The Yijing on the web

I Ching: Book of Sun and Moon – LiSe Heyboer is one of the few whose interest in the Yijing has inspired her to research the original etymology of the Chinese characters. The site used to be called 'Book of the Moon'. I pointed out in The Mandate of Heaven that the character Yi was the name of an ancient sacrifice to the sun, essentially to bring the sun back after prolonged rainy weather. The original title character appears to be a pictograph of the sun emerging from behind rain clouds with three rays of sunlight streaming down.

This is an excellent site, and encouraging to any who delve into the Chinese characters themselves. There is a complete translation of the Zhouyi, as well as an ever-expanding selection of essays. Her commentary on her own translation shows great insight, clearly derived from divination experience. Some of the translations are speculative, but based on her study of early graphs.

LiSe is one of the wives of the Dutch artist Anton Heyboer, who has a website here too put together by LiSe. Anton, a self-styled Zen master who died in April 2005, had some very curious things to say about the Yi, written down in dictation by LiSe, which are hard to understand but very engaging nonetheless. LiSe would take a drawing of an oracle bone graph over to Anton's 'shed' – a concrete structure without windows in which he did his paintings and apparently never left in 20 years despite photographs of him out and about appearing in Dutch newspapers – and Anton would spontaneously talk about hexagrams and the Yijing in channelling style. I love Anton's art so am only too willing to listen to what he had to say, though many might regard it as somewhat strange. The stories are prefaced by 'The master says', like the Confucian Analects.

I Ching with Clarity – A lively site by Hilary Barrett geared towards practical divination in what has become the 'traditional' western approach to the oracle, although it's interesting to see the piecemeal dissemination of some of the more modern ideas coming out of Yijing scholarship also gradually finding an audience. (It's fair to say 'the shock of the new' has not fully impacted as yet in the popular arena of Yijing interest – it only does when you begin to realise that the cosy Yi you've been consulting all these years has disappeared, changed beyond recognition, but what most people don't realise is that this is when the Yijing gets truly interesting – the real revolution and therefore the real power of it.) The site has a Community section, with message boards you can contribute to, and the Answers blog. You can also get paid-for readings by email and a correspondence course.

The I Ching on the Net – Greg Whincup's site of Yijing links. Whincup wrote 'Rediscovering the I Ching', one of the first mainstream books to detail modern scholarship on the Yi. A nice selection of links, together with sample texts from Whincup's book: his translation and commentary on hexagram 1 and hexagram 21.

Yijing Bagua – Well laid-out excerpt from Stephen Field's article that was originally published in 'The Oracle' Vol. 2, No. 9, pp 20–27, titled 'Recovering the Lost Meaning of the Yijing Bagua'.

Yijing Matrices – I think this is a very interesting site, a lot of material on structural matters by Pieng-Lam Kho. Particularly good is the diamond transposition of the circular arrangement of the hexagrams in binary notation, which I haven't seen before and I believe is original to Mr Kho. This diagram is really quite brilliant. Kho attributes the circular original to Fuxi, mainly because the Earlier Heaven [Xiantian] arrangement of the 8 trigrams is attributed to the legendary Fuxi. In actual fact, the mathematical properties of the Earlier Heaven arrangement in a three-stage evolution that lead by extension in a six-stage evolution to the circular diagram of the 64 hexagrams doesn't appear to have been realised until Shao Yong made it apparent in the 11th century. Kho's transposition to a diamond, though adding nothing to the original thought of Shao Yong, provides a fresh way of looking at the diagram. Also an essay on the DNA-Yijing correlation on this website.

I Ching Cosmos – Notes on a few individual lines, with a particular interest in hamsters, together with materials on the Marquis de Sade and essays on various aspects of Yijing studies. Enthusiastic site by Tony Saroop of Niiza, Japan, with a delightful essay on Yijing finds on visiting Mr Kan's Chinese bookshop in Tokyo, so crammed with books and space so tight between the shelves it is likened to a submarine. The site also has a good annotated bibliography of Yijing books and dictionaries, though not as complete as the book by Hacker, Moore, and Patsco. [UPDATE: Site has disappeared, but perhaps it will turn up again. For pages that no longer exist on the web there is a good chance you will find a copy through the Internet Archive's waybackmachine, as is the case here.]

Yi Jing Algebra – Andreas Schöter's Yijing site, coming out of his two-part article on Boolean algebra and the Yijing, which first appeared in issues 7 and 8 of 'The Oracle'. Also an in-depth review of Z D Sung's mathematical ideas from his 'Symbols of the Yi King', as well as reviews of the 'Omei I Ching' by Monica Salyer and Gilbert Leal and 'The Numerology of the I Ching' by Alfred Huang (some of this material originally appeared in 'The Oracle').

Harmen Mesker's Yijing page – No longer updated, but of particular interest are a set of 22 Chinese hexagram name fonts, a PDF essay on Jing Fang's 'Eight Palaces' arrangement of hexagrams, and photographs of Richard Wilhelm, including his trigram and globe grave where he is buried with his wife Salomé. Also a sketch of Wilhelm's honoured teacher Lao Naixuan.

I Tjing Centrum – Harmen Mesker's latest Yijing site, mostly in Dutch. There's some particularly useful PDF downloads: the influential 1927 article by Homer Dubs from the journal T'oung Pao, 'Did Confucius Study the Book of Changes?'; diagrammatic information from the He-luo lishu for calculating month hexagrams intended to supplement 'The Astrology of I Ching' by Sherrill & Chu; a concordance to the Yi by Chinese character; the Chinese text of the Yi; the Chinese text of the Shenshu oracle; a 400-year solar calendar; a small portion from the Baihutong (The Comprehensive Discussions in the White Tiger Hall) about stems and branches; and Harmen's own article about the Eight Houses or Palaces. Especially valuable is the 25 Mb download of 'Sprüche der "Wandlungen" auf Ihrem Geistesgeschichtlichen Hintergrund', the complete 193-page book in German by Gerhard Schmitt, published in 1970 in Berlin and long out-of-print. You can also get the Yilin in Chinese, the 'Forest of Change', a first century BCE text of disputed authorship that provides a poetic image for every possible change of one hexagram into another. Harmen's blog periodically includes some detailed Yijing research in English.

I Ching Bookmarks – Lorraine Patsco's collection of Yijing links.

C F Russell Cubed – Cecil Frederick Russell (1897–1987) was a follower of Aleister Crowley who was more than a little eccentric and had an interest in the Yijing. In 1950 he published 'Book Chameleon' on the oracle with his own Chinese calligraphy, which looks like it was 'brushed' with the chewed end of a matchstick dipped in ink. The introduction to 'Book Chameleon' is available online. Russell's extremely rare collected memoirs, entitled 'Znuz is Znees' Vols. 1–3 (1970–72), are completely mad (the Warburg Institute in London has signed copies from Russell). This website, however, makes him out to be a magical mathematician and logician of unsung genius. Certainly their graphics of Russell's 'logic cube' are sufficiently appealing to make one wonder whether there was something in his ideas after all. Frankly, I still think Russell was round the twist, but that doesn't stop me finding him an endearing character and part of me hopes one day I may come to realise that he was a genius after all, but, sadly, I don't think that will happen. Make you own mind up. (Steve Moore wrote an essay on Russell, and Louis Culling, in issue 2 of Strange Attractor journal, 2005.)

The Master Therion Yi King – Aleister Crowley's 'translation' (he didn't know Chinese) of the Yijing rendered as six-line poems. I never did like this work for all I appreciate Crowley's serious-minded attitude to the oracle in his magical journals. One interesting thing about this text, often not noticed at first, is that Crowley rhymes yang lines with yang lines and yin with yin. (See the review of Red Flame's Beastly Book of Changes.)

Alex Chiu's Super I Ching – This site is hilarious. Alex Chiu specialises in using the Yijing to protect people from horrific accidents, all spieled out like a salesman trying to sell his grandmother. There's a photograph of a crashed car, if only the occupant had listened to the Yijing's advice everything would have been all right. And if only the family of nine swept away in a flood had listened they might still be picking water chestnuts today. Naturally, he advises on stocks and shares. From this online book you can learn to predict the exact time of death of your friends and know when the earthquake will strike. Amusingly eccentric. Alex Chiu has also invented an Immortality Device, which appears to involve walking around with magnetic clamps on your feet and small fingers. It's all kinda charming.

I Ching Lexicon – The Zhouyi in Chinese where each character is a gif link to its definition, with related information such as radical, stroke count, tone, pinyin, and sometimes comparative English translations. An impressive site, a labour of love by Chuck Polisher, but not complete as yet. This site is certainly very useful, but note that the definitions do not necessarily include the findings of modern Yijing research, such that, for example, 'heng' is defined as 'persevere; to be successful; to pervade' (the standard Mathews' Dictionary definition) but there is no mention of its earlier meaning in the Zhouyi: 'sacrifice' (Bernhard Karlgren, incidentally, in his Grammata Serica Recensa [GSR], defined 'heng' in the Shijing as 'sacrificial offering'). That said, this site is a great tool, particularly for the amateur translator. I couldn't see any source text specified for the Chinese, which would be useful since there are variants floating around.

Zuozhuan divination stories – Bro. Andrew Thornton has put extracts dealing with historical incidents of Zhouyi divination from James Legge's out-of-copyright translation of the Zuozhuan on the web, for a course at Saint Anselm College. The Zuozhuan, 'Chronicle of Zuo', covers the period 722–468 BCE. The text itself dates from the third century BCE and is probably semi-fictional in parts. The Zuo is of interest to those studying the Yijing because it contains a number of purported genuine early consultations of the oracle, the quoted text of which occasionally differs from that in the received text we use today. The text on the website was taken from Legge's 1872 translation in 'The Chinese Classics', Vol. V, which was reprinted by Hong Kong University Press, 1960. Thornton has usefully updated Legge's archaic romanisations of Chinese to pinyin.

Not all of the Zhouyi divination stories have been included. Richard Rutt translates all 19 stories from the Zuo concerning the Yi in Zhouyi: The Book of Changes (pp 173–197). Rutt's translation is a lot more readable than Legge's, and he also includes examples of Zhouyi divination found in the 5th century BCE Guoyu, the 'Discourses of the States'. Some of the material from the Zuo has also been translated by Kidder Smith in 'Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies' 49.

Rick Kunst's unpublished Yijing Notes – Richard Kunst's 1985 PhD dissertation containing his translation of the Yi and other materials, such as the very useful glossary of Chinese characters with Karlgren GSR numbers, is a gateway to the scholarly study of the Yijing. The PhD dissertation itself is available for purchase online as 686 pages printed both sides on loose sheets from University Microfilms International (the order number is 8525020). It would be advisable to read this before his scanned handwritten notes from this endeavour, which he has made freely available as 64 PDF files covering each of the hexagrams (average 1–3 Mb in size). These notes were mostly taken during the period 1979–1985 and sometimes explain things in the translation in the dissertation that would otherwise be unglossed. Not easy reading by any means, but for anyone investigating the Yi in depth these notes are of course worthy of study. I find they are easier to read if printed out rather than viewed on-screen. See also 'Rick Kunst's Miscellaneous Chinese, Yijing, You-name-it Page'.

Joseph Adler – Adler's field of research is Neo-Confucian religious thought in China. Of particular interest are chapters 6 and 7 on Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) from the excellent book 'Sung Dynasty Uses of the I Ching' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Adler's translation of Zhu Xi's 'Introduction to the Study of the Classic of Change', a Song dynasty work on the Yijing, used to be online but was taken down when the work was published in hardback. The original webpage, however, is still freely available courtesy of the Internet Archive's waybackmachine (although some of the illustrations appear to be missing).

Adler has some interesting material on Zhou Dunyi (Chou Tun-i), such as his translation of the Tongshu. Zhou is also known for his brief 'Explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Polarity' or Taijitu shuo. The Tongshu is conventionally translated as 'Penetrating the Classic of Change' after Zhu Xi's explanation that the real title was 'Yi Tongshu', though literally 'Tongshu' is simply 'Penetrating Writing'.

Western-language works on the Yijing – This annotated bibliography is a supplement to Professor Richard J Smith's article from the Fall 2003 issue of 'Education About Asia' (Volume 8, Number 2), 'The Yijing (Classic of Changes) in Global Perspective: Some Pedagogical Reflections'. The bibliography is a little different in that it is organised according to topics. The section on the transmission of the Yijing to other lands is particularly good. Richard J Smith wrote the book 'Fortune-Tellers & Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society', which is focused on the Qing dynasty, and has a forthcoming book on Yijing history.

Early History of the Zhouyi cantong qi – Writings by Fabrizio Pregadio adapted from an appendix to his article, 'The Representation of Time in the Zhouyi cantong qi', in 'Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie' 8 (1995): 155–173. An Italian sinologist interested in Chinese alchemy, Fabrizio Pregadio wrote the book 'Zhouyi cantong qi: dal Libro dei Mutamenti all'Elisir d'Oro. Con un'edizione critica e una concordanza della recensione di Peng Xiao (947 dC). Venezia: Cafoscarina, 1996, 248 pp. This translates as: 'Zhouyi cantong qi: From the Book of Changes to the Golden Elixir. With a critical edition and a concordance of Peng Xiao's recension (947 CE).' The table of contents for the book is on the website, as well as an abstract and some extracts. There's also a Big5 Zhouyi cantong qi, the title of which Pregadio translates as: 'Token for the Agreement of the Three in Accordance with the Book of Changes'.

A delight to come across this site, a great deal of scholarly material. Particularly interesting is his main Golden Elixir site, a large collection of resources on Chinese alchemy. I was also very surprised to find an index (in Chinese) to the Daozang (Daoist Canon), with background materials in English. There is so much material on this website I'm essentially making bookmarks for myself here, one last one: Yu Yan's Diagram of the Fire Phases. This circular diagram has the bigua on one of its concentric rings, the 12 'sovereign hexagrams', about which I have written in my article on Yijing hexagram sequences. (See also my Chinese diagrams archive.)

Bigua and yin-yang symbol – Article from 'Fengshui for Modern Living' magazine pointing out how the bigua sequence in a circle could potentially be the origin of the familiar yin-yang symbol or taijitu, also known as the 'yin-yang fishes' (yinyangyu).

Ralph Abraham's I Ching work – Abraham is a chaos mathematician with an interest in the occult, Enochian magick, John Dee, Euclid, and the Yijing. As he writes:

During the second half of 1971, while living in Amsterdam, I began a book of commentaries on the I Ching. The project was discontinued in early 1972 due to professional duties in Amsterdam and Paris. The extant parts of the manuscript are presented here for what they are worth, and perhaps the project will be resumed one day.

Much of the historical basis of the work is dated, but it is interesting to read because of Abraham's influence in other areas. I hope maybe he might pick up the work again concentrating on the mathematical chapters he had outlined. The full extent of Ralph Abraham's interests can be seen at ralph-abraham.org, including an article on the Yijing in relation to lunar astrology: The Hexagrams of the Moon [PDF]. Abraham used to present lectures and discussions at Esalen along with Terence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake. He mentions McKenna's 'Time Wave' in his book 'Chaos · Gaia · Eros'.

The Watkins Objection – Matthew Watkins is a British mathematician who wrote an objection to Terence McKenna's theory of 'Time Wave', a convoluted theory of cyclical history based on a fractal generated from the King Wen sequence of hexagrams. McKenna had the idea on a psilocybin mushroom trip, see 'The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching' by Terence and Dennis McKenna. Terence McKenna came to agree with the objection made by Watkins. Email addresses are given for both McKenna and Watkins, but this webpage was last updated in 1996 and McKenna is dead now and the last I heard of Watkins he was wandering around Ireland with a donkey and a mule, planting trees. [UPDATE: I had an email from Matthew Watkins in February 2006, pointing out that he is now at the mathematics department of Exeter University, where he has a website. He tells me he is happy to discuss 'Time Wave Zero' with anyone who wants to get in touch.]

Mathematics of the Time Wave – Very detailed site on the Time Wave theory of the King Wen sequence, by John Sheliak. Whatever one thinks of Time Wave, whether it is an enormous projection onto the sequence or not, it has certainly inspired some dedicated and complex investigation by mathematically-inclined minds who presumably didn't think they were wasting their time.

King Wen sequence cracked! – So claims Chris Lofting on this webpage. It will take more than obfuscating waffle, however. Lofting has further webpages devoted to the Yi in a semiotics context. They are mostly unpalatable tripe.

I Ching Sequencer – This excellent Flash animation was the point of departure for my article on Yijing hexagram sequences.

Four Pillars – Information on Four Pillars Chinese astrology, fengshui, and Yijing by D H Van den Berghe. His explanation of the King Wen sequence on the articles page has some very good diagrams; they perhaps suggest more structure than they prove but nonetheless worthy of study. His article on 'Harmonious hexagrams' has some intriguing ideas, which used to have a fascinating gif animation to illustrate them but because his articles are now in PDF it couldn't be included; it is, however, now shown on the homepage.

Scott Davis's hypothesis – Thoughts on the King Wen sequence of hexagrams. Although pointing out some interesting symmetries in parts of the sequence, Scott's idea is essentially based on associating decades of hexagrams with decades of life in ancient Chinese society rather than on the structure of the hexagram diagrams.

The I Ching Binary System And Natural Phenomena – Very interesting piece of work looking at analogies between the I Ching binary system and DNA, and 'interacting' trigrams and hexagrams, by artist Stanley Tomshinsky. I've not yet studied it in the depth it requires, but my gut instinct is that there may well be something well worthwhile investigating here. This is an internet-rendition of projects Tomshinsky realised between 1974 and 1978.

Energy As It Flows In The Universe – Billy Culver's mindboggling 'Energy Map Using The Polar Diffusion Of Opposing Yet Complementary Forces As Illustrated By The Hexagram Lines Of The I Ching/Binary Notation.'

I Ching geometric relationships – Pretty diagram, not sure what it means. Looks like what you would get if you strung string around 64 nails sticking out around the circumference of a wooden disk, the presence of hexagrams in Shao Yong's circular sequence appears to be superfluous. I stand to be corrected. Presumably you can wind the string around the nails till it looks pretty and something a Spirograph can do and then you take the hexagrams connected by string and ask what changes in one hexagram lead to the hexagram it is connected to. Don't quite see the point, and the text on this website will win no prizes for clarity.

Tai Chi Symbol and Hexagrams from the I Ging – Observations by Prof Klaus-Dieter Graf from Berlin on the geometric properties of what is properly called the taijitu, the 'Diagram of the Supreme Polarity' or what we crudely call the yin-yang symbol. This paper was originally published in: K Yokochi and H Okamori (eds): 'Proceedings of the Fifth Five Nations Conference on Mathematics Education', 1994, Osaka, Japan, pp 15–21. Prof Graf has also written some very interesting papers on 17th century Chinese calculating machines, with fascinating photographs, see his homepage.

Origins of the yin-yang symbol – Useful discussion on the origins of the taijitu from the archive of the H-Asia list.

Geometry of the I Ching – The 'Cullinane sequence' of the 64 hexagrams 'was discovered during an investigation of the six-dimensional affine space over the two-element field by S H Cullinane on January 6, 1989'. The Marie-Louise von Franz style of drawing the hexagrams shown on the site is also of interest, although hexagram 1 leaves something to be desired, being invisible. I hadn't come across the von Franz style before, apparently it comes from her book 'Number and Time' (1970).

Information on Subsets of a Set – Not an Yijing site, but has information on the 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle, which relates to the sequencing of trigrams and hexagrams. [This site has disappeared, but I have found it stored by the waybackmachine.]

Liber de Octo Mutationibus – Essay entitled 'The Book of the Eight Changes: Universal Cycles and the Trigrams', by John Opsopaus. A discussion of the eight phases that occur in any cycle between opposing poles, and their relation to the eight trigrams of the I Ching, on the Biblioteca Arcana site. Arcane is the word for it: Caput II: Clavis illius libri vicis (The Key to The Book of Change). Most curious and worthy of study.

Wikipedia I Ching page – The Wikipedia is a wonderful concept, an encyclopaedia put together and continually added to and revised by those passing through, who throw in a little of their knowledge and expertise. At the bottom of the entry is a link to 'page history', showing how the page has evolved over time.

Yi-Toons – Hexagram cartoons by Luis Andrade. Inspired idea. Also an Yi-Blog as part of the same site, and scans of many of the diagram pages from the books on the Yijing by General George T Cheng. You can also download a PDF of Louis Culling's LRI I Ching.

Owl Academy Sinological Library – Lawrence Chin has put scans online from Hu Fangping's 'Yixue qimeng tongshi', which he translates as 'General Explanatory Initiation into the Learning of Change'. Hu Fangping was a Song dynasty exponent of the teachings of Zhu Xi. In a multi-part essay on Yijing metaphysics, Lawrence translates some portions of this work. See also his marvellous paintings inspired by scenes from Chinese history.

I Ching Mastery – 'Master' Alfred Huang's website, who apparently wrote the 'definitive' Yijing translation. The subtitle of the site is: 'Spiritually Prosperous and Prosperously Spiritual.' 'Spiritually Preposterous' might be more apt, given that Huang has recently registered the phrase 'I Ching Master' as a trademark. See A note on Alfred Huang's I Ching books. [UPDATE: Huang's domain has lapsed. I leave the URL here, as you may be able to find it in the waybackmachine.]

Mei Hua Xin Yi – A page by Makoto Ogino on the 'Plum Blossom Numerology' method for constructing hexagrams. Other Yi-related subjects are linked to from the home page, including one on Qimen Dunjia.

Wilhelm/Baynes translation – The full text of Book I on a single webpage, useful for searching. A Book of Five Rings, the Samurai classic by Miyamoto Musashi, is also on this site together with an eclectic mix of material gathered with a minimum of explanation, such as tangled in a thousand strands, as part of akirarabelais.com, which appears to redirect to a random hexagram from a page you don't have time to read.

James Legge translation – Complete text and plates as published in 'The Sacred Books of the East', Vol. 16 (1899), which was the 2nd edition.

Mary Halpin's Midaughter 'Journal of I Ching' – Halpin likes to present herself as a scholar of the Yijing, but her work lacks rigour. She accepts on face value many ideas about the Yi and its history that are fallacious. Her site, though apparently impressive to beginners, singlehandedly manages to mislead students of the oracle into a mishmash of personal obsessions presented authoritatively but that do not bear critical scrutiny. Beware of getting your education in Yijing history from this site, you may have much to unlearn later. Seen in its proper context as wild speculation the site is not without merit. Halpin also runs a Yahoo group. She fancies herself as spiritually advanced, but it is merely the usual New Age narcissism.

Bradford Hatcher's Yijing materials – A lot of interesting material here and some great resources. A translation of the Yi, historical notes, a Big5 Chinese Yijing, and, particularly useful, a 'matrix translation' that provides the Mathews' dictionary numbers for the Chinese characters.

Yijing in Big5 Chinese – This online Chinese version includes commentary material in addition to the Zhouyi. It has a frame that works as a hexagram finder. I haven't checked the text for accuracy. The main site also has other Yijing-related materials in Chinese.

Another Chinese Yijing – This one was typed in by Wang Minghui and has been cut-and-pasted to a number of sites. Again, I've not checked it for accuracy. Bradford Hatcher has stated that the text typed in by Wang Minghui contains many errors.

Zhouyi shuoming – After creating my own online and accurate transcription of the 1935 Harvard-Yenching Zhouyi, I discovered that the Harvard-Yenching Institute actually have the Zhouyi in Chinese on their own site, which I failed to find when I first searched for it. However, this version is slightly different to the 1935 printed work, which is widely regarded as the benchmark edition of the text. At the bottom of each hexagram page the Mawangdui 'silk manuscript' (boshu) text is also given, which is very useful.

Wengu – Chinese Classics – Absolutely marvellous rendering of the Yijing, Lunyu, Daodejing, Shijing, Tang Shi, and other texts, in Chinese and translation. Beautifully presented in encoded vertical Chinese linked to dictionary definitions and superimposed on a graphic of strung bamboo slats. An obvious labour of love made with considerable technical expertise.

Richard S Cook – Cook, of the Linguistics Department of the University of California, Berkeley, submitted a proposal (with Michael Everson and John H Jenkins) to the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) to encode all 64 hexagrams, the 2 monograms (broken and unbroken yin and yang lines), and 4 digrams into Unicode, the trigrams already there. The proposal has an appendix showcasing various Yi-related text samples, mainly to illustrate to the UTC that hexagrams widely feature as component parts of Chinese and English printed materials. This section contains an extract from Cook's monograph 'The Etymology of the Chinese Chen' that has an interesting interpretation of hexagram 51. The proposal has since been accepted by the UTC.

Cook, with Everson and Michael Nylan, also submitted a proposal to add the monogram, digram, and 81 tetragram characters of Yang Xiong's Taixuanjing to the Unicode character set; this too has also been accepted. The Taixuanjing has been translated by Michael Nylan as 'The Canon of Supreme Mystery' and by Derek Walters as 'The Alternative I Ching'. Both proposals can be downloaded as PDF files from a page of links to Cook's writings. Interesting in the tetragram proposal is that Cook points to the subset of 16 tetragrams containing only the kind of broken and unbroken lines found in the Yijing as being useful in the study of 'nuclear trigrams' for Yijing scholars, as an example of incidental benefit.

Cook also has an attractively laid-out Big5 Chinese Yijing Daxiang (Great Images) commentary on the Yi, plus a note on the Daxiang in English.

Unicode hexagrams test page – Alan Wood has put together a page to test browser support for the Unicode hexagram characters. For the hexagrams to show you need either the Code2000 font or Fixedsys Excelsior installed. I have been able to get the hexagram symbols to show in the Firefox browser on Windows ME. Alan Wood also has a test page for the 81 tetragrams of the Taixuanjing in Unicode. He says he hasn't found a font that contains these characters as yet. Richard S Cook (above) uses a font called UtopiaTetragrams in his PDF proposal, and a font called YiJingGuaSeven for the hexagrams, but doesn't appear to have made either of these fonts available.

Canon of Supreme Mystery – Detailed introduction to Yang Xiong's Taixuanjing by Michael Nylan and Nathan Sivin, first published as chapter 3 of Sivin's book 'Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China' in 1995.

Script for building hexagrams – A script written in the J programming language for generating monograms, digrams, trigrams, hexagrams, the 81 tetragrams of the Taixuanjing, and Shao Yong's 'Great Horizontal Diagram'.

Mr Fang Xuanzhen's prediction with Yi-Jing – Enthusiast's website in China in English and Chinese. Apparently in 1984 Fang resigned his job to study the Yijing full-time (coincidentally, that is precisely what I did in 1984 as well). In 1988 he predicted he would be a skilled diviner if someone gave him the gift of an extraordinarily huge tortoise (hexagram 42/2 I imagine). He dedicated himself even more to study of the Yi and then at the end of November 1995 someone gave him a tortoise so large it made the Jiang-Nan Evening News. I was interested in his sample divination for a man of 29 born in the year of the Pig who had fallen in love with a girl born in the year of the Rabbit who wanted to know whether their marriage would be fortunate and happy. So too the divination for a man born in the year of the Mouse 'intending to drill a fresh spring well', Fang Xuanzhen tells him it will be hopeless at that location.

YiSheng College – Mr YiSheng Cai is a 'Zhouyiologist' after studying Zhouyiology. His Zhouyi business consultancy appears to be geared towards 'fate management'. Interesting example of a Chinese diviner's website in English and Chinese. He says he was at Shandong University and 'for four years studied zhouyiology under the instruction of Da junliu'. I assume he means Liu Dajun, whose work is reviewed here.

Studies of Zhouyi – Selection of articles translated into English from Liu Dajun's journal 'Studies of Zhouyi', published by the 'Center for Zhouyi & Ancient Chinese Philosophy' at Shandong University. The Zhouyi in English they present is the same as the one that Richard Rutt has reviewed in book-form, but the web version doesn't include the annotations.

The Chameleon Book – Self-published translation of the Yijing with remarks by Freeman Crouch. A 50-page PDF sampler from the book is available for download. The book was in part inspired by 'The Mandate of Heaven'. An interesting and enthusiastic work which is far too kind to my good self. (Not to be confused with 'Book Chameleon' by C F Russell.)

Yijing Poetics – Essays on hexagrams and the King Wen sequence by Denis Mair. The specimen divinations I found particularly interesting. Denis is a poet and his reflections have a lyrical quality to them.

Fuyang Zhouyi [PDF] – Edward L Shaughnessy's article from the journal 'Asia Major' on the bamboo-slip Zhouyi discovered in a Han tomb.

Fuyang Zhouyi fragments – In Chinese.

A touch of ancients – Allan Lian's reflections on the Zhouyi, Daoist immortals, and ancient Chinese literature.

The Useless Tree – Sam Crane writes in his blog about what modern America can learn from ancient Chinese literature, regularly consulting the Yijing about political matters. The title of his site comes from Zhuangzi (chapter 4), the idea being that no-one bothers cutting down a useless tree so its uselessness ensures it has a long and tranquil life.

Djohi – French Yijing site under the auspices of Cyrille Javary. 'Djohi' is the non-pinyin phonetic pronunciation of 'Zhouyi'.

Abrahadabra – Some beautiful diagrams and animations mapping together the Qabalistic Tree of Life and the Yijing. The tetragrams of the Taixuanjing also feature. These ideas are set against the backdrop of Aleister Crowley's writings.

Deciphering Wen – A fascinating site by J M Berger exploring the structure of the King Wen sequence. Some attractive diagrams, animations, and mandalas are put forward in an ongoing personal study that seems to be heading in an interesting direction. Also a subsite of blog entries detailing references to the Yijing in the enigmatic TV series 'Lost'. Berger otherwise is a journalist specialising in al Qaeda's activities within the United States.

Logical ordering of hexagrams and trigrams [PDF] – Peter D Loly's paper entitled 'A Logical Way of Ordering the Hexagrams of the Yijing and the Trigrams of the Bagua', which was first published in 'The Oracle: Journal of Yijing Studies' Vol. 2, No. 12 (January 2002), pp 2–13.

Yijing scholarship in late-Nguyen Vietnam [PDF] – A study in English of Le Van Ngu's 'Chu dich cuu nguyen' ('An Investigation of the Origins of the Yijing', 1916), by Wai-Ming Ng of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The author of this 24-page paper leads up to the conclusion that Le's ideas are not particularly exceptional and did not break new ground. He says that the main worth of Le's book is 'its spirit of doubt, openness and pragmatism'. The most interesting thing I found out here is that Mr Le referred to himself as a 'crackpot'. Style over substance can sometimes be worth looking at, though not enough is quoted in this paper to form much of an impression. Nonetheless, there is a useful summary of Vietnamese Yijing studies.

Yi diagram repository – Good collection of scans of Yijing diagrams on this Chinese site.

I Ching Consultation – Cesca Diebschlag offers I Ching readings in person in Sussex, UK, or by phone/email. She is also a herbalist and acupuncturist. The site has a number of articles to download in PDF, and an external blog, Moving Lines, which is not solely about the I Ching, which is good as far as I'm concerned as I am always interested to hear about people's gardens. Insights into the Book of Changes are more grounded in the concrete than the abstract. Cesca has another blog, I Ching News, which seems to be the current one.

I Ching Meditation – Adele Aldridge's blog of paintings and thoughts, subtitled 'A Woman's Book of Changes'.

Pure Yang Mudra – I think Master Wu Zhongxian's connection of the mudra to hexagram 63 is rather fanciful, since it requires a hidden yin line at the top to take account of us being a finger short to make a hexagram in a naturally elegant way. Still, interesting. You can also download Master Wu's preface in PDF for his planned Yijing book.

Yijing Wondering and Wandering – Online scanned presentation of the book by Jane Schorre and Carrin Dunne. Some interesting structural insights and notes on the Yijing. Not all of the book is available online as yet, it will be added over time as it is scanned.

Xicizhuan – The Xicizhuan or Dazhuan (Great Treatise), Wings 5 and 6, in Chinese.

Comparison of variant Zhouyi texts – Today's received text (in simple and traditional characters), the Mawangdui silk manuscript, and the Chu bamboo-slip Zhouyi (Shanghai Museum), transcribed by Liu Dajun. (See also Harmen Mesker's review of Pu Maozuo's work on the Chu bamboo Zhouyi other variant texts.)

The Tao of the I Ching – 111-page Powerpoint ebook ($20) by Ted Harper on structural properties of the King Wen sequence converted into base-8. An interesting presentation, with animations, that goes into some fascinating avenues such as the Fibonacci series, Benjamin Franklin's magic squares, DNA, and connects up with Lama Anagarika Govinda's much-ignored work 'The Inner Structure of the I Ching'. I'm not sure the Powerpoint format permits easy assimilation of these complex ideas, though it certainly makes them attractive to the eye. I think it would be good if the author offered in addition a printable PDF ebook, with more explanation of things shown mostly visually through animation in Powerpoint, to enable proper study. That said, anyone interested in structural issues to do with the Yijing will probably find food for thought here, although the small amount of Yijing history and the idea that King Wen was concealing his discovery of Pi in the sequence is best skipped over.

Liubo – Interesting page on the ancient Chinese board game of liubo, which may have a connection to the Yijing. The game is intriguing because the rules have been lost and it looks a rather good game from surviving representations. The author has attempted a reconstruction of the rules.

Working with clients – A good post by Harmen Mesker on his approach to giving professional Yijing readings. A response to an equally good post by Allan Lian on the same subject from a more traditional point of view.

Siku Quanshu Yijing books – The books, in Chinese, from the Yijing section of the Imperial Encyclopedia, downloadable in 40 PDF files. (At the time of writing the link for #37 is a repeat of the link to #3, but the link address can be copied and pasted into the browser address field and corrected so it points at the right file.)

Drumming the I Ching Patterns – Three pages on drumming the yin and yang lines of hexagrams, based on Melinda Maxfield's book and CD, Drumming the I Ching. Hilary Barrett has mentioned her experience of drumming the sequence, in response to a blog post by Nicole Raisinstern. There is a book on Lulu by Michael Drake on the same subject, I Ching: The Tao of Drumming, which has an accompanying CD. The I Ching reading page on his website has his version of the oracle fed into it, which is Part Two of his book. More or less an I Ching based on Wilhelm with a small section geared towards drummers called 'The Rhythmic Pattern', which doesn’t seem to be saying much. I don’t know whether he has made anything of the few references to drumming in the Yi. I think it's the actual drumming that is interesting, rather than an I Ching text with a nod towards drumming. Perhaps Part One of his book has more about that.

Iulian Shchutskii

Biography and photographs of the Russian author of 'Researches on the I Ching'.

Hellmut Wilhelm

Biography and photographs of the author of 'Change' and 'Heaven, Earth, and Man in the Book of Changes'.

Arthur Waley

Biography and photographs of the author of the influential 1933 essay The Book of Changes.

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YIJING DAO

The Yijing on the web