The I Ching: A Beginner's Guide to the 64 Hexagrams by Gavin - HTML preview

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The Chinese text is the received text of the Zhouyi and is in the public domain. The English rendering, the commentary on each hexagram and each line, and the intro-ductory chapters are original work, informed by the public-domain scholarship of James Legge. No modern copyrighted translation is reproduced here.

This book may be copied and shared freely in its entirety for non-commercial purpos-es, with attribution.

The I Ching is a tool for reection. Nothing in this book is nancial, legal, medical or psychological advice.

Contents

Introduction · Casting a Reading with Three Coins · Reading What You Get · Hexagram Finder

The Sixty-Four Hexagrams

1. 1. Heaven 乾

2. 2. Earth 坤

3. 3. Sprouting 屯

4. 4. Inexperience 蒙

5. 5. Patience 需

6. 6. Dispute 讼

7. 7. Troops 师

8. 8. Alliance ⽐

9. 9. Small Accumulation ⼩畜

10. 10. Treading 履

11. 11. Peace 泰

12. 12. Obstruction 否

13. 13. Fellowship 同⼈

14. 14. Great Possession ⼤有

15. 15. Humility 谦

16. 16. Anticipation 豫

17. 17. Following 随

18. 18. Corruption 蛊

19. 19. Drawing Near 临

20. 20. Observation 观

21. 21. Jaws Closing 噬嗑

22. 22. Adornment 贲

23. 23. Stripping Away 剥

24. 24. Return 复

25. 25. Genuineness ⽆妄

26. 26. Great Accumulation ⼤畜

27. 27. Sustenance 颐

28. 28. Great Exceeding ⼤过

29. 29. Water 坎

30. 30. Fire 离

31. 31. Inuence 咸

32. 32. Duration 恒

33. 33. Retreat 遁

34. 34. Great Vigor ⼤壮

35. 35. Advance 晋

36. 36. Dimmed Light 明夷

37. 37. Household 家⼈

38. 38. Opposition 睽

39. 39. Hardship 蹇

40. 40. Release 解

41. 41. Decrease 损

42. 42. Increase 益

43. 43. Breakthrough 夬

44. 44. Encounter 姤

45. 45. Convergence 萃

46. 46. Ascending 升

47. 47. Adversity 困

48. 48. Village Well 井

49. 49. Radical Change ⾰

50. 50. Cauldron ⿍

51. 51. Shock 震

52. 52. Stillness ⾉

53. 53. Gradual Advance 渐

54. 54. Young Bride 归妹

55. 55. Plenty 丰

56. 56. Sojourning 旅

57. 57. Wind 巽

58. 58. Lake 兑

59. 59. Scattering 涣

60. 60. Restraint 节

61. 61. Heartfelt Trust 中孚

62. 62. Small Exceeding ⼩过

63. 63. Already Crossed 既济

64. 64. Not Yet Crossed 未济

Keep Reading

Introduction

The I Ching — also written Yijing, and known in English as the Book of Changes — is the oldest of the Chinese classics, and the one that has trav-elled furthest. It began as a divination manual in the early Zhou dynasty, roughly three thousand years ago, and over the centuries accumulated layers of commentary until it became something larger: a book about how situations change, and about the stance a person can take inside that change.

Its structure is simple to describe. Every situation is represented by a hexagram — a gure of six stacked lines, each either solid (yang) or broken (yin). Six lines with two possible states give sixty-four gures in all, and those sixty-four are the whole book. Each carries a name, a short judgment, an image drawn from nature, and six line statements, one for each position from the bottom up.

What makes a reading feel alive is the idea of changing lines. When you cast the hexagram, some lines may come out unstable — in the middle of turning into their opposite. Those lines are read as the moving edge of your situation, and when they ip, they produce a second hexagram: where things are heading. The oracle therefore describes not a xed verdict but a movement, from one conguration to another.

This book is a working reference for that practice. It explains how to cast a reading with three coins, how to read what you get, and then gives all sixty-four hexagrams in the traditional King Wen order: the received Chinese text, an English rendering, what the gure means in plain language, and what each of the six lines says when it moves.

How to use this book

7

If you are new to the oracle, read the two short chapters that follow —

casting and interpretation — and then simply consult the reference when you have a reading in hand. If you already know the method, the sixty-four entries stand alone and can be read in any order.

The English throughout is an original rendering informed by the public-domain scholarship of James Legge, not a reprint of any modern copyrighted translation. The Chinese is the received text (通⾏本). Where a passage admits several defensible readings, this book chooses the plainest one and leaves the ambiguity visible rather than resolving it silently.

Cast a reading online, free. This book pairs with Your I Ching at https://www.youriching.com, where you can ask a question and throw all six lines by hand — no coins required — and get a reading written for the question you actually asked. All sixty-four hexagram references are also free to browse at https://www.youriching.com/hexagrams.

8

Casting a Reading with Three

Coins

The traditional method uses fty yarrow stalks and takes the better part of an hour. The three-coin method, in use for at least a thousand years, gives the same four possible outcomes with a slightly different distribution of probabilities, and takes about two minutes. It is what most people use today.

What you need

Three coins of the same kind, with sides you can tell apart at a glance.

Any currency will do. Some people keep a set aside for this purpose; nothing is lost if you don't.

Ask one clear question

Write your question down before you throw. The oracle answers a specif-ic situation better than a general one, and an open question better than a yes-or-no. “What should I understand about this job offer?” yields more than

“Should I take it?” Keep it to one question — a compound question produces a compound answer that cannot be untangled.

Throw six times

Assign 3 to heads and 2 to tails (or the reverse, as long as you keep it consistent). Shake the three coins and let them fall. Add up the three values; each throw gives 6, 7, 8 or 9:

TOTAL

COINS

LINE

DRAWN AS

9

6