The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is one of the oldest texts of the Chinese tradition — a divination system and philosophical treatise structured around sixty-four hexagrams, each a configuration of six broken or unbroken lines. The text has been consulted as oracle, ethical guide, and philosophical map for roughly three thousand years. Jung wrote the foreword to Richard Wilhelm’s 1950 English translation and treated the I Ching as a primary example of what he called synchronicity.

What is synchronicity?

Synchronicity is Jung’s term for meaningful coincidence — moments when an outer event corresponds to an inner state with no causal connection between them. The I Ching, in Jung’s reading, works through synchronicity: the hexagram the consulter casts arrives at the right moment because the psychic field and the cast fall into the same configuration. Jung’s foreword to the Wilhelm edition is the foundational text.

How do I cast the I Ching?

The traditional method uses fifty yarrow stalks. The more common modern method uses three coins, tossed six times, each toss giving you one line of the hexagram (heads counts 3, tails counts 2; the sum determines whether the line is yin or yang, old or young). This experience will generate a hexagram for you if you don’t have coins to hand, or read the hexagram you’ve already cast.

What is a changing line?

Changing (or "old") lines are lines that shift from yin to yang or yang to yin, generating a second hexagram called the relating hexagram. The primary hexagram describes the current situation; the changing lines describe the dynamics already in motion; the relating hexagram describes where the situation is tending. A reading engages all three.

Who translates the I Ching well?

Richard Wilhelm’s 1924 German translation (rendered into English by Cary Baynes in 1950) remains the standard depth-psychological edition, with Jung’s foreword. Thomas Cleary’s Taoist I Ching and The Taoist I Ching: Commentary by Liu I-ming offer a Taoist internal-alchemical reading. Ritsema and Karcher’s Eranos edition reads the text through the original Chinese etymologies with careful attention to what each character actually carries.

I Ching Reading — Free Cast the Book of Changes

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is among the oldest continuous divination practices in human history — a system of sixty-four hexagrams, each a specific configuration of six broken and unbroken lines, that has been consulted in the Chinese tradition for roughly three thousand years. It is an oracle, a philosophical treatise, a manual of ethics, and a map of situations in process, all at once. Jung encountered the text through his collaboration with the sinologist Richard Wilhelm, and his 1949 foreword to the Wilhelm-Baynes English translation is the foundational depth-psychological reading.

Jung’s claim is that the I Ching works through synchronicity — the principle of meaningful coincidence — rather than causation. The hexagram arrives because the psychic field at the moment of consultation and the cast of the coins fall into the same configuration. For Jung this was not mysticism; it was the empirical observation that meaning can be acausally related to event. The practice is slow, careful, and honest: you ask a real question, you cast, you receive the hexagram, and you read what the Changes has given you.

How the Reading Works

You can cast your own hexagram (three coins tossed six times, traditional yarrow-stalk method, or digital casting) and tell Sebastian the hexagram number plus any changing lines. Or you can ask Sebastian to cast for you. Sebastian then generates a reading that engages the hexagram’s image, judgment, and commentary — drawing on Wilhelm, Cleary, Ritsema/Karcher, and Jung’s own commentary where relevant.

What a Reading Will Contain

The primary hexagram. The configuration you cast — the judgment, image, and the commentary on what the Changes is naming in your question.
Changing lines, if any. The specific line commentaries for any lines that are shifting. These describe the dynamic already in motion.
The relating hexagram. If changing lines are present, the second hexagram they generate — where the situation is tending.
Depth-psychological reading. How the hexagram speaks to the question in the language of the soul. Inline citations from the library’s primary texts.

The I Ching

How the Reading Works

What a Reading Will Contain

Further Reading