Archive for Wednesday 26th February 2003 - The wisdom of the I Ching

The ultimate oracle is accessible to everyone. The 5,000-year-old I Ching, the Book of Changes, can be consulted by asking a question then throwing three coins six times. There are 64 possible outcomes each represented by six-lined pictograms, called hexagrams. For each hexagram there is an interpretation which is to be applied to your question. Eminent psychoanalyst Carl Jung was fascinated by the wisdom of the Chinese ancients: “The I Ching offers neither facts nor power, but for lovers of self-knowledge, of wisdom it seems to be the right book.” Underpinning this aid to divination, older than both the tarot and astrology, is the oriental belief in a interconnected universe, which is in a perpetual cycle of change. As day changes to night, and birth gives way to death, so the forces of yang, positive, masculine and intellectual, and yin, negative, feminine and imaginative, interact to drive the ongoing flux of nature. According to Paul Sneddon, in Personal Development with the I Ching (Foulsham, £7.99), “The I Ching will not tell you what is going to happen, but it will direct your attention to alternatives.” Mark Winter

The wisdom of the I Ching The hexagram of Union, Pi, is just one of the 64 in the I Ching. It gives this advice: “Pi represents the idea of union between different types of people. The person who wants others to follow should examine his or her own fitness to lead. If that person is worthy, others will unite as followers and goodwill come from it, but only if they do not delay.”

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