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What is I Ching 易經 [Yijing]? I Ching is highly regarded as one of the most important and ancient cultural treasure in human history and nowadays it has already attracts worldwide interest. You can find a lot of book talking about I Ching or Book of Change in English, German, or many other foreign languages, but that kind of I Ching explained in the book store referring to the Book of Changes compiled by King Wen 文王 [Wen Wang], the China Emperor of Chao Dinasty in 1122 B.C. and Confucius, a Chinese thinker and social philosopher (551 B.C. - 479 B.C.) These books served for academic and philosophical only. It was believed that the I Ching originated from a man named Fu Xi 伏羲. It is uncertain whether King Wen’s Book of Change reflects the original meaning given by Fu Xi, because there is a time gap between when King Wen and Fu Xi lived. The I Ching is a tool for divination, but the system use by professional fortune tellers in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong for divination is totally different. The system they used is introduced by Keng Fong from Han Dynasty 漢武帝 [Han Wu Di], but he bigheartedly attributed his work to King Wen文王 [Wen Wang]. Hence they call this divination system as the “King Wen Way”, which has nothing to do with the I Ching we find in bookstores nowadays. It has the capability to give you answer of any unclear doubts and questions in your mind.  The term I Ching is build upon a series of lines 爻 [yao] either continuous or broken which form into the Trigram卦 [gua] symbols (three lines) and Hexagram symbols (combination of trigrams which made up of six lines as the picture above). The continuous or solid line is translated as Yang and the broken line as Yin. If six lines stacked from bottom to top, there will be 64 possibilities of combinations, thus there are 64 hexagrams. In the beginning, there are only 8 symbols of trigrams which represent the natural phenomenon observed by man as follow: Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain, and Earth. Later on, these 8 trigrams are stacked on top another to develop the 64 hexagrams.   The Fortune Telling I Ching technique is mainly an instrument for asking uncertainty of something and getting the right answers. Please remember that when you want to the fortune telling I Ching, you should be on a relax condition and clear mind. You must focus and calm. Pick a quiet place to begin the process of asking the divination. In order to get the correct answers, you should state your questions precise, specific and clear cut. For instance, your question is ”Will my investment profitable?” The question has weakness because you don’t specify what investment you are in and missing the time range. You can’t use I Ching to ask something bad or manipulating. Please do not ask yes or no question with I Ching and do not ask too many things all at once. Remember to verify whether your question really reflect your objective. It is always good to give your question a time frame. The normal time frame is between 6 months to 12 months.
The ancient application of I Ching is by using the oracle bones and tortoise shells. With the fall of Shang Dynasty in 1122 B.C., oracle bones went into oblivion. Instead of using oracle bones, they begin to use 50 yarrow stalks to do the divination. First they pick and put aside one stalk from the 50 stalks. Then they separate randomly the 49 stalks into 2 bundles, with the bundles on the left hand symbolize Heaven, and the bundles on the right hand symbolize Earth. They pick from the Heaven bundle in multiplies of 8 until the number of stalks in the left bundle fall below 8 which will form the lower trigram (1 – Heaven, 2 – Lake, 3 – Fire, 4 – Thunder, 5 – Wind, 6 – Water, 7 – Mountain, 8 – Earth). Repeat the same process to get the upper trigram from the right or Earth bundles. Then pick from the Heaven bundles in multiplies of 6 until the number of stalks in the Heaven bundles fall below 6 to get the position of the active line in the Hexagram.
There is another system of divination entitle as “Plum Blossom Oracle.” The hexagram in Plum Blossom Oracle is derived from the moment of time when the questions arose. This system is invented by a Chinese scholar and philosopher, Master Shao Yung from the Sung Dynasty. He believed that every moment of time (year, month, day, and hour) will carry a message from the universe. The Upper Trigram is represented by the remainder of the total numbers of day, month and year divided by 8. The Lower Trigram is represented by the remainder of the total numbers of day, month year and hour divided by 8. The active line is represented by the remainder of the total numbers of day, month, year and hour divided by 6. |
The Yarrow Stalk is no longer common today and it is already being replaced by tossing the 3 coins. The 3 coins we often used for I Ching are Chinese coins of the Ching Dynasty. It has a head with the picture side and a tail with a side of 4 Chinese characters which are the name of the emperors. If you don’t have such coins, you can still use any metal coins of any country, but you must use the same set of coins all the time to do the divination. The more you use the tool, the more it will serve you.