I Ching: The Ancient Chinese Book of Changes (Chinese Bound)

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Weinberger, Eliot (February 25, 2016). "What Is the I Ching?". The New York Review of Books. In China and in East Asia, it has been by far the most consulted of all books, in the belief that it can explain everything.... is surely the most popularly recognized Chinese book.

Nanette R. Spina (2017) (28 February 2017), Women's Authority and Leadership in a Hindu Goddess Tradition, Springer, p.135, ISBN 978-1-1375-8909-5 The award-winning new translation of the ancient Chinese oracle and book of wisdom, by the acclaimed translator of the Tao Te Ching and The Art of War It's still quite true, no matter what science tries so hard to make us believe. Our understanding of the universe and our own roles in it are evolving. Well, honestly, sometimes increasing, but sometimes getting it altogether wrong. The problem is that only by time are we able to make our conclusions, and even then with the reservation of what the future of that future might reveal.Sahagún, Bernardino de. General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 4, The Soothsayers and Book 5, The Omens. Number 14, parts 5 and 6. Translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson. Santa Fe, N. M., 1979. This single volume of the Florentine Codex contains books 4 and 5, listing attributes of Aztec days signs and omens. Leoni, Francesca; Lory, Pierre; Gruber, Christiane (2016). Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural. Ashmolean Museum. ISBN 978-1910807095.

The swirling shapes made by pouring melted wax into water were used as a divination tool in both ancient and medieval Europe. One common method was to melt the wax in a brass container, and then pour the liquified wax into a vessel full of cold water, after which the diviner would interpret the shapes floating in the water. A related practice, molybdomancy, used the shapes in molten metal, usually lead. One 19th-century Irish book instructs women curious about the trade of their future spouse to take a small lump of lead and put it under their pillow on Midsummer's Eve. The next day they were to heat the lead until boiling, take a pail of water, and pour in the lead—"take it out, and you will find … emblems of his trade; if a ship, he is a sailor, [if] a book, a parson … and so on." 8. Cledonomancy (Divination by Words Overheard) Ng, Wai-ming (2000b). "The I Ching in Late-Choson Thought". Korean Studies. 24 (1): 53–68. doi: 10.1353/ks.2000.0013. S2CID 162334992. During battle, generals would frequently ask seers at both the campground (a process called the hiera) and at the battlefield (called the sphagia). The hiera entailed the seer slaughtering a sheep and examining its liver for answers regarding a more generic question; the sphagia involved killing a young female goat by slitting its throat and noting the animal's last movements and blood flow. The battlefield sacrifice only occurred when two armies prepared for battle against each other. Neither force would advance until the seer revealed appropriate omens. [ citation needed] Personality typing as a form of divination has been prevalent in Japan since the 1980s. Various methods exist for divining personality type. Each attempt to reveal glimpses of an individual's destiny, productive and inhibiting traits, future parenting techniques, and compatibility in marriage. Personality type is increasingly important for young Japanese, who consider personality the driving factor of compatibility, given the ongoing marriage drought and birth rate decline in Japan. [47] THOMAS McCLATCHIE (1876)McClatchie’s was the first English-language translation, and it’s also not that great. He was far less prudish than Legge, his successor, but still tragically entrenched in the predominant Western mindset towards the East of the 19th century, exemplified in the opening statement of his preface: “The task of translating and explaining the works of Pagan Philosophers is by no means easy of accomplishment. The Heathen and Christian modes of thought are so diverse [that] the Christian translator will find himself completely puzzled, unless, as a preparation for his work, he learns to view these and suchlike subjects from a heathen standpoint.” (I feel like this is a perfect example of “task failed successfully.”) Although in the public domain, McClatchie’s translation is rather difficult to find in non-academic circles, being out of print in most areas; I’ve read it, and honestly it can be skipped.Both oracles and seers in ancient Greece practiced divination. Oracles were the conduits for the gods on earth; their prophecies were understood to be the will of the gods verbatim. Because of the high demand for oracle consultations and the oracles’ limited work schedule, they were not the main source of divination for the ancient Greeks. That role fell to the seers ( Greek: μάντεις). [12]

The I Ching system of divination is still in wide use today, also far outside China. I've used it many times through the years and found it very rewarding. Contrary to many other systems of divination, the I Ching speaks through words, and so do we. That makes it surprisingly easy to apply to personal circumstances.

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JAMES LEGGE (1882)Also in the public domain is Legge’s translation, long considered the “standard” English-language version of the text. Legge is a complicated figure in the history of translation; his work was mostly terrible, but massively influential, and is still often used in translation studies, in no small part because of the fact that many of his translations included parallel Chinese and English text. Like many other translators of the Victorian era, particularly those who were also missionaries, Legge filtered all of his translation work through a Western religious context. Much scholarship has been written on the Victorian-era “invention” of Eastern “beliefs,” and Legge is one of the worst offenders; although his opinions on Eastern and particularly Chinese culture and literature did change for the positive throughout his life, the majority of his translation work is so irrevocably tinged with this 19th century-typical Orientalism, as well as his religious evangelism, so as to be functionally useless if the intent is to read something resembling the original text. For further information on Legge specifically, I’d recommend Norman J. Girardot’s The Victorian Translation of China. Regal, Brian. (2009). Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. Greenwood. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-313-35507-3 In 692 the Quinisext Council, also known as the "Council in Trullo" in the Eastern Orthodox Church, passed canons to eliminate pagan and divination practices. [16] Fortune-telling and other forms of divination were widespread through the Middle Ages. [17] In the constitution of 1572 and public regulations of 1661 of the Electorate of Saxony, capital punishment was used on those predicting the future. [18] Laws forbidding divination practice continue to this day. [19] The Waldensians sect were accused of practicing divination. [20]

A drawing of women practicing divination with lead or wax / Čeněk Zibrt, Wikimedia // Public Domain With the fall of the Han, I Ching scholarship was no longer organized into systematic schools. The most influential writer of this period was Wang Bi, who discarded the numerology of Han commentators and integrated the philosophy of the Ten Wings directly into the central text of the I Ching, creating such a persuasive narrative that Han commentators were no longer considered significant. A century later Han Kangbo added commentaries on the Ten Wings to Wang Bi's book, creating a text called the Zhouyi zhu. The principal rival interpretation was a practical text on divination by the soothsayer Guan Lu. [63] Tang and Song dynasties [ edit ]

Divination with the I Ching

Hon, Tze-ki 韓子奇 (2005). The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song Period, 960–1127. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-6311-7. Legge, James (1882). The Yî King. In Sacred Books of the East, vol. XVI. 2nd edition (1899), Oxford: Clarendon Press; reprinted numerous times.