The Book leans on a working vocabulary and rarely stops to explain it. Here is all of it in plain words — fifty-seven terms, each with a permanent address.
One full consultation: a held question, six lines built from the bottom up, and the reading they compose.
To cast is to put a question to the oracle and build a hexagram in answer — by stalks, coins, or this site's faithful simulation of the stalk arithmetic. The result is the hexagram, any moving lines, and, when lines move, the transformed hexagram.
A line cast at its extreme — a six or a nine — read as the live point of the situation; flipping it produces the second hexagram.
When the count produces a six (old yin) or a nine (old yang), that line is moving: it is at its extreme, and extremes are where change begins. Only moving lines have their line texts read. Flipping every moving line to its opposite produces the transformed hexagram, the direction the situation is tending.
A line is correct when its kind matches its place — firm lines in odd positions, yielding lines in even ones.
The places of a hexagram alternate in character: the first, third and fifth are firm places, the second, fourth and sixth yielding. A yang line in a firm place, or a yin line in a yielding one, "is correct" — suited to its station. Correctness and centrality together are the commentaries' shorthand for a line's soundness.
The oracle's image for a decisive undertaking: a risky passage away from familiar ground that the time either favors or forbids.
"It furthers one to cross the great water" — one of the book's oldest formulas, drawn from the real danger of fording a river in flood. It stands for any decisive venture: the departure, the launch, the commitment that cannot be half-made. Some chapters bless the crossing and some warn against it; the point is always whether the time carries it.
Persistence as a living form: not rigidity but a self-renewing course, like seasons — the marriage of thunder and wind.
The name of hexagram 32 and one of the Book's central ideas: what lasts is not what refuses to move but what renews itself inside an ordered movement. Duration is the standing answer to the book's own subject — if everything changes, what persists? A way of moving, not a position held.
Receptive space as capacity: the open heart, the hollow that can be filled — a strength in this vocabulary, not a lack.
Valleys, hollows, the open center of the lake, the heart free of self: the Book prizes emptiness as the precondition of receiving — influence enters where something has been kept open. The theme essay collects the appearances.
Community that holds because it is open and organized around a shared aim, not private ties — fire rising under heaven.
The concern of hexagram 13, Fellowship with Men, and its neighbors: what makes association durable. The Book's answer is openness (fellowship in the open succeeds; in the clan it stagnates) and a common goal above private interest. The theme essay traces the thread.
13 Fellowship with Men08 Holding Together45 Gathering TogetherThe theme essay
"It furthers one to…": the oracle's formula for what the time rewards — the actions with the current behind them.
Li, "furthering," is the Book's standing word for benefit with the grain of the time: it furthers one to cross the great water, to see the great man, to have somewhere to go. The formula marks where effort pays; its withholding marks where effort leaks away. The theme essay traces it.
The favorable verdict of the oracle formulas: the movement of this time tends toward benefit.
Ji, the standing formula of favorable tendency, usually attached to a condition — good fortune if one perseveres, if one is sincere, if one meets the great man. Its counterpart is misfortune (xiong). The theme essays trace both through the chapters.
A formula meaning purposeful movement: undertakings, direction, something in hand to do.
"It furthers one to have somewhere to go" marks a time that rewards initiative — there is traction, and movement with a destination prospers. Its absence or reversal marks times for staying put. The theme essay traces the phrase.
A figure of six stacked lines, solid or broken, read from the bottom up; there are sixty-four, each naming a situation.
The unit the Book thinks in. Six lines, each either solid (yang) or broken (yin), stacked and read from the bottom up. Two to the sixth power gives sixty-four possible figures, and each one carries a name, a judgment, an image and six line texts. A hexagram is not a fortune; it is a portrait of a kind of time.
The verdict for persisting in a small wrong until it shames: lighter than misfortune, harder to dissolve than remorse.
Lin, the fourth of the standing verdicts. Where remorse is the sting that prompts correction, humiliation is what accrues when a fault is clung to past its correction point. The theme essay gathers its appearances.
The ancient Chinese Book of Changes: sixty-four six-line figures, each describing a kind of situation, consulted by casting.
A Chinese classic some three thousand years old, part oracle and part philosophy. Its sixty-four hexagrams map the kinds of situation a life passes through — beginnings, obstructions, gatherings, retreats — and describe how each one tends to move. It is consulted by casting: a slow procedure of sorting yarrow stalks that builds one hexagram, line by line, in answer to a held question.
Sincerity that has force: the confidence between beings that moves others without pressure, imaged as wind over the lake.
The name of hexagram 61 and a recurring standard: the visible hexagram of a person's inside matching their outside. In the Book's mechanics it is what makes influence real — the pig and fishes are moved, the crane's young answer unseen — where mere position only compels.
The hexagram turned upside down (zong gua): the same situation seen from the other party's side.
Read a hexagram's six lines from the top down instead of the bottom up and you have its inverse — zong gua, 綜卦. Tradition treats it as the situation viewed from the opposite bank: Gathering Together inverted is Pushing Upward. Each hexagram page lists its inverse.
The other half of a hexagram's couplet in the received sequence — usually the same figure turned upside down.
The sequence moves in couplets: 3 pairs with 4, 5 with 6, and so on. In all but eight cases the partner is the hexagram inverted; the eight symmetrical figures, which read the same both ways, pair instead with their line-for-line opposites. The pair is listed with each hexagram's structural relatives.
The received ordering of the sixty-four hexagrams, in thirty-two pairs, ending on Before Completion so the book can begin again.
The traditional order of the chapters, credited to King Wen. It runs in pairs — almost every even-numbered hexagram is its predecessor turned upside down — and ends with After Completion followed by Before Completion, a deliberate refusal of finality. Every hexagram page shows its neighbors in the sequence.
The paired principles as forces in time: the bright advancing or wounded, the dark serving or presuming — never one without the other.
Beyond the line-kinds themselves, the commentaries speak of the light and the dark as parties in a situation: the light principle advancing, retreating, or wounded and hiding its brightness; the dark serving, carrying, or presuming to rule. The theme essay gathers the language.
The unfavorable verdict: continuing on this line runs against the time and tends toward harm.
Xiong, the oracle's standing word for an unfavorable tendency. In the Book's mechanics it is rarely fate and usually diagnosis: a course that has parted from the time. Its milder cousins are remorse and humiliation, which mark recoverable error.
The one hexagram favorable in every line: the mountain that consents to stand within the earth, high things leveling themselves.
Hexagram 15 is famously the only chapter whose every line text is favorable. Its image — a mountain inside the earth — pictures height that does not insist on itself, and the commentary's law is that the high is worn down and the low filled up. The theme essay and this site's name both live nearby.
Acting from the nature of things rather than from calculation — the innocence that makes action fortunate.
The virtue of hexagram 25, Innocence (The Unexpected): movement that springs from what a thing is rather than from scheming about outcomes. The Book treats calculated virtue as already spoiled; what is done because it is the next true thing carries the time with it.
A formula meaning the action fits the time: whatever happens next, this move itself creates no fault to answer for.
One of the book's quietest and most characteristic verdicts. "No blame" does not promise success; it says that the conduct in question is free of error — appropriate to the moment — so that even a poor outcome leaves nothing to reproach. Wilhelm's commentary adds: no blame also means being able to correct one's faults in time.
What feeds a thing — food, words, attention, tradition — and the Book's standing question: what are you feeding, and with what?
From the corners of the mouth (hexagram 27) to the well and the caldron, the Book keeps returning to nourishment: what sustains the body, what sustains character, and the care due to both. "Pay heed to the providing of nourishment" is as much about what you take in as what you serve.
27 Corners of the Mouth48 The Well50 The CaldronThe theme essay
The figure hidden inside a hexagram, built from its four inner lines — the situation inside the situation.
Lines two through four of a hexagram form one trigram and lines three through five another; stacked, they make the nuclear hexagram (hu gua, 互卦). It is read as the inner tendency of the situation — what is quietly forming inside the visible circumstances. Every hexagram page lists its nuclear relative among the structural relations.
The hexagram with every line exchanged for its contrary (cuo gua): the situation's photographic negative.
Flip each of the six lines — solid to broken, broken to solid — and the result is the opposite, cuo gua, 錯卦. It marks the situation's complete complement: Peace against Standstill, the Army against… whatever the lines yield. Each hexagram page lists it among the structural relatives.
A practice of putting a question to something outside your own reasoning; here, the cast text of the Book of Changes.
The word covers both the practice and the voice: consulting the Book is consulting the oracle, and the verse portions of each chapter are its oracle texts. What distinguishes this oracle is that it answers with a described situation rather than a prediction.
The oracle's most frequent counsel: steady continuance in what is correct — not stubbornness, but holding a true course through time.
Zhen, the word Wilhelm renders "perseverance," began as "divination" and came to mean constancy in what is right. "Perseverance furthers" does not mean pushing harder; it means that the benefit of this time is only collected by staying true through its duration. The theme essay draws the distinction between perseverance and mere persistence.
The modern standard romanization of Chinese: qián, kūn, gèn for Wilhelm's Ch'ien, K'un, Kên.
Hanyu pinyin, the romanization used in China and in most writing since the mid-twentieth century. Each hexagram and trigram page gives the pinyin beside the character and Wilhelm's Wade-Giles, so the three naming traditions stay connected.
The sting of a recoverable mistake; "remorse disappears" marks the moment a correction takes and the fault stops costing.
Hui, one of the four standing verdicts between good fortune and misfortune. Remorse is error that can still be repaired by a change of course, and the frequent formula "remorse disappears" marks conduct that dissolves it. The theme essay follows the word through the book.
The turning point: the light re-entering from below after its withdrawal — change that arrives quietly, at its own hour.
The name of hexagram 24, set at the winter solstice: one firm line re-entering beneath five yielding ones. The Book's image of every comeback — energy at its first, protected stirring, not to be hurried or spent early. The theme essay follows the figure.
The line that governs a hexagram's meaning — usually the fifth place, sometimes the single line unlike all the others.
Most hexagrams have a governing line: often the fifth, the place of the ruler, and often the one minority line — the single yielding line among five firm ones, or the reverse — around which the whole figure organizes. Wilhelm's commentary names the rulers chapter by chapter.
The wing of commentary that catalogues the eight trigrams — their images, attributes, family places and directions.
One of the Ten Wings, the "Discussion of the Trigrams." It is the source for the correlations on this site's trigram pages: which trigram is the eldest daughter, which direction is Kên's, what the Arousing arouses.
The strongest of the oracle's fortune formulas: the time carries what is undertaken, if the stated conditions are met.
A fixed formula of the Judgments — yuan heng, rendered by Wilhelm as "supreme success" or "sublime success." It marks a time whose fundamental current is favorable. It is almost always followed by a condition ("perseverance furthers"), and the condition is the actual counsel.
The classical commentaries appended to the oracle text, traditionally ascribed to Confucius, that made the book a work of philosophy.
Ten treatises — on the judgments, the images, the trigrams, the sequence — that accreted around the core text in the classical period. Wilhelm's edition weaves much of their material into his commentary. They are why the I Ching reads as philosophy and not only as a diviner's manual.
The pure yang principle — heaven, the father: the initiating energy whose image is the dragon.
The name of hexagram 1 and the pole it stands for: six solid lines, pure initiating force, whose stations the dragon images trace from hidden to arrogant. Its power is real only when paired with the Receptive, which gives what it begins a body and a place.
Wilhelm's names for the two line kinds — firm (solid, yang) and yielding (broken, yin) — whose interplay is the whole mechanism of change.
The vocabulary Wilhelm's commentary uses for yang and yin lines. The Book reads every situation as a configuration of firm and yielding places — where strength sits, where it gives way, whether a line is "correct" in its place — and change as their continuous exchange. The theme essay traces the idea across the chapters.
"It furthers one to see the great man": the person of weight and clarity whose counsel or example the time calls for.
A recurring oracle formula. The great man is the one whose inner weight matches the moment — a sage, a worthy ruler, an honest counselor. "It furthers one to see the great man" counsels seeking that person out, or rising to be that person for someone else. The theme essay collects its appearances.
The two trigrams as a natural picture, with one sentence on how a person conducts themselves inside that weather.
The second text of every chapter: the hexagram's two trigrams read as a scene in nature — clouds rise over heaven; the mountain rests on the earth — followed by a single sentence about the conduct that scene teaches, usually introduced by "thus the superior man…". Where the Judgment says what the time is, the Image says what to be like in it.
The counter-figure to the superior man: the one who blames, forces, crowds in when the time favors him and collapses when it turns.
Wilhelm's rendering of xiaoren, "the small man." Not a villain so much as a posture: seeking the fault outside, pressing advantage without regard for the time, flattering upward and hardening downward. Many chapters turn on how the superior man conducts himself while inferior men are ascendant — retreat, reserve, keeping inner worth intact.
The oldest text of a chapter and the actual answer: a compressed verdict on the situation and what it asks of you.
Each hexagram carries a short oracle text called the Judgment — the core verdict, traditionally credited to King Wen. It says what the time is like, whether movement or stillness furthers, and where the danger sits. The commentary that follows it in Wilhelm's edition unpacks the verdict phrase by phrase.
Six short oracle texts per hexagram, one per line, read only for the lines that came up moving in a cast.
Each of the six places in a hexagram carries its own text — traditionally credited to the Duke of Zhou — describing the situation as seen from that station: the beginning, the field, the threshold, the minister's place, the ruler's place, the top that has gone past its peak. In a reading, only the moving lines speak.
The virtue of the middle: lines in the second and fifth places hold the center of their trigrams, and centrality steadies them.
The second line (center of the lower trigram) and the fifth (center of the upper) occupy the middle, and the commentaries read centrality as balance — conduct without excess. Many favorable line texts rest on it. The theme essay follows the idea through the book.
The one stalk set aside before the count begins, taking no part — presence without participation.
The yarrow procedure opens by removing one stalk from the fifty; it rests apart for the whole cast. Tradition reads it as the still point against which the moving forty-nine have meaning — the part of the questioner that watches the question rather than being inside it.
The pure yin principle — earth, the mother, devotion: strength that carries and completes rather than initiates.
The name of hexagram 2 and the pole it stands for: the receptive, sustaining power that brings to completion what the Creative begins. Wilhelm's word for its virtue is devotion — not submission but the strength of the ground, which carries everything without contention.
The fully realized figure of the tradition: the one who moves with the Tao and therefore without strain.
Where the superior man is the working ideal — a bearing anyone can practice — the sage is the completed one, appearing in the commentaries as the person whose action is indistinguishable from the way things move on their own. The theme essay gathers the sage's appearances across the book.
Wilhelm's rendering of junzi: not a rank but a bearing — the person who meets the time with self-correction rather than blame.
The recurring protagonist of the Image texts. Junzi meant a noble by birth; Confucius turned it into nobility by conduct, and Wilhelm renders it "the superior man." It names a bearing rather than a status — the person who reads the time, corrects themselves first, and acts without haste or self-deception. The theme essay follows the figure through the book.
The Way: the single course running through all change, which right conduct aligns with rather than forces.
The law running through end and beginning that the Book's transformations all express — "the course of things, the principle of the one in the many," as Wilhelm's introduction puts it. To read the oracle well is to ask where the current is moving and how to move with it. The theme essay connects the term to its Taoist stream.
The Book's word for the character of a moment: every hexagram is a time, and right conduct is conduct that fits it.
Wilhelm's commentary constantly weighs action against "the time" — not clock time but the qualitative season of a situation: a time for advance, a time for retreat, a time when small things succeed and great ones fail. The same act is right in one time and ruinous in another; reading the time is the whole skill.
The figure a cast becomes when its moving lines flip: not a second answer but the direction the situation is tending.
If a cast contains moving lines, flipping each one to its opposite yields a second complete hexagram. It is read as bearing rather than instruction — where the situation goes if the movement in it completes. The counsel for acting stays with the first hexagram and its moving lines.
A figure of three lines; the eight trigrams — heaven, earth, thunder, water, mountain, wind, fire, lake — pair up to build every hexagram.
Half a hexagram. Three lines make eight possible figures, and tradition gives each a natural image — heaven, earth, thunder, water, mountain, wind, fire, lake — along with an attribute, a family position, a season and a direction. Every hexagram is a lower trigram with an upper trigram over it, and the meeting of the two images is where its meaning starts: water over heaven is rain gathering, clouds and waiting.
The older romanization system Wilhelm's translation uses: Ch'ien, K'un, Kên — where pinyin writes qián, kūn, gèn.
The nineteenth-century system for writing Chinese in Latin letters, standard when the Wilhelm/Baynes translation was made. This site keeps Wilhelm's Wade-Giles forms alongside the characters and the modern pinyin, since readers arrive searching in all three.
The Book's picture of change as tide: light and dark advance and recede by turns, and no condition is a permanent address.
A family of twelve hexagrams traces the light lines entering from below and withdrawing above, month by month, like the year breathing. It is the Book's structural reminder that every peak is a turning point: fullness is already the first day of decline, and the darkest figure carries return inside it.
11 Peace12 Standstill23 Splitting Apart24 ReturnThe theme essay
The translation this site is built on: Richard Wilhelm's German I Ching (1924), rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes (1950).
Richard Wilhelm translated the Book with the scholar Lao Nai-hsüan over a decade in Qingdao; Cary F. Baynes carried the German into English, and C. G. Jung's foreword introduced it to a Western readership. It remains the translation most readers mean by "the I Ching."
Non-forcing: acting with the grain of the time so the result arrives without strain — not passivity but timing.
The Taoist term for effortless action — literally "non-doing," better read as non-forcing. In the Book it appears as the hidden dragon that does not act until the time ripens, the wind that penetrates by ceaselessness rather than force, the rain that cannot be hurried. The theme essay draws the connections.
The solid, unbroken line: the firm, light, active principle.
One of the two kinds of line and the principle it stands for: solid, light, firm, initiating. In the casting numbers, seven is young yang (a solid line at rest) and nine is old yang — a solid line at its extreme, about to break, and therefore a moving line.
The fifty dried stalks of the traditional casting method, divided and counted away four at a time to build each line.
The oldest surviving way of consulting the Book uses fifty stalks of the yarrow plant. One is set aside as the observer; the remaining forty-nine are divided and counted through three passes per line, six lines per cast. The arithmetic gives the four numbers six through nine their distinct, deliberately asymmetric probabilities.
The broken line: the yielding, dark, receptive principle.
The counterpart of yang: the broken line, and the yielding, receptive, sustaining principle it stands for. In the casting numbers, eight is young yin (a broken line at rest) and six is old yin — a broken line at its extreme, about to close into a solid one, and therefore a moving line.
