History of the I Ching
The I Ching is very likely the oldest book ever written. The actual texts were said to have been written by a legendary emperor of China (Fu Hsi) who existed in prehistory some three to four thousand years ago. Fragments of I Ching symbols (trigrams and hexagrams) have been discovered carved on bones that have been carbon-dated even older than this. It is clear, then, that the I Ching is one of the oldest spiritual and divination systems in the world, if not the oldest. The texts that make up the book called I Ching, as we now know them, were written down and annotated by King Wen (translated as “King Writing” or “King Pattern”), the founder of the Chou dynasty, about 1000 B.C.E. He had plenty of time to do this, as he was held captive by an enemy, the tyrant Chou Hsin, for many years. It was King Wen who organized the eight trigrams and the resulting sixty-four hexagrams (more on these later). These symbols and the writings he added roughly resulted in the system we have today.
By the end of the “Warring States Period,” about 200 B.C.E., the practice of “throwing yarrow sticks” and actually consulting the “official” I Ching was more or less established. The very old primary mode of consulting the spirits had previously centered around touching a hot poker to a tortoiseshell and then reading the cracks that occurred. A legend that ties this together tells of the demigod Fu Hsi contemplating a tortoiseshell one day and seeing in its eight-sectioned back the lines of the eight primal trigrams. What gave form to this mass of visionary information—something we cannot avoid discussing—is the root religion/ philosophy called Taoism.
The Tao and Taoism
Taoism, the root-philosophy of all Asia is extremely easy to embrace once one has delved into it, and yet it is also one of the most difficult things to do! The basis of Taoism is essentially “letting go,” a real stretch for most Westerners. Here, then, in a few words, is the paradox of Taoism. Essentially, Taoism is based on the Tao Teh Ching, a very slim book of eighty-one short passages written (or dictated) by Lao Tzu, a semimythological Chinese sage who lived, it is said, around 2,500 years ago. Here are some bits and pieces from the Tao Teh Ching:
The unnamable is the eternally real...
The Tao is like a well; used but never used up
It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities ...
The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal? It was never born;
Thus it can never die ...
Open yourself to the Tao, then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place.*
* All quotes taken from the Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).
This earlier, open-minded, nature-based philosophy imbues and binds the I Ching together, pervading it with cosmic humor and flashes of insight that are far from rational or earthly. It is important to appreciate this spirit of detachment. This is a mysticism that is so basic to Eastern philosophies and spirituality that in order to work with the I Ching in any meaningful way it needs to be understood. Why? Because the I Ching is not a fortune-telling device, nor is it a predictor of the future or a therapeutic device, at least in the Western sense, at least as far as I understand it. To a Taoist, accurately predicting the future is rather beside the point. One should be in the present; that is the goal of living and being. The I Ching was created to help people understand the flow of reality (Tao) about them, to better “go with the flow” to live a real life.
This brings us to the huge subject we have not mentioned, the most important point yet, to wit: What exactly is the I Ching?
The System of the I Ching
To understand a thing, a good place to begin is the name. I Ching literally means “Book [Ching] of Changes [I].” Often this book is simply called by the Chinese ideogram “I.” In Chinese, the character “I” is often translated as “Changes,” as we have, but “changes” is not exactly correct. It doesn’t refer to change as we usually think of it, like the changing of the seasons or the changing of ice into water. In this case the character “I” means “forces of change that are unknowable, mysterious ...” it indicates a way of dealing with Fate, with the “flow of the Tao,” with calamity or things that just happen to you.*
* See I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, edited by Rudolf Ritsema (London: Element Books, 1994).
In short, in common vulgar slang, the I Ching could be considered the “Book of Shit Happens!” This gets the flavor across rather crudely but pretty clearly.
Now that we have more or less presented the philosophical and magical underpinnings of the I Ching, let’s briefly back up and look at its structure.
The Tao is beyond, through, existent in/about/as all reality (and not-reality). It is formless, nameless, beyond all conception, thought, or concept. You probably got this by now. So much for that.
In manifesting the unity of Tao comes to be as duality, Yin and Yang. This Yin/Yang is called Tai Chi. It is a symbol that is roundly misunderstood and replicated by New Agers and all sorts of other people. The Yin/Yang is a symbol that is made of two areas flowing together: Yin (dark) and Yang (light). Originally, this concept was illustrated using the image of the shadow side of a mountain and the lit-up side of a mountain. This goes far to explaining the idea better than negative and positive, unless one thinks of a magnet. In this sense, we can grasp the idea that all things have two poles, two aspects, two sides, two energies, and all things and people are a combination of these two forces, always changing, always flowing, always dancing in the eternal flow of matter and energy.
All things, events, and people are a combination of Yin and Yang, some just have more of one and less of the other. Yet the essence of all things is change, so one can be more Yin while resting or painting and be more Yang while driving or skiing an hour later. Women are not necessarily more Yin then men, though by their nature they have better access to Yin and a deeper understanding of it. Still, if women were essentially Yin all the time, they would be comatose! If men were completely Yang, they would be rabidly insane whirlwinds of aggression!
Think of the left and right halves of the brain; this is probably the physiological origin of the entire concept of Yin and Yang. The right side is more open, artistic, free-form, holistic, embracing, nurturing. The left side is more logical, linear, structured, sequential, spatial ... and so on.
The Trigrams and Hexagrams
Each of us is a balance of two ever-changing forces manifested in varied and unique ways. The system works like this:
First, beyond/through/within & without all being and nonbeing is the Tao.
This manifests as the two cosmic forms: Yin and Yang, or:
and
Since every basic manifestation is a three-part combination of these forces—for example, Heaven + Earth = Man or Father + Mother = Child— they are each represented as three lines. These three-line figures, or trigrams, are the most basic elemental forces of nature and exist behind all other manifestations or reality. There are eight primal, or archetypal, trigrams because there are that many combinations of Yin/Yang lines in three-line combinations. To wit:
As we descend from pure Tao, we see that the forces of the universe become more and more manifest and