I Ching

I Ching (ê jîng) noun
A Chinese book of ancient origin consisting of 64 interrelated hexagrams along with commentaries. The hexagrams embody Taoist philosophy by describing all nature and human endeavor in terms of the interaction of yin and yang, and the book may be consulted as an oracle.
[Chinese (Mandarin) Yâ Jìng : Yâ, divination + Jìng, classic, book.]

theories on the I-Ching

Imagine that a being from an advanced culture gave you a toy designed to both entertain you and instruct you in the workings of our reality matrix. The toy works like this: at any moment, you can freeze the flow of time into a very small slice which not only tells you the nature of the moment, but why you chose it, the ramifications of having chosen it, and three other co-ordinates of change that create the moment and the choice.

Essentially, the I Ching, the gift of Fu Hsi, is such a toy. Any means of random selection can be used - counting yarrow stalks, tossing coins or a binary computer program - to provide the hexagram which marks the quality of that moment. This hexagram is then interpreted by various methods and then related to other hexagrams to provide an inclusive and holistic perspective on the evolution of that moment in time. The value of such knowledge, however, comes from our ability to make use of it.

And this, perhaps, was the genius of King Wen. In addition to writing the enigmatic judgments, King Wen also designed a way to structure the hexagrams in pairs so that the increment of change between the pairs described the rhythmic structure of that elusive quality the now or the ever-changing present. This discovery animated the larger structures described by Fu Hsi's trigrams so that time or change was rendered interactive. King Wen's arrangement became the standard sequence used in most versions of the I Ching, and for millennia was the preferred way to consult the oracle. It survived because it worked. Through the King Wen arrangement, it was possible to have a dialogue with this ancient source of wisdom.

How this actually worked was a mystery until recently. Carl Jung's study of the I Ching led to his theory of synchronicity as an acausal connecting principle, but he was unable to see how the flow of archetypes formed meaningful structures in an acausal manner. Synchronicity could be defined as a psychological event, the projection of meaning onto a background of randomness, but Jung left unanswered the question of meaning itself. Does this temporal universe inhabited by biological entities truly have a “meaning?”

Perhaps not a meaning, but at least a “destiny.” One of the commentaries on the I Ching attributed to Confucius tells us that “the future likewise develops in accordance with the fixed laws, according to calculable numbers. . . This is the thought on which the Book of Changes is based.” Another even older commentary informs us that “counting that which is going into the past depends on the forward movement. Knowing that which is to come depends on the backward movement. This is why the Book of Changes has backward moving numbers.” Clearly the early commentators and interpreters saw the I Ching as something vastly more significant than a simple oracle.

But what exactly? This question was answered by a couple of the century's most brilliant minds. The McKenna brothers, Terence and Dennis, in their groundbreaking work, _The Invisible Landscape_, postulated that the King Wen arrangement contained just such a backward and forward flowing pattern of numbers, and that these numbers could be used to construct an interface with similar vital holons, or holistic hierarchies, in the organization of space/time.

The McKennas demonstrated this by overlaying the 384 lines of the sixty four hexagrams (6 x 64 = 384) on the 13 month lunar calendar (13 X 29.53 days = 383.89 days). They then used these basic units to develop a temporal lock with the solar/sunspot cycle, the Zodiacal Ages, and the length of the Great Year of precessional motion. With the same increment, sixty four, they found it was possible to assemble a 26 step model of space/time from the size/age of the universe down to Planck's Constant. In this view, the I Ching is a fractal model of all that is, was, or will be. It is also hologramic, in that the piece, the I Ching, contains the information of the whole, the evolving universe.

Applying this realization to the structure of the King Wen arrangement produces a model of the holonic nature of evolution. If we think of the time from the emergence of life on earth to the immediate future, roughly 1.3 billion years, as one increment and then begin to divide that by 64, some interesting time periods are highlighted. Our first division, one 64th of 1.3 billion years, brings us to the high point of the mammals, 18 million years ago. The next division by 64 brings us to 275,000 BCE, the dawn of Homo Sapiens. Dividing again by 64 brings us to the high point of the ancient cultures such as the Egyptian around 2300 BCE. Another division brings us to the mid 20th century and the last 67 + years of the cycle.

According to this view, all of biological and cosmological time is approaching a point of concrescence in the near future. The McKenna brothers went looking for possible dates for this concrescence and decided that the helical rising of the winter solstice sunrise in 2012 matched the requirements. It would certainly be an event of cosmological significance that could serve as a symbol of the concrescence itself. The McKennas found that this date also matched the wave form derived from King Wen's arrangement with historical events. The end of World War II and the atomic bomb, for instance, fell on 1945, the year of the last division, the beginning of the last 67 + years of biological and galactic evolution which completes the vast hexagram of time which began 72.25 billion years ago.

All of the information, “novelty” as the McKennas called it, that was generated in the course of the previous billions of years from the formation of the earth to the present is compressed and recapitulated in the last 67 + years. Therefore we can apply the same scale of division, creating a new hexagramic hierarchy, to this 67 + year period. Within this time period, there are 64 groups of 384 days which cover three major and six minor sunspot cycles. When the wave front of concrescence is applied to the time period, we find that the first node falls on the beginning of the last 384 day cycle. The McKennas suggested that this node marked a shift in “novelty” or information density, equal to that which occurred in 1945 CE, 2300 BCE, 275,000 BCE and so on.

The next node on the concrescence wave happens six days before the shift point and again represents the same kind of acceleration in “novelty.” The first trigram is completed at the next node, 135 minutes from ground zero, and represents another level of acceleration. Novelty continues to speed up at the next node, 127 seconds, and again at the next, 1.98 seconds, and then for the final time at .003 seconds when it accelerates to its maximum. The pattern then inverts and novelty decreases by the same incremental pattern with which it increased. Another round has begun.

The implications of this are staggering if considered from the perspective of the universe's meaning or destiny. Perhaps sentient life developed out of the primal matrix just to be aware of this all important wave of information acceleration as it reaches concrescence. Perhaps the true value of the I Ching is to help us understand the transformative possibilities of living in a moment of rapidly accelerating time.

Terence and Dennis McKenna's work has been validated and expanded upon by others since the first publication of The Inner Landscape in 1975. John Major Jenkins, in his definitive work on the Maya and precession, _Maya Cosmogenesis 2012_, credits the McKennas with having the intuition that the helical alignment with galactic center in 2012 was an important precessional marker. Jenkins' work suggests that the Maya actually based their calendar on such galactic alignments. The work of Moira Timms, in Beyond Prophecies and Predictions and in other articles, suggests that the ancient Egyptians also aligned the Djed pillar with the center of the galaxy. In our recent book, A Monument to the End of Time, my co-author, Jay Weidner, and I demonstrated that the ancient traditions of alchemy and chiliaism in the west are also based on the precessional mysteries.

Interestingly enough, the Taoist alchemists of the Sung Dynasty (960 - 1127 CE) seemed to understand the concept of alchemical time and the transformative process at the heart of King Wen's arrangement. In a curious mandala entitled The Cauldron, Furnace, Medicines and Firing Process, the King Wen sequence is used to describe the alchemical process. “The science of the gold pill (alchemy),” as Liu I-ming, the foremost Taoist scholar of the 19th century, tells us in his commentary on the mandala, “has the Heaven and the Earth for its cauldron and furnace, Water and Fire for its medicinal ingredients; the other sixty hexagrams, beginning with Difficulty and Darkness, are the firing process. . . The science of the gold pill (alchemy) is not outside the tao of transformation, the tao of transformation is not outside the tao of evolution of yin and yang, of heaven and earth, sun and moon.”

And so the toy, so bright and strange, given to us by an advanced culture or being turns out to be the wish fulfilling jewel of transformation. This super computer of destiny, the world's oldest book, not only has an application in the moment, it just might be that it was designed specifically to be used at this moment as a way to understand the relentless process of information acceleration and increasing novelty. In that sense, the McKenna brothers deserve to take their place along with Master Kung, King Wen and Fu Hsi for defining this aspect of the I Ching's wisdom.

• track _Book Of Changes_ MP3 by Q-Burns Abstract Message off of _Deep Concentration_ compilation CD on Om (1997)
• trance track _Soulstorm_ MP3 (192k) by I-Ching feat. DJ Patrick Reid on Platipus #054 (2000)
• ethnic fusion track _39 I Ching_ MP3 by Atman off of _Tradition_ on Drunken Fish (1999)

"Time, like light, may best be described as a union of opposites. Time may be both wave and, ultimately, particle, each in some sense a reflection of the other. The same holographic properties that have long been an accepted part of the phenomenon of the perception of three-dimensional space also suggest that interference patterns are characteristic of process. Living beings especially illustrate this: They are an instance of the superimposition of many different chemical waves, waves of gene expression and of gene inhibition, waves of energy release and energy consumption, forming the standing wave interference patterns characteristic of life. We hypothesize that this wave description is the simple form of a more complex wave that utilizes the simple wave as the primary unit in a system of such units, combined in the same way as lines are combined into trigrams and then hexagrams in the I Ching. We will argue that this more complex wave is a kind of temporal map of the changing boundary conditions that exist in space and time, including future time. We have called the quantized wave-particle, whatever its level of occurrence within the hierarchy or its duration, eschaton.

We don't think about time because we take it for granted like breathing, but consider our hypothesis that the space-time continuum is a modular wave-hierarchy. The Eschaton is a universal and fractal morphogenetic field, hypothesized to model the unfolding predispositions of space and time. This structure was decoded from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching and was the central idea that evolved in the wake of the events of La Chorrera as described in my book, _True Hallucinations_.

I've been talking about it since 1971, and what's interesting to me is at the beginning, it was material for hospitalization, now it is a minority viewpoint and everything is on schedule. My career is on schedule, the evolution of cybernetic technology is on schedule, the evolution of a global information network is on schedule. Given this asymptotic curve, I think we'll arrive under budget, on time, December 22, 2012.

The King Wen sequence of the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching is among the oldest structured abstractions extant. It has been found scratched on the shoulder bones of sheep that have been dated to 4000 BC so we do know that this sequence existed very early in ancient China, yet the nature of the ordering principles preserved in that sequence remains unelucidated. The I Ching is a mathematical divinatory tool whose probable origin is the mountainous heart of Asia-the home of classical shamanism and Taoist magic. The I Ching is a centrally important part of humanity's shamanic heritage that is rich in implications.

The I Ching is particularly concerned with the dynamic relationships and transformations that archetypes undergo; it is deeply involved with the nature of time as the necessary condition for the manifestation of archetypes as categories of experience. The I Ching, through its concern with detailing the dynamics of change and process, may hold the key to modeling the temporal dimension that metabolism creates for organisms, the temporal dimension without which mind as we know it, could not manifest."

- Terence McKenna

casting the runes /n./

What a guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular program and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp. used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from what J. Random Luser does. Compare incantation, runes, examining the entrails; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in " AI Koans" (Appendix A).

A correspondent from England tells us that one of ICL's most talented systems designers used to be called out occasionally to service machines which the field circus had given up on. Since he knew the design inside out, he could often find faults simply by listening to a quick outline of the symptoms. He used to play on this by going to some site where the field circus had just spent the last two weeks solid trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram of the system out on a table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones and cast them over the diagram, peer at the bones intently for a minute, and then tell them that a certain module needed replacing. The system would start working again
immediately upon the replacement.
 - from _The New Hacker's Dictionary_ by Eric S. Raymond 

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

I Ching:  Because 9 in the first place means it furthers one to cross the Great Road. No blame.
 
  

The I Ching is based on a set of binary mathematical permutations, which also underlie what I call the "pure" progression of the Mayan number harmonics - 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64.  As it is presented to us, however, the I Ching is actually comprised of the combination of eight symbols (trigrams) of three lines, either broken or unbroken, in all possible combinations with each other.  By doubling the trigrams, the permutations yield 64 more complex symbolic possibilities of six lines each (hexagrams).  By comparison, the Tzolk'in is based on permutations of thirteen numbers and twenty symbols or Sacred Signs which yield a possibility of 260 permutations.  At minimum, each one of the 260 permutations is a combination of one of thirteen numbers, one of twenty signs, and one of four directional positions.

Finally, like the I Ching, the Tzolkin is a system for revealing information relating to a deeper or larger purpose.  While the I Ching is precisely synchronized with the genetic code, the Tzolkin is synchronized with the galactic code.  As the genetic code governs information concerning the operation of all levels of the life cycle, inclusive of all plant and animal forms, the galactic code governs information affecting the operations of the light cycle.  The light cycle defines resonant frequency ranges of radiant energy, inclusive of electricity, heat, light and radio waves that inform the self-generative functions of all phenomena, organic or inorganic.  The two codes are obviously interpenetrating and complementary.

 - Jose Arguelles - _TheMayan Factor_

During the late 1930s, John Cage began experimenting with musique concrete, composing the landmark _Imaginary Landscape No. 1_, which employed variable-speed  phonographs and frequency tone recordings alongside muted piano and a large Chinese cymbal. He also invented the "prepared piano," in which he placed a variety of household objects between the strings of a grand piano to create sounds suggesting a one-man percussion orchestra. It was at this time that Cage fell under the sway of Eastern philosophies, the influence of Zen Buddhism informing the random compositional techniques of his later work; obsessed with removing forethought and choice from the creative model, he set out to make music in line with the principles of the I Ching, predictable only by its very unpredictability.

"The I Ching told me to continue what I was doing, and to spread joy and revolution."

"In the time of gathering together, make no arbitrary choice of your associates. There are secret forces at work, leading together those who belong together."

~~~I Ching Wisdom

The I Ching, the "Book of Changes" or more accurately "Classic of Change", is the oldest of the Chinese classic texts.

It describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy which is at the heart of Chinese cultural beliefs. The philosophy centres around the ideas of balance through opposites and acceptance of change.

The book is also known as Zhou Yi, the "Changes of Zhou", in ancient Chinese literature which indicates the book was based on work from Zhou Dynasty.

In the Western cultures, it is known mostly as a system of divination.

Structure

The I Ching symbolism is embodied in a set of 64 abstract line arrangements called hexagrams. These are each comprised of six horizontal lines; each line is either unbroken (a solid line), or broken (an open line with a gap in the centre). With six such lines stacked in each hexagram, there are 26 or sixty-four possible combinations and thus sixty-four hexagrams.

Each hexagram represents a process, a change happening at the present moment. To further express this, it is possible for one, many or all of the lines to be determined to be moving lines, i.e. their polarity is in the process of reversal and thus the meaning of the hexagram radically altered.

Note that because the lines in the hexagrams are traditionally determined by biased random-number generation procedures, the 64 hexagrams are not equiprobable if generated in these ways.

Components of Hexagrams

The solid line represents yang, the masculine, creative principle. The open line represents yin, the feminine, receptive principle. These principles are also represented in a common circular symbol, called Tai Ji, but more commonly known in the west as yin-yang, expressing the idea that everything contains its opposite.

In the following lists, the trigrams and hexagrams are represented using a common textual convention: horizontally from left to right, using '|' for yang and ':' for yin. Note, though, that the normal diagrammatic representation is to show the lines stacked vertically, from bottom to top (i.e. to visualize the actual trigrams or hexagrams, rotate the text counterclockwise 90°).

Each hexagram can be considered composed of two trigrams of three lines each. There are eight possible trigrams.

1. ||| Force = heaven
2. ::: Field = earth
3. |:: Shake = thunder
4. :|: Gorge = water
5. ::| Bound = mountain
6. :|| Ground= wind
7. |:| Radiance = fire
8. ||: Open = swamp

The first three lines, the lower trigram, are seen as the inner aspect of the change that is occurring. The upper trigram, the last three lines, are the outer aspect. The change described is thus the dynamic of the inner (personal) aspect relating to the outer (external) situation. Thus, hexagram 04 :|:::| Enveloping, is composed of the inner trigram :|: Gorge, relating to the outer trigram ::| Bound.

The Hexagrams

The text of the I Ching describes each of the 64 hexagrams, and later scholars added commentaries and analyses of each one; these have been subsumed into the text comprising the I Ching.

* 01. |||||| Force
* 02. :::::: Field
* 03. |:::|: Sprouting
* 04. :|:::| Enveloping
* 05. |||:|: Attending
* 06. :|:||| Arguing
* 07. :|:::: Leading
* 08. ::::|: Grouping
* 09. |||:|| Small Accumulating
* 10. ||:||| Treading
* 11. |||::: Prevading
* 12. :::||| Obstruction
* 13. |:|||| Concording People
* 14. ||||:| Great Possessing
* 15. ::|::: Humbling
* 16. :::|:: Providing-For
* 17. |::||: Following
* 18. :||::| Corrupting
* 19. ||:::: Nearing
* 20. ::::|| Viewing
* 21. |::|:| Gnawing Bite
* 22. |:|::| Adorning
* 23. :::::| Stripping
* 24. |::::: Returning
* 25. |::||| Without Embroiling
* 26. |||::| Great Accumulating
* 27. |::::| Swallowing
* 28. :||||: Great Exceeding
* 29. :|::|: Gorge
* 30. |:||:| Radiance
* 31. ::|||: Conjoining
* 32. :|||:: Persevering
* 33. ::|||| Retiring
* 34. ||||:: Great Invigorating
* 35. :::|:| Prospering
* 36. |:|::: Brightness Hiding
* 37. |:|:|| Dwelling People
* 38. ||:|:| Polarising
* 39. ::|:|: Limping
* 40. :|:|:: Taking-Apart
* 41. ||:::| Diminishing
* 42. |:::|| Augmenting
* 43. |||||: Parting
* 44. :||||| Coupling
* 45. :::||: Clustering
* 46. :||::: Ascending
* 47. :|:||: Confining
* 48. :||:|: Welling
* 49. |:|||: Skinning
* 50. :|||:| Holding
* 51. |::|:: Shake
* 52. ::|::| Bound
* 53. ::|:|| Infiltrating
* 54. ||:|:: Converting The Maiden
* 55. |:||:: Abounding
* 56. ::||:| Sojourning
* 57. :||:|| Ground
* 58. ||:||: Open
* 59. :|::|| Dispersing
* 60. ||::|: Articulating
* 61. ||::|| Centre Confirming
* 62. ::||:: Small Exceeding
* 63. |:|:|: Already Fording
* 64. :|:|:| Not-Yet Fording

The hexagrams, though, are mere mnemonics for the philosophical concepts embodied in each one. The philosophy centres around the ideas of balance through opposites and acceptance of change.

Philosophy

The ambient and dualistic nature taoist thought matches with the nuances of binary possibility within each line of hexagrammatic representation.

Another view holds that the I Ching is a Confucianist document. This view is based upon the following:

* The Wings or Appendices are attributed to Confucius.
* The study of it was required as part of the Civil Service Exams. These exams only studied Confucianist texts.
* It is one of the Five Confucian Classics.
* It does not appear in any surviving editions of the Dao Zheng.
* The major commentaries have been written by Confucianists, or Neo-Confucianists.

Both views may induce that I Ching is at heart of Chinese thought, feeding together its Confucianist and Taoist sides. Partly forgotten because of the rise of Chinese Buddhism during Tang dynasty, the I Ching came back in thinkers focus during the Song dynasty with confucianism regeneration, known in the West as Neo-Confucianism. This book, unquestionnably an ancient Chinese scripture, helped Song Confucians thinkers to synthesize Buddhist vacuity and Taoist voidness and Confucian positivism into a new kind of cosmogony, that could be linked to the said lost Tao of Confucius and Mencius.

History

It was believed that the principle of I Ching was originated from Fu Hsi. He was one of earliest legendary rulers (2852 BC-2738 BC), reputed to discover the trigrams. Before Zhou Dynasty, there were other literature on the "Change" philosophy, e.g. Lian Shan Yi and Gui Cang Yi. The philosophy heavily influenced the literature and government administration of the Zhou Dynasty. It was refined over time and I Ching was completed around the time of Han Wu Di in Han Dynasty (circa 200 BC).

(NOTE: In the past 50 years a "Modernist" history of the Yijing has been emerging, based on context criticism and research into Shang and Zhou dynasty oracle bones, as well as Zhou bronze inscriptions. This reconstructed and more scholarly history is dealt with in a handful of books, such as "The Mandate of Heaven: Hidden History in the I Ching", by S J Marshall, Columbia University Press, 2001, and Richard Rutt's "Zhouyi: The Book of Changes" from Curzon Press, 1996. Scholarly PhDs dealing with the new view of the Book of Changes include the dissertations by Richard Kunst and Edward Shaughnessy. When talking about the history of the Book of Changes it is important to distinguish between the traditional but anachronistic history passed down over the centuries and the more recent scholarly history. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but, for instance, Modernist scholars doubt the actual existence of Fuxi, think Confucius had nothing to do with the Book of Changes, and that the hexagrams came before the trigrams.)

Divination

The process of consulting the oracle involves determining the hexagram by some random method, and then reading the I Ching text associated with that hexagram.

Each line of a hexagram determined with these methods is either stable ("young") or changing ("old"); thus, there are four possibilities for each line, corresponding to the cycle of change from yin to yang and back again:

* old yin (yin changing into yang), which has the number 6
* young yang (unchanging yang), which has the number 7
* young yin (unchanging yin), which has the number 8
* old yang (yang changing into yin), which has the number 9

Once a hexagram is determined, each line has been determined as either changing (old) or unchanging (young). Since each changing line is seen as being in the process of becoming its opposite, a new hexagram can be formed by transposing each changing yin line with a yang line, and vice versa. Thus, further insight into the process of change is gained by reading the text of this new hexagram and viewing it as the result of the current change.

Methods

Several of the methods use a randomising agent to determine each line of the hexagram. These methods produce a number, which corresponds to the numbers of changing or unchanging lines discussed above, and thus determine each line of the hexagram.

Cracks on turtle shell

The turtle shell oracle is probably the earliest record of fortune telling. The bottom of a turtle shell was roasted in fire. The resulting cracks were interpreted for divination. The cracks were annotated with inscriptions which are considered the oldest Chinese writings discovered.

Actually the oracle predated the Book of I Ching by over 1000 years. Some oracles unearthed dated back to 1200 BC. The writings on them were already highly developed which indicated that there may be much older oracles to be found.

Yarrow stalks

The following algorithm is traditionally used to generate biased random numbers for the I Ching using yarrow stalks:

* use fifty dried stalks of the yarrow plant and a large clear table space
* set aside one stalk to represent unity, using forty-nine stalks for the remainder of the ritual
* for each of the six lines of the hexagram
o divide and count the stalks three times as follows
+ gather the stalks into the left hand
+ split them randomly into two bundles with the left thumb
+ place the two bundles separately, as left and right piles, onto the table
+ take one stalk from the right side pile, hold it between the little finger and ring finger of the left hand
+ pick up the left side pile in the left hand
+ count the stalks from the pile into separate piles of four, until four or fewer remain
+ hold this remainder between the ring and middle finger of the left hand
+ pick up the right side pile in the left hand
+ count the stalks from the pile into separate piles of four, until four or fewer remain
+ hold this remainder between the index and middle finger of the left hand
+ set aside all the stalks held between fingers of the left hand
+ count the number of piles of four stalks
+ if this is not the third iteration, gather all the piles of four together to repeat the dividing and counting process
o after the third iteration, the number of piles of four stalks will be six, seven, eight or nine
o determine the current line of the hexagram from this number
* once six lines have been determined (by repeating the dividing and counting process three times for each line) the hexagram is formed

This is the most common "traditional" method for casting a hexagram. Using this method, the probabilities of each type of line are as follows:

* old yin: 1 in 16 (0.0625)
* young yang: 5 in 16 (0.3125)
* young yin: 7 in 16 (0.4375)
* old yang: 3 in 16 (0.1875)

Coins

* use three coins with distinct "head" and "tail" sides
* for each of the six lines of the hexagram
o toss all three coins
o assign the value 2 to each "head" result, and 3 to each "tail" result
o total all the coin values
o the total will be six, seven, eight or nine
o determine the current line of the hexagram from this number
* once six lines have been determined, the hexagram is formed

This is the most common "quick" method for casting a hexagram. Using this method, the probabilities of each type of line are as follows:

* old yin: 1 in 8 (0.125)
* young yang: 3 in 8 (0.375)
* young yin: 3 in 8 (0.375)
* old yang: 1 in 8 (0.125)

Marbles

This method is a recent innovation, designed to be quick like the coin method, while giving the same probabilities as the yarrow stalk method.

* use sixteen marbles of four different colours, distributed as follows
o 1 marble of a colour representing old yin (such as blue)
o 5 marbles of a colour representing young yang (such as white)
o 7 marbles of a colour representing young yin (such as black)
o 3 marbles of a colour representing old yang (such as red)
* place all the marbles in a bag or other opaque container
* for each of the six lines of the hexagram
o shake all sixteen marbles together in the container to "shuffle" them
o draw out one marble
o the marble drawn determines the current line of the hexagram
o replace the marble in the container
* once six lines have been determined, the hexagram is formed

Using this method, the probabilities of each type of line are the same as the distribution of the colours, as follows:

* old yin: 1 in 16 (0.0625)
* young yang: 5 in 16 (0.3125)
* young yin: 7 in 16 (0.4375)
* old yang: 3 in 16 (0.1875)

Rice grains

For this method, either rice grains, or small seeds are used.

One picks up a few seeds between the middle finger and thumb. Carefully and respectfully place them on a clean sheet of paper. Repeat this process six times, keeping each cluster of seeds in a separate pile --- each pile represents one line. One then counts the number of seeds in each cluster, starting with the first pile, which is the base line. If there is an even number of seeds, then the line is yin, otherwise the line is yang --- except if there is one seed, in which case one redoes that line.

One then asks the question again, and picks up one more cluster of seeds. Count the number of seeds you have, then keep subtracting six, until you have six seeds or less. This gives you the number of the line that specifically represent your situation. It is not a moving Line. If you do not understand your answer, you may rephrase the question, and ask it a second time.

Calligraphy brush strokes

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• timewave zero
• Anomalog:
  • Theories On The I-Ching
  • The Green Language Of Light
• book _The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching_ by Terence and Dennis McKenna
• 64-bit computing/gaming
 
• King Wen sequence
• The 23rd hexagram of the I-Ching signifies chaos, Disintegration.
• lecture _Consciousness, The I-Ching & Civilization_ MP3 (160k)(17:41) by Alan Watts
• book _Tao of Chaos - DNA and the I Ching_ by Katya Walter

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