Das Buch der Wandlungen
The I Ching oracle, or Book of Changes, is one of the foundational works of Chinese philosophy. Composed of 64 hexagrams, each made of six continuous (yang) or broken (yin) lines, it describes through the language of complementary opposites the quality of a situation and its possible changes. On Tarotsi you can consult it online with a random system that simulates the traditional procedure of six tosses of three coins.
The canonical version dates from the Zhou dynasty (11th-8th century BC) and is one of the Five Confucian Classics. The 64 hexagrams are numbered: 1 The Creative, 2 The Receptive, 3 Difficulty at the Beginning, ..., 63 After Completion, 64 Before Completion. Each hexagram is composed of two trigrams (three lines each), corresponding to the eight primary trigrams: Heaven, Earth, Thunder, Water, Mountain, Wind, Fire, Lake. Lines are read from bottom to top.
A line can be "old" (unstable) and transform into the opposite, generating a second hexagram describing the direction of development. This is the I Ching s unique feature: not a static snapshot but movement. The oracle returns the starting hexagram, any changing lines and the transformation hexagram.
Formulate an open, qualitative question (for example "what is the appropriate attitude for this situation?") and shuffle. The tool simulates six tosses of three coins to determine the lines from bottom up. Hexagram, trigram names, changing lines and the classic text (judgment and image) are shown with a contemporary interpretation.
No. The tool uses an English translation of the classic text with a brief contemporary reading.
Chinese tradition discourages multiple consultations on the same question at close distance. If the answer is unclear, meditate on the text in the following days.
I Ching describes a situation through yin-yang dynamics and includes movement (changing lines). Tarot uses a 78-card deck with specific archetypes. Different languages that can be used together or separately.