I Ching

Essay:

I Ching is an ancient fortune telling method that we were assigned to work on in Divination. The art of I Ching was originally used with yarrow sticks and they were cast out and then read. However this practice took too long to read and was later replaced with a faster and simpler was to read I Ching. The method requires six coins that are to be held in your hand for a few moments then tossed into the air six times. The Coins are read thus. Each time the coins are cast they form either a broken or whole line, there are sixty-four combinations that the lines create to form hexagrams. The Hexagon is very important in the use of I Ching, the yarrow sticks were thrown in hope that they would create Yarrow stalks and the coins are thrown hoping that they either add up to hexagons or their lines create hexagons.

I Ching is used a lot in daily life, it can be used to answer simple questions and it is also found in books. 'His dark materials' trilogy by Philip Pullman that features a girl Lyra and a polar bear uses I Ching in the second and third books: The Subtle Knife and the Amber Spyglass. On both occasions a girl: Mary Malone uses the yarrow sticks to do a reading. The Internet also features the use of I Ching, sites that allow the user to get a "Free I Ching Reading" or Have their future seen on virtual crystal balls, or read by virtual tarot cards.

Shao Yung also played an important part in I Ching, he and a group of people known as Louyang believed in two things: One of these was to draw parallels between their own streams of thought and that of Confucianism as understood by Mencius and the other was that the men set out to undermine any links, real or otherwise, between 4th century Confucianism and what they viewed as "Unclean" or "not philosophical' meanings. He saw I Ching through the meaning-principle study.

Here is a picture of the total sixty-four hexagon/Lines the coins can create can be seen here: http://www.changecycle.org/images/BlockChangeCycle-0905.gif.

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