History

The Book of Changes - I Ching, together with the Bible, is the oldest book in the world. There are innumerable disputes about its origin. One legendary origin tells us that Fu Shi, a mythological personage, created the trigrams (3 lines) and hexagrams (6 lines) after studying the Ho Tu, the map of the Yellow River discovered after the great flood.

The traditional Ho Tu diagram

This diagram shows the Yin and Yang forces and their combinations represented by black and white circles. Fu Shi substituted the circles for complete lines and broken lines and, using a special numerology, formed the eight trigrams and, from them, the hexagrams. Other sources believe the book was created when Fu Shi discovered a way to "read" the laws of changes in the patterns of a tortoise shell. Some Chinese religious schools teach that this map was found etched into a metal ball when the flood waters dried, and they claim that this ball came from another planet.Legends aside, many Western scholars who study this book affirm that, based on archeological findings, the Chinese first used bones etched with inscriptions (unearthed in 1899 in Anyang) to predict the future. There are numerous writings inscribed on these bones that prove that the trigrams and hexagrams were originally written with numbers and not with lines like we use today. After the discovery of manuscripts written on silk in Manwangdui in 1973, showing an unknown sequence different from the hexagrams, the scholars came to the conclusion that there are various forms for sequencing the hexagrams and that, historically speaking, there is not just one I Ching but several. Today we know that we cannot really prove any origin for this book. The only certainty is that the book we call the I Ching is one of the ways to sequence the hexagrams created by King Wen, founder of the Chou Dynasty.Thomas McClatchie wrote the first English translation of the book in 1876, followed shortly thereafter by James Legge's translation in 1882. The first French translations came soon after, written by Philastre (1883 & 1893) and Harlez (1889). Richard Wilhelm's German translation, the best and most well-known in the West, was not published until 1924. The preface written by Carl Gustav Jung for the 1960 English translation of Wilhelm's version led the West to believe that the book was merely an oracle to be consulted for self-improvement. But the I Ching is also a book of strategies and philosophy containing enormous cosmological and historical knowledge. Scholars who study these aspects of the I Ching are prejudiced regarding the book's oracular purpose. These scholars forget that the book of changes reveals the laws of change at work also in the events that form what we call destiny. The I Ching has survived for thousands of years on account of this oracular use.

There are still many controversies surrounding study of the I Ching. Should we only study it as a book of philosophy, a history book or a book of primitive cosmology? Should we only consult it and learn the laws of change in a practical, objective way? I believe that we must study the I Ching's full scope, excluding nothing. I think the best option is to integrate its facets. Academic studies are too much Yang. We must balance this focus with its complementary Yin--consulting this book for self-improvement.