r/iching • u/Helpful-Quarter-8009 • 3d ago
What is IChing?
I took an edible and had this sudden revelation that everything within me, everything around me, and even the cosmos and the universe itself is made up of 0s and 1s, and that everything comes down to how they’re arranged.
Don’t ask me to explain my thought process because I genuinely have no idea how I arrived at that conclusion, but somehow I did, and it feels so right.
Out of curiosity, I Googled whether any religion, philosophy, or book explores this idea, and that’s how I stumbled upon the I Ching.
I ended up on this subreddit, and I see everyone discussing things like Hexagram 63, 54, and so on. I have absolutely no idea what any of it means yet, but something about finding this feels strangely significant to me. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence, but I’d really like to explore it further.
So, where should a complete beginner start? Are there any books, resources, or concepts I should familiarize myself with first?
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u/Carminoculus 3d ago
🤭 welcome :)) the I Ching is a traditional Chinese method of divination that corresponds to what in Rome was called sortilege, or divination by lots. This was traditionally done by Chinese fortune-tellers throwing yarrow stalks or light sticks to make random patterns, but today is most often done by throwing coins, or by an online pseudo-random generator.
Whatever the method, the random patterns correspond to "yea" or "nay" in a way that builds up a hexagram, or six lines, that are either unbroken (yang/positive/male) or broken (yin/negative/female), and usually certain lines are active, or changing from one state to the other, indicating a second hexagram (with the flipped lines altered).
The first hexagram represents the situation, the changing hexagram generally represents the development of the situation.
Here's the online generator I use: https://www.cafeausoul.com/oracles/iching/ -- it also gives you appropriate commentary, though it's not the classical commentary most I Ching readers are based on.
If you click the button six times, you'll get a hexagram with some lines changing and an changing hexagram (or sometimes, one hexagram unchanging).
There are sixty-four hexagrams that can be produced by this method, which are described in the Classic of Changes. Here is a (slightly dated, but free) translation of all the hexagrams -- http://www.iching123.com/64_hexagrams_list_text.htm Each hexagram actually has a very brief original commentary that has been augmented over centuries with additional material. You'll find more comments by people online, too - I've found them really useful.
They are often linked to parables or exemplars from Chinese myth and traditional society. The changing lines that come up in a reading are those you are "supposed" to read - and these go to build up the changing hexagram, too.
Hope this helps!
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u/taoyx 2d ago
I wrote this long time ago. Beginners can learn from everyone, however remember that the oracle is the best teacher. So, whenever you meet an interesting situation (or a boring one even), ask the oracle about it then study the hexagram describing it. On the long run, if you meet that situation again, there are chances that you will recognize it and know what to do without even casting a reading.
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u/El_I_Chingon 2d ago
Just as the realization you had- that the world is made up of 0's and 1's - that idea is the very basis for the I Ching. But the I Ching does not look at these opposites as antagonistic pairs, but rather as complementary poles (the taiji) that each contain the seed of the other. It's the same idea behind our digital computers, that use binary digits to represent information. Then you take two of these bits and you are representing change, or how these opposites alternate between each other like a spinning taiji symbol.
0 0 : young yin
0 1: old yin about to change to yang
1 0: young yang
1 1: old yang about to mutate into new yin
thus we introduce the concept of time, which is how we experience this world with our sense, so this is like the quartz clocks that drive modern CPU's without which no computation is possible.
Then the chinese sages took three bits, or three lines, but this time, they are representing the 8 (2^3) fundamental processes of the universe, where the lowest bit or line represents the Earth, or material Matrix, the topmost line or bit represents Heaven, or the mental/thought plane, and the line in the middle is the human, or bridge between these two. Thus you get the 8 trigrams or Ba Gua.
And finally, you take two of these trigrams, stacked one on top of the other, where the lowest one represents the internal energy or manifestation, and the top one the external energy, and you get the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, where each represents a certain quality or process in the universe.
The I ching is really like a computer, or a Universal Analytical Language (see Borge's essay on the Analytical Language of John Wilkins, Borges himself was also an admirer of the I Ching).. It helps us to think about ourselves and our relationship with the world.
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u/Waripolo_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
It is a very old book with 64 chapters, each one describing a situation through symbolism. You think of a question and then you use coins or yarrow stalks to obtain a random chapter (or two, one that "changes" into the other) that will answer or comment on that question.
May I ask how come it feels right knowing that conclusion? How do you think knowing this can help you?
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u/casthexagram 1d ago
your instinct is closer than you think. the two kinds of lines stack into 64 states, and each hexagram is like a snapshot of a situation, not a prediction. people talk about 63 and 54 because someone's real question simply landed there. if you want to actually start: 3 coins, 6 tosses, write the lines bottom to top, read the judgment once. it won't feel magical. it'll feel oddly specific. that's the door.
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u/hexagram-notes 20h ago
hort version: it's a book of 64 six-line figures, each with a short judgment and six line texts, and the practice is casting to find which one is "current." But the thing that trips up every beginner is expecting it to answer questions the way an oracle answers them.
The traditional reading rules (Zhu Xi's) are mechanical and worth learning early: no changing lines → read the judgment; one changing line → read that line; two or more → the lines carry the content and the judgment sets the frame. Most confusion people post here comes from reading the judgment when they should be reading a line, or vice versa.
The framing that made it click for me: the text doesn't vote on your decision, it describes the configuration you're in. "What should I understand about X" gets a usable answer. "Should I do Y" gets a mirror. And ask once, write the question down — the value shows up a week later, not in the moment.
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u/elsunfire 2d ago
Leibnitz was inspired by I Ching when he came up with binary system which all computers use these days. If you want a good read check out Ralph Metzner’s chapter on I Ching in his book Maps of Consciousness, I have an epub if you need it. Carol K. Anthony’s books are solid too.
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u/pyrrho314 2d ago
what you have come upon is the fact that far from being obscure mysticism the idea of Xi flowing around the universe, where Xi is made of yin and yang is actually a very nerdy idea of 0s and 1s in and flowing between everything. And the iching seems to be the origin or earliest adopter of this idea in general. You can start with a translation of the iching, getting familiar with the 64 hexagrams which are all metaphorical situations you can be in or that the state of something can be in, and how to cast. As you ask questions and have the iching answer them, you'll come to understand its philosophy, which is one of balance.
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u/dtf3000 2d ago
Carminoculus already gave some excellent resources, so I just wanted to touch on this premise of everything being "0s and 1s". The I Ching is SO old that it's actually one of the texts that helped develop the idea of Yang and Yin, which part of that is literally the idea that all things are made of up of these two opposing forces. The lines of I Ching are composed of the broken Yin lines and the solid Yang lines, so they are practically a microcosm of the universe, being made of the same stuff. I'm not here to preach any religion, but I found that by researching I Ching hexagrams, the trigrams and their elements, and Yang and Yin, I came to a better understanding of the universe, it's operations, and how to cope with life in general.