Introduction

I first encountered a copy of the IChing when I met my husband who had a more traditional copy to the one I ended up purchasing more than 25 years ago. My copy was the IChing Workbook by RL Wing and if you are just beginning to use the IChing, then I highly recommend this workbook because it is easier to understand than other copies I have read, and also because you can record your questions next to the hexagrams received, along with the date. This is quite important because after a time, a pattern will begin to emerge and you will eventually see 'the light' through the emotional turmoil of your reality.

I had never seen a divination book of any kind before, so I was quite excited when I first used my IChing, yet somewhat skeptical, because I didn't really believe that a book could tell my future.

My natural instinct was to begin by throwing the coins however 'reason' pointed out that there was no use throwing coins if I didn't know anything about them, so, I began reading.

History

The IChing had many authors over the years, the first of these being Fu Hsi (ruler of China during the third millennium BC), who, it is said, discovered the eight trigrams that form the 64 hexagrams, on the shell of a tortoise. Later on, Confucius (551-479BC), wrote a series of commentaries about the hexagrams and put them together in a book called 'The Ten Wings', and this book is a must for anyone who wishes to study the IChing as a career.Confucius was also the first person to use the IChing for his inner development. In the early 1900's, psychologist Carl Jung could see the inner workings of the IChing and sought funding to add to the American edition.

About the IChing

The IChing is all about capturing a moment in time to see what type of energies there are that surround the question we are asking. The example that the IChing uses is as follows:

"Imagine our reality to be a tube of time extending through space. We are constantly flowing through the tube along with everything we perceive. Now if we could slice through the tube and study its fixed cross sections, we would see all of the elements in nature that happen to now exist, as well as their immediate relationships to one another. By evaluating the patterns of the current relationships among things, we should then be able to divine what we might expect in our own lives from the available forces and compelling tendencies in the cosmos."

How does the IChing work?

I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with the electrical impulses in your brain that is transferred to the coins or sticks being tossed.