Everything the Book is made of
The whole apparatus in one place: the chapters, the figures they are built from, the threads that run between them, and enough context to read any of it cold.
The sixty-four
All sixty-four, three waysThe Book's own arrangement. Rows are the lower trigram, columns the upper, and every cell is a chapter — so a hexagram's place here is also the recipe for drawing it.
The Book
What the sixty-four are made of, and the vocabulary that runs between them.
- The eight trigrams
The three-line figures every hexagram is built from — two of them stacked makes a chapter. Each with its attribute, its family place, and the chapters it carries.
Heaven · Earth · Thunder · Water · Mountain · Wind · Fire · Lake
- Themes
The oracle's fixed formulas: the thirty phrases the text says again and again, each traced through every chapter that uses it.
Perseverance furthers · No blame · Supreme success · It furthers one to cross the great water
- Metaphors
The other register: twenty-six images the Book thinks with rather than formulas it repeats, and where each one appears.
The dragon · The well · The caldron · The marrying maiden · Clouds that give no rain
- Glossary
Plain definitions for every term of art the Book leans on, from changing line to the superior man, each pointing back at where it is used.
Using the oracle
Three short guides, in the order you need them.
- The method
How a cast is actually made: fifty yarrow stalks, the three-fold division, six lines from the bottom up, and why the counting gives the odds it does.
- How to ask
Phrasing a question the oracle can answer, and the kinds that come back empty.
- Reading a cast
What the Judgment, the Image and the moving lines each do, and how the second hexagram fits.
Behind the text
Where it came from, and what to read next.
- A short history
Three thousand years in a few minutes: the Zhou diviners, the Confucian commentaries, Wilhelm and Jung.
- Further reading
The books this site is built on and the ones worth reading next.