The I Ching is one of China's oldest books. Its name, 易經, means "Classic of Changes." Here we call it the I Ching, but you'll also see it spelled Yijing or Yi King: the same book, written in the Latin alphabet in different ways. For close to three thousand years, people have turned to it to think more clearly about what they're going through.
It isn't a book you read from cover to cover. You consult it. You ask a question, you get a figure, and you read what the book says about that figure.
A book about change
The core idea is simple: everything changes, and change has shapes you can learn to recognize. Day turns into night, planting turns into harvest, a problem ripens and either resolves or gets tangled. The I Ching doesn't try to stop that movement. It helps you see where you are in the cycle and what attitude fits that moment.
The word 易 has traditionally been read in three senses at once: what changes, what is easy or simple, and what stays constant. The book is about all three: what moves, the simple pattern underneath, and the rules that don't change.
Lines, trigrams and hexagrams
The whole system is built from two kinds of line, the two sides of yin and yang:
- The solid line (⚊) is the yang line: strength, drive, what is firm.
- The broken line (⚋) is the yin line: receptiveness, openness, what yields.
Three lines stacked together make a trigram. There are eight, each with an image from nature: heaven, earth, thunder, water, mountain, wind, fire and lake.
Put one trigram on top of another and you get a hexagram of six lines. That gives 64 combinations, and the book has a chapter for each. The first, Activity, is six solid lines; the second, Passivity, is six broken ones. Every mix lies between those two.
Lines are counted from the bottom up, the way a plant grows. Line one is at the bottom and line six is at the top.
What the text says
Each hexagram comes with a short text on the situation as a whole, the judgment, and an image that compares it to something in nature. Each of its six lines has its own text as well. That ancient core is called the Zhouyi, the Changes of Zhou. Over the centuries, commentaries were added, the Ten Wings, which explain it and turned a divination manual into a classic of philosophy too. The story is in The History of the I Ching.
The two layers in Cambios
In Cambios, every hexagram and every line has two layers:
- The practical layer tells you what it means for your question, now, in plain words. For the first line of Activity it says: "It's not yet time to act."
- The poetic layer is the voice of the old book, with its images. For that same line the Chinese reads 潛龍勿用, which in our version is "A dragon under the water. Do not act."
Both say the same thing in different ways. The practical layer gives you clear direction; the poetic one leaves you an image to keep thinking with. Read one or both.
What to expect, and what not to
The I Ching is a classic for reflection, not a guarantee of what will happen. Many people feel the answer speaks to their situation, and that has real value: it asks you to look at your question from a new angle. The decision is still yours. Use it to think better, not to stop thinking.
It doesn't replace a doctor, a lawyer or a financial advisor either. There's more on that in Using the I Ching Well.
How to begin
- Think of a question that is clear and open. There are ideas in How to Ask a Question.
- Cast. The most common method uses three coins, tossed six times, once for each line. It's explained in How to Toss the Coins. In Cambios you can toss the coins on screen and save your readings.
- Read the hexagram you got: first the text for the whole figure, then any lines that change. The guide is in How to Read a Hexagram.
- Go back to your question. What does the answer help you see that you didn't see before?
You don't need to believe anything to start. Curiosity and an honest question are enough.