What Is the I Ching (주역 / 周易)? The Book of Changes

The I Ching is also called the Yijing (역경 / 易經) or simply the Yi (역 / 易). Its roots reach back some three thousand years to the Zhou dynasty of China, and it became a foundation of East Asian thought. The character yi itself means change.

Later, scholars including Confucius added commentaries, and the I Ching grew from a divination manual into a classic of philosophy and conduct. It is no exaggeration to say that much of East Asia’s thinking about yin-yang, time, and change flows from this one book.

The smallest unit of the I Ching is the line (효 / 爻). There are only two kinds. An unbroken line represents yang (양 / 陽); a line broken in the middle represents yin (음 / 陰). Yang stands for brightness, movement, and what is expressed; yin for darkness, stillness, and what receives.

The starting idea of the I Ching is to describe everything in the world through combinations of just two marks. This simple alternation of yin and yang, stacked again and again, ends up portraying extraordinarily complex change.

Stack three lines and you get a small figure called a trigram, or one of the eight trigrams (팔괘 / 八卦, the bagua). Three yin-or-yang lines combine into exactly eight possibilities.

Each trigram is linked to a great natural symbol: Qian is heaven, Kun is earth, Zhen is thunder, Xun is wind, Kan is water, Li is fire, Gen is mountain, and Dui is lake. These eight symbols are natural phenomena and also stand for family roles, directions, and qualities, forming the basic vocabulary of I Ching interpretation.

Place one trigram above another and you get a larger figure of six lines, a hexagram. Doubling the eight trigrams gives 64 combinations in all, and these 64 hexagrams are the heart of the I Ching.

Each of the 64 hexagrams has its own name, image, and accompanying text. Qian, heaven doubled over heaven, signals strength and a firm beginning; Kun, earth over earth, signals broad acceptance and yielding. The 64 hexagrams can be seen as a map of 64 situations one meets in life.

To consult the I Ching, you hold a question in mind and obtain one hexagram. Traditionally this was done by counting yarrow stalks or tossing three coins several times, building the six lines one at a time from the bottom up.

A line that moves with special force is called a changing line (변효 / 變爻). When a changing line shifts from yin to yang or yang to yin, the first hexagram transforms into a second one. So an I Ching reading considers the first hexagram (your present situation), the transformed hexagram (the direction things are heading), and the guidance the changing lines point to.

CrossFates does not toss coins by hand; it casts the hexagram from the date and your inputs according to a fixed rule and shows it to you. The I Ching is a tool for reflecting on your present situation through the logic of change, not a prophecy that fixes the future. The reading is for entertainment and reflection, so make important decisions by your own judgment.