.
The I Ching ends here. Deliberately. Fire above, water below: each element is in the wrong place. The fire burns upward and the water flows downward; they do not meet. The title means “not yet crossed“ or “before completion.“ After sixty-three hexagrams, the book concludes not with arrival but with transition. The Judgment reads: “Before Completion. Success. But if the little fox, nearly across the river, gets his tail wet, there is nothing that would further.“
The little fox is the one who has almost made it, and that “almost“ is the most dangerous moment. When completion seems near, vigilance drops. The fox is so focused on the far shore that it forgets to lift its tail from the water. The hexagram is a reminder that every ending is also a beginning, and that the work of attention is never done. The Book of Changes ends on a hexagram of incompletion because change itself never ends. The river is always mid-crossing.
The teaching of Weiji: the work is never finished, and that is not a failure. It is the nature of a living world. Every completion reveals the next threshold. Attention is the only arrival.
The I Ching is not the work of one author or one era. It is a conversation spanning three millennia, with each generation adding its understanding. Three figures stand out as turning points in how the book has been read.
孔子 Kǒngzǐ · c. 551–479 BCE
The Ten Wings 十翼 Shí Yì
Tradition holds that Confucius wrote the Ten Wings, the appendix-like commentaries that transformed the I Ching from a divination manual into a philosophical and moral text. The "Image" commentaries in particular draw ethical lessons from natural configurations: "Thus the superior man, when he sees the sign of increase, emulates it and cultivates virtue." Whether or not Confucius himself authored every line, the Ten Wings established the I Ching as a book of wisdom, not merely a book of answers, and placed it at the center of Confucian education for two thousand years.
王弼 Wáng Bì · 226–249 CE
Zhou Yi Zhu 周易注 (Commentary on the Zhou Changes)
Wang Bi read the I Ching through a Daoist lens, and in doing so, he changed everything. Where earlier commentators had treated each line as an isolated divination text, Wang Bi insisted that each hexagram has a single governing principle, one idea that unifies all six lines. "The many cannot govern the many," he wrote. "That which governs the many is the most unitary." This was a radical simplification, and it made the text accessible to generations of literati. Wang Bi died at twenty-three, yet his commentary became the standard for centuries. His approach, find the idea behind the images, remains the most natural entry point for modern readers.
朱熹 Zhū Xī · 1130–1200 CE
Zhou Yi Ben Yi 周易本義 (Original Meaning of the Zhou Changes)
Zhu Xi, the architect of Neo-Confucianism, performed a synthesis: he reclaimed the I Ching as a divination text while integrating the philosophical depth of both Confucian and Daoist traditions. His "Original Meaning" argued that the hexagrams were first and foremost tools for consulting the oracle, and that this practical function was not at odds with philosophical profundity but was its foundation. "The sages composed the I Ching so that people could respond to events and seek guidance." His commentary became the orthodox interpretation for the civil service examinations, shaping how millions of educated Chinese encountered the text from the thirteenth century until the civil service examinations were abolished in 1905 and the imperial system itself fell in 1911.
Each commentator read the same sixty-four hexagrams and found something different: Confucius found ethics, Wang Bi found metaphysics, Zhu Xi found a method. The text is not a single voice but a chorus, and that, perhaps, is why it has outlived empires.
The I Ching is not a book you read once. It is a book you live with. Carl Jung called it a method for “exploring the unconscious.“ The sinologist Richard Wilhelm spent a decade translating it and emerged convinced that its wisdom was not merely historical but alive and applicable. The composer John Cage used it to compose. The physicist Niels Bohr placed the Taijitu on his coat of arms.
What you find in the I Ching depends on what you bring to it. This is not mysticism; it is the nature of a text rich enough to reflect the reader. The 64 hexagrams are 64 mirrors. The question chooses the mirror, and the mirror shows the questioner what they could not see alone.
Continue reading
Five Elements: Wu XingReady to cast your own hexagram?
For entertainment purposes only · 仅供娱乐参考