THE FIVE PHASES · LESSON 6 OF 7 · 18 MIN
The Book of Changes
The Yijing — sixty-four hexagrams, how they were cast with yarrow stalks and coins, the layers of the text, the two orders of the hexagrams, and how to ask it a question.
The Yijing (I Ching), the Book of Changes, is the oldest oracle still in daily use. It answers a question not with a yes or a no but with a picture of a situation in motion: one of sixty-four hexagrams, six lines each either whole (yang) or broken (yin), with a short text for the whole and a text for each line. Lines may be "old" and about to change, and when they do a second hexagram appears: where things are going.