I Ching or YiJing

I’m currently writing a soon-to-be-released app for Android devices dealing with the I Ching or YiJing. But, the friends whom I’ve talked to are unfamiliar with the YiJing.

(I’ll be using YiJing instead of I Ching because YiJing is based on Pinyin, the ISO standard for transliterating Chinese.)

Summary

The YiJing is a book also known as The Book of Changes, The Classic of Changes or the Zhouyi (“Joe-Yee”). It is one of the oldest Chinese texts and dates from the Shang Dynasty. It contains a system of fortune telling and is primarily used to tell the future. It consists of a collection of comments on, and interpretations of, a set of 64 symbols or hexagrams consisting of six lines. Each line is either “Yin” or “Yang”, represented by broken and solid lines.

The YiJing can be consulted by opening a version to a random page and reading the interpretations. But, the more common method is to randomly generate the lines that compose a hexagram. The hexagram is built from the bottom up, so the first line that is determined is the bottommost line while the last line is the top.

How to cast the lines

Several methods have been devised to generate the lines of a hexagram in recent years, but two methods are the most traditional.

Tossing Three Coins

This method is the easiest to perform and the tools needed are readily available. Because of its convenience, it the most popular and has almost replaced older methods.

All you need are three coins. You can buy specialized coins that have a square hole in the middle or you can use coins of the same value, for example, three quarters. You concentrate on a question  and toss the coins in your cupped hands. You release the coins onto a table and take note of how many heads or tails appear.

The four possible combinations of heads and tails have the following values.

Combination	Line Value	Symbol
All heads	Changing Broken (Old Yin)	-x-
All tails	Changing Solid (Old Yang)	-o-
1 head, 2 tails	Stable Solid (Young Yang)	- -
2 heads, 1 tail	Stable Broken (Young Yin)	---

The changing values and which of the lines should be noted. See below to understand what their importance is in the reading. The next section will talk about how to interpret the changing lines.

Splitting the Yarrow Stalks

Another method, splitting the yarrow stalks, is older than the three-coin method previously mentioned. It, too, replaced an older method where a question was written on a piece of bone or turtle shell. And then, heat was applied to the bone or shell to produce cracks. The cracks were then interpreted for an answer.

In this method, you take a bundle of yarrow stalks and split them into two piles. Each pile is counted by taking four stalks out of the pile at a time. The remaining stalks are set in front and the pile set aside. The total number of stalks from each pile will result in four or eight. The two piles are recombined, split and counted to determine the number of remainders. The remainders are set in front like the previous count but separate from it. The process is repeated with the remaining stalks to produce a third set of remainders. The number of four- or eight-stalk remainders are tallied and determines the value of the line. The entire process is repeated for the next five lines. Because of the long process, it takes much more time to produce a hexagram.

Remainders	Line Value	Symbol
4,4,4	Changing Solid (Old Yang)	-o-
4,4,8	Stable Broken (Young Yin)	- -
4,8,8	Stable Solid (Young Yang)	---
8,8,8	Changing Broken(Old Yin)	-x-

As in the three-coin method, the changing lines should be noted.

How to Interpret the Hexagram and Changing Lines

Once all the lines are cast, you look up the interpretation of the hexagram. You read the main text of the hexagram to get the overall meaning. The changing lines add to or, even contradict, the overall meaning, so their interpretations should be considered. Unless, there are no changing lines, this is your first hexagram and represents the current situation.

The next step in the process is to convert the changing lines to their opposite values. The changing broken lines are converted to stable solid lines; the changing solid lines are converted to stable broken lines. You write down the resulting hexagram and look up its interpretation. This is your “result” or “future” hexagram and represents how the situation will evolve.

My app follows the same method of consulting the YiJing, but it take a different approach with the changing lines. In his book, The I Ching Handbook: Decision-Making with and without Divination, the author Mondo Secter proposes a different approach to the changing lines. Instead of changing all lines, only the first line is changed to produce a “transitional” hexagram. If this transitional hexagram still has changing lines, its first changing line is converted. The process is repeated until a hexagram where there are no more changing lines results.

Hopefully, this blog entry gets others interested and gives a very basic understand of this type of fortune telling. Additionally, I hope that garners interest in the Android app.

Android App

The Android app, it is now in the beta testing phase. If you would like to participate and give feedback on an app that will be released, please let me know. Otherwise, expect to see it hit Google Play by the second quarter of 2013. I’ll write another blog entry about the progress on the app and why I decided to write yet another app dealing with the YiJing when there are several already on Google Play.