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I-Ching Revelations
The Book: I-Ching Oracles
How to Use the I-Ching Oracles
Pages from the I-Ching Oracles
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I-Ching Revelations
The I-Ching, Book of Changes, is an ancient book of Chinese origin.
Along with the Bible and the Koran, it is one of the most translated
and studied books on the planet. The Book of Changes is the epitome
of Chinese philosophy, founded on transcendental Taoist
understandings and modified by Confucian logic. It is studied for
its pragmatic yet esoteric wisdom and consulted as an oracle for its
solutions to life's problems. It is a book of 64 readings, each
chapter made up of a different 6 line Hexagram. The readings include
commentaries and advice on all the different archetypal life
experiences a person or group may live through.
The Book’s origin is credited to the legendary emperor and sage Fu
Hsi, who lived approximately 5-8000 years ago. It was he who first
found and understood a “line symbol system” inscribed on the shell
of a mysterious tortoise. Fu Hsi recognized the importance of the 8
Trigram symbols and how they represented Reality on all levels. It
is interesting that other ancient cultures in the world also used
various types of “line symbol systems” for representing primal and
universal values.
The next important date in history was during the Shang dynasty,
1766-1121 BCE. King Wen was imprisoned for a good while and worked
hard on understanding the I-Ching and organizing it into a
particular framework. His son, the Duke of Chou continued his work
by writing commentaries on each of the 384 Lines of the Hexagrams.
All of the books published are known as the “King Wen version” of
the I-Ching. The other arrangements and understandings of the 64
Hexagrams are apparently lost to history. The King Wen version is
all that’s survived, but when studying the I-Ching as a
philosophical system, it is important to read it in other chapter
patterns according to current traditional systems (See T. Cleary; I-Ching
Mandalas).
The last important date in I-Ching history is during the time of
Confucius (Kung Fu-tze), 551-479 BCE. He studied the Book of Changes
very diligently and wrote a commentary on it. Most of the books
published today include his commentary (or possibly his students) as
part of the text. As in the general Chinese culture of the past few
thousand years, the Confucian ideas have overlaid all aspects of the
I-Ching. Many of the concepts in the Book appear to be Confucian,
but underneath at a core level are actually Taoist.
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