Miscellanea
A selection of essays, articles, and notes on the Book of Changes and related subjects, plus an archive of hard-to-find scanned material such as Chinese Yijing diagrams and journal articles.
What’s new?
Keep track of fresh additions to the site.
I Ching patents
Steve Marshall digs out a collection of patents for I Ching devices, some of them wonderfully mad.
The I Ching on YouTube
A selection of video links with comments.
Nigel Richmond and the I Ching
Nigel Richmond's two books on the oracle have been out of print for many years, and the second one wasn't widely distributed. We have received news that Mr Richmond died in August 2005, aged 83. In addition to this article about him and his work, we have made his books available once again.
Glossary of Chinese Yijing terms
The Chinese characters of technical terms used on this site, together with a brief explanation.
Yijing hexagram sequences
I had planned to write something on Yijing sequences for my introductory notes for beginners, but kept putting it off due to the complexity of the subject. Wuwei being what it is, I found myself writing a short review of a website dealing with sequences for the 'Links' section that kept expanding until I was adding graphics and animations and had to give it a page of its own. This essay deals with the Fuxi sequence, binary notation of hexagrams, Shao Yong square, Xiantian diagram, Jing Fang's 8 Palaces, the 12 'waxing and waning hexagrams', Mawangdui and King Wen sequences.
King Wen sequence animation
A larger animation of this sequence than shown in the above essay, with a note on an interesting pattern that emerged when the animation was optimised.
Scans archive
I originally started this archive to present a collection of Chinese Yijing diagrams I had scanned from the 'Zhouyi Tushi Dadian' or 'Encyclopaedia of Zhouyi Diagrams'. Later I scanned Arthur Waley's marvellous 1933 paper 'The Book of Changes', which is extremely hard to get hold of, buried deep in the dusty vaults of academic libraries. In time, other material will be added. I have jotted a few notes on some of the diagrams.
A ‘compass rose’ star in the circular Xiantian diagram
A star pattern that appears to have eluded observation before is shown here for the first time.
Squaring the circle
An idea I had to extend the Xiantian circle to a rectangle.
Reading hexagrams off the Xiantian diagram
Examples showing how the Xiantian progression is read.
The pattern of the King Wen sequence
The King Wen sequence in a form inspired by Shao Yong's Xiantian diagram, to aid pattern recognition.
Received to Mawangdui [PDF]
Those using Edward Shaughnessy's book on the Mawangdui Yijing often express frustration that he gives a chart listing the hexagrams in Mawangdui order but not in the received King Wen order, making it difficult to look up a hexagram if one knows the King Wen number but not the Mawangdui number. I made a PDF chart to solve this problem, conveniently sized so that after printing out it can be trimmed and glued at the back of the book.
Lingqijing: The Magical Chess Classic
An introduction to a Chinese oracle that is related to the Yijing. The translation of the Lingqijing by Ralph D Sawyer and Mei-chün Lee Sawyer is also reviewed on this site.
Bob Dylan and the I Ching
John Cage's use of the oracle to foster creativity is well-known, but Dylan's less so.
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