I-Ching for Beginners

Hi Serendipity,
Hope you will carry on with this thread, it is such a relief to not be scared off from the I-Ching by the more technical side. I experimented this weekend with an old book of my Father's from the 70's and sure enough got scolded for asking too many questions (reminds me of when I first started to read tarot and would ask things again and again and just started to get the Hanged Man in response to everything! )
Anyway, sorry for not posting before - shy
L

Hi everybody!

Sorry, I lost track of this thread for a few days...

The nice thing about I-ching, is that it can be very quick to do... but it can take a while to get the hang of interpreting the hexagrams...

Little Buddha, those sticks are yarrow sticks. The traditional oracle is very complicated, though I have done it a few times for important questions... yarrow grows wild around my house, so I gathered 50 stalks so I could do the oracle. lavender works too, in my opinion, if you have the stalk...

but coins have been used for 1000 years...

I think i-ching is very beautiful, and because it speaks in poetry rather than images, sometimes it can be a little easier to interpret than tarot, depending on how your brain works!

So, I would like to open up this thread now, to all of your questions...

Glad you are finding this useful and beautiful, as William Morris would say.

Sincerely,
Serendipity

I-ching questions, anyone?

Does anyone have a question regarding I-ching?

Today I did an interesting experiment... I did a tarot reading for someone, and then asked the Iching what path would be best to take... and the I-ching reflected what the tarot had pointed at... but spoke more directly, and did not refer to the larger situation as much

Has anyone else ever tried this?

Sincerely,
Serendipity

Hi Serendipity,

I'm just starting to learn I-Ching as well -- synchronicity!

I haven't used I-Ching in this way yet but I have used other oracles to give further clarity to a reading. Hopefully I can spend some time on this thread in the coming weeks -- just got busy again...

serenaserendipity said:

Does anyone have a question regarding I-ching?

Today I did an interesting experiment... I did a tarot reading for someone, and then asked the Iching what path would be best to take... and the I-ching reflected what the tarot had pointed at... but spoke more directly, and did not refer to the larger situation as much

Has anyone else ever tried this?

Sincerely,
Serendipity

Click to expand...

where do you find the top 12, let alone 100?

bradford said:

~B~

RE: Is the John Blofeld translation any good?

It's in the top 12 (of more than 100).
But not in the top 3.

If you want to supplement Wilhelm with someone more contemporary try Thomas Cleary (just his plain I Ching), Richard Lynn or Alfred Huang

Click to expand...

How do you feel about Wu Wei? (which is interesting something related to the Tao Te Ching but I can't remember exactly what. *tired*

bradford said:

Stongly disagree. There's a whole lot of crap out there. More than half of the so-called translators don't know a word of Chinese. They just spout a bunch of new age psychobabble to make some money or get some notariety. Garbage in, garbage out. It's worth the time spent to find a good, true translation. There are good reasons that this classic has been around for three thousand years, and it warrants some respect.

Click to expand...

Kind of like Tarot?

Pagan X said:

I've found it very helpful to realize that there is not one I Ching.

The I Ching is three thousand years old, and written Chinese (like all languages) changed over that period of time. It's like the history of the Bible and Bible translations--there are many I Chings, of different periods.

Click to expand...

When I was reading at a centre, I used the I Ching with
Tarot. There were cards I made from a book of I Ching.
Put the small cards in a bag and had the client draw one
at the end of a reading.This worked very well. Most
times it comfirmed my Tarot reading. Sometimes, I even
surprise myself! LOL

ros

i-ching and tarot

once i was on a train in japan, and i felt awkward throwing pennies around...

so i put hexagrams on tiny strips of paper, and put them in my mini paintbox and closed my eyes and drew them!

i don't reccomend this for basing much planning on though-- i made some big gaffes in that journey

sincerely,
serendipity

p.s. i-ching and tarot work well together, but you must think of them differently
tarot is much younger than i-ching... so i feel its best to let energetic tarot do the big spread, and then ask i-ching for wise words at the end... like asking great grandma what she thinks after an argument's been going on for a while...

any questions?

i would like to have this thread be open to people's questions...