I Ching

I Ching - A System of Change Through Time

The I Ching is an ancient Chinese manual of divination, based primarily upon eight symbolic trigrams, which build into sixty-four hexagrams. This classic “Book of Changes” is among the most ancient of the Chinese classics, with a history of more than two and a half millennia of commentary and interpretation. The I Ching inspires world religions, as well as fields of psychoanalysis, business, literature, and art.

One of the Five Chinese Classics, the I Ching has been the subject of scholarly commentary for many years, and remains the basis for divination, a practice that has endured for centuries in the Far East, and in recent years influenced many Western thinkers too.

Wisdom of Changes - Richard Wilhelm and translating the I Ching

Its name, “The Book of Changes,” is suggestive; and we find throughout its contents the vague idea of change replaced by the more definite one of “transformation,” the key-word of alchemy… “The diagrams,” Confucius says “comprehend the profoundest secrets of the universe; and the power of exciting the various motions of the universe depends on their explanation; — the power to effect transmutation depends on the understanding of the diagrams of changes.” Here, in a word, is the general object of Chinese students of alchemy.
– William Alexander Parsons Martin