Approach to the I Ching

250,000$ but for explorers, historians, anthropologists, etc. His value is more than 1,000,000$. And the last one for esoteric people the skull has a real asset object. ■ Author: Elisa Villagrasa

"If I were given 50 more years of life, I would dedicate them exclusively to the study of the I Ching and in this way, I would avoid many of the mistakes I have made throughout my life". Confucio

Puedo corroborar la sabia respuesta de Confucio porque, tras casi medio siglo de mi vida dedicado al estudio del I Ching, puedo hacerla mía sin ningún género de duda.

I can reconfirm Confucius' wise answer because, after almost half a century of my life devoted to the I Ching, I can fully endorse it without any doubt.

Beyond my opinion, I can also subscribe the words of Carl Gustav Jung when in 1948, in his foreword to the translation of Richard Wilhelm's I Ching, a reference work known to all scholars of the Book of Changes he stated: “I cannot answer the thousand questions that this extraordinary book raises .

The I Ching is not offered accompanied by evidences and results. On the contrary, he waits patiently until he is discovered. To some people, will appear as clear as day. To others it will appear as gloomy as twilight and to a third it will appear as dark as night. To others who does it not like, they do not have to use it and anyone who opposes to it don’t required to prove their veracity. But one thing is certain: the I Ching is undoubtedly the right book to the wisdom lovers"

But ... What the I Ching is?

Throughout history, the Wisdom has been forwarded through books of knowledge, open with no restrictions of any kind to all those who come to them.

One of these universal treasures of knowledge is the I Ching, which is known as the Book of Changes or Mutations, a book born in China and that with its 4,000 years of existence is probably one of the oldest Books of Wisdom in the world, but the oldest.

The I Ching is also a way of knowledge as well as an oracle book.

As a way of thought, it is the original source from which the two great currents of Chinese Thought emerged: Taoism and Confucianism.

As an oracle book, the I Ching is an infallible method of prediction that allows us to know how the secret Matrix of the Universe works to correctly adapt our actions, eliminating the margin of uncertainty in which human beings habitually make mainly our ordinary decisions. In other words, in its oracular aspect, the I Ching acts as a self-aware GPS that indicates the most efficient route to reach the destination that we have marked, although it indicates, at the same time, those other routes that, according to the decisions that freely let's take it, they will take us to other alternative destinations, equally possible and real.

The real essence of I Ching thought is based on two great principles:

The first: permanent change is the rule of the universe.

The second: there are no irreconcilable opposites but a unique indivisible and complementary reality beyond the appearances. Yin and Yang, day, and night, male and female, and feminine, Good and Evil… All is One! Contraria sunt complementa.

Therefore, the Universe in a permanent change, the present is the unfolding of the past and the future is

being generated in a hidden way in the present as a seed, which is born in the past but will finally unfold in the future and it will do so by always moving in a dynamics of permanent change between pairs of a complementary opposites which tend to be balanced.

That’s why, if we get to know which are the dominant cosmic patterns at a moment, we will be able to know how to act in our daily life to adapt it to what is to come and make a sort of surf over the Destiny.

But at this point it is very important to remark that the I Ching is not an ontological or metaphysical way whatsoever. There are no gods to obey, but only knowledge and guidance to make our life flow and develop in the best way, but always taking over your free decision over your life. As well as, in the thought of the I Ching there is no place neither for the notion of guilt, nor the sin or for any belief of Karma.

To say this in a mood of a modern metaphor, the I Ching could be a sort of the “red pill” that Morpheus gives to Neo in the film Matrix; the only thing that the Book of Changes will give to you is simply the truth. You can freely take it or not but any way you take won’t be better or worse than the other. If we briefly refer to the origins of the I Ching, according to the most well-founded scholars’ studies, it has the roots in Central Asian Shamanism more than 5,000 years ago because of the observation of the natural cycles and astronomical phenomena, which given to the Chinese Shamans some guidelines on the hidden rules of the Universe.

The Shamanism in the Ancient China is known as Wuism, which takes its name from the word WU, presumably an adaptation of the IndoEuropean term Magus, which would refer to individuals endowed with special abilities to become intermediaries between the physical world and the not ordinary reality.

During the reign of the Shang Dynasty (XVII century, B.C) the influence of Chinese Shamanism which was very important in shaping the imperial system of beliefs. Nevertheless, it was not until after the ascent to the throne of the Zhou Dynasty (XI century B.C) when the I Ching will take the development as we know it today.

The Emperor Ji Chang (VIII B.C), known as the Emperor Wen and his son, the scholar Ji Dan, Duke of Zhou, will create the canonical structure of the I Ching as well as the myth of Fu-Xi.

Over the centuries, the I Ching will be feed with the exegesis and contributions of Taoist and Confucian schools that will complete the interpretations of the I Ching.

We now must turn briefly to the myth of Fu-Xi, the cosmological legend of the I Ching.

Fu-Xi is a kind of Demiurge. He created language and writing, the calculation system, agriculture, and livestock among other wonders.

Fu Xi's birth was a wonder.

Pangu, the deity who ruled the universe before there was the space and time, created Heaven and Earth and after that, his body became rivers, mountains, plants, animals and in the rest of created beings. Among them he created the twins Fu-Xi and his sister and wife Nü- Wa, half human and half dragon, mythological animal that Chinese civilization identifies with Wisdom.

We can read in the Book of the Venerable Documents:

"One day when Fu-Xi was contemplating the Yellow River, he saw a great dragon emerge from its waters. Fu-Xi fixed his attention on the marks that the Dragon had engraved on its back. There were eight figures formed by three superimposed lines. Immersed in his contemplation, Fu-Xi looked at Heaven and then at Earth and saw how everything contained in its essence the eight marks of the dragon and that by learning their multiple combinations it was possible to order the world and know the subtle language with which it expresses itself governed by the principle of complementarity between opposing elements in permanent transformation".

Fu-Xi identified Heaven with the Yang principle and Earth with the Yin principle, assigning Yang a solid line and YIN a dashed line.

Afterwards, Fu-Xi added another line on each individual line and thus generated the four orders: the Bigrames, which represent the different ways in which the only lines can be duplicated to give rise to the intermediate states between absolute Yin and Yang.

Thus, Fu-Xi created the Ba Gua, the eight trigrams that form the basis of the structure of the I Ching and duplicating them, the 64 hexagrams of the Book of Changes.

There are many means to obtain the 64 Hexagrams, from the traditional one, the rods of Aquillea Milleforum, to the 3 coins, the 3 dice...but the evaluation of the effectiveness of each one in obtaining a precise result to the question asked is far beyond the scope of this article.

Despite the complexity of the process and methods to use, I can assure to you all, no matter the method you use. The results of the answer you can get to your question to the I Ching are astonishing and precise!

I should like to stress at this point that, despite procedures to obtain the Hexagrams, the I Ching is not a method of divination in any way.

In any case, it would be a Way to Wisdom as well as a predictive system which uses a very sophisticated methodology to manage an enormous deal of relevant multivariate, statistical, multifactorial analysis of data, to draw coherent, precise conclusions to your questions, no matter its complexity.

However, if someone asks me how is possible that the I Ching, which at first glance may seem so strange even bizarre system to obtain accurate response to your questions really works?... all I can say to you, to be honest, is… I don’t know but… “Eppur Si Muove”! After almost fifty years studying the I Ching, I just can say that the I Ching is the most great mystery I have dealt in my entire life but in spite of my strong rational mind, I have given up to crack because, as a practical man in his research of Wisdom, I can assure that it works, and to my mind, this is enough.

To conclude.

To improve into the knowledge of the I Ching means to change your ordinary life to steep into a new Initiatory Way, which will change your life forever.

As Albert Einstein said: "The human mind, no matter how trained it may be, can never encompass the Universe because you always reach a point where you end up not understanding how certain processes operate but you know that they are real"

This is how the I Ching works.

The Way to start your journeys will be easy: keep your mind free, never be dogmatic, think for yourself, be humble, respectful, and open to the Wonders of the Universe.