The I Ching
A diagram of I Ching hexagrams sent to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from Joachim Bouvet.
Chris Gabriel September 20, 2025
What is the I Ching?
If you have interacted with the I Ching, you may know it as a book of poetry used for divination. You throw coins, draw the hexagram, and check the guide in the back to find the number. You read the six line poem and contemplate. This is a very modern means of interacting with the oracle and misses the soul, the meat, and the true purpose of the work!
The I Ching is by far the oldest “book” in the world. In primordial times, the story goes, a dragon named Fu Xi sat patiently and studied nature. While looking at the shell of a turtle, the Trigrams came to him as an eightfold set of elements. From these, he constructed the I Ching and taught humanity his wisdom.
The Chinese written language is one of the oldest, nearly 5,000 years old, yet the trigrams predate it, and are in fact the basis for it.
The Trigrams alone existed for a long time, then the 64 hexagrams came about, a stacking of two trigrams. Long after that, they were numbered and named. Far later, the accompanying poems were written. By our modern focus on the writing, we are essentially missing the whole picture.
In this exploration of the I Ching we will focus on the symbolism of the Trigrams, and the ideogrammic study of their names. By focusing on the oldest, and most visual parts of the text, we will illuminate the oracle.
This Translation
I studied the I Ching for 7 years before I started this translation in 2022. After reading Carl Jung’s work on the I Ching, I was moved enough to buy a copy, though I found the text academic, and harder to grasp than the visual Tarot.
It was after studying Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa’s “Ideogrammic Method” of interpreting Chinese characters that I began to grasp the nature of the I Ching as a set of natural images, much like the Tarot, but “Eastern” enough for the ‘Western’ world to be blind to.
We are reading what we should be seeing.
Aleister Crowley recognized the 64 hexagrams as a direct mirror to the 32 paths of the Qabalah. He mapped the Tao, the Yin and Yang, and the eight trigrams to the Tree of Life, but did not follow through with his translation and commentary. I sought to complete the work he began, and as such have created the first fully corresponded I Ching.
My study of Nursery Rhymes then gave me the profoundly simple and effective language with which I could express the “simple and easy” truths of the text. I sought to make the I Ching accessible to anyone.
The Cosmology of the I Ching
As with all things, we start with the Tao.
1
Form of Tao
The Tao that is spoken
Is not the Tao
The Name that is Named
Is not the Name
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The Name is the Mother of the ten thousand things
The Desireless sees its marvels
The Desirer sees only its shadows
Two move as One
Yet their names are different
One is Mystery; Mystery within Mystery
This is the gate to all marvels
-Tao Te Ching
From the “Creative Nothing” of the Tao, duality emerged. Magickally, this is expressed as 0=2, but we can understand it also as, Yin and Yang, a feminine and a masculine energy. These are the black and white halves of the whole. Yang is light and masculine and is symbolized by a solid line —, Yin is dark and feminine and is symbolized by a broken line - -.
Within these halves exist a dot of the opposite, these are the “four elements”. Younger Yang is two solid lines, while Older Yang is a solid line topped by a broken one. Younger Yin is two broken lines, while Older Yin is a broken line topped by a solid line.
These four also mirror the first line of the I Ching:
Heaven Origin Prosperity Reap Pure
The four characters following the first fill the rest of the book endlessly, they are essentially the four elemental virtues of the I Ching.
元 -Yen
亨 -Heng
利 -Li
貞- Ching
元
Yen depicts a Man with a big Head.
This is often translated as some form of “Origin” or, “Generation”, etc. It is “first”, in the way that the Head of an organization is - , the Capo.
亨
Heng depicts a Child and a Shrine.
Often translated as “progress” and “prosperity”, this is the prosperity in the way that the children of God, the Sons of Heaven experience prosper. Or, progress and prosperity through child sacrifice is an equally possible understanding.
利
Li depicts wheat and a knife.
It is “harvesting” and “gaining”, reaping rewardsgains after sowing work.
貞
Ching, or Ding depicts a vessel.
It is purity, like the Grail.
They can mapped to the Western elements as:
Fire: Yen, Younger Yang
Water: Ching, Younger Yin
Air: Heng, Older Yang
Earth: Li, Older Yin
