![]() ![]() These are usually genuine Achillea millefolium stalks that have been cut and prepared for such purposes, or any form of wooden rod or sticks (the quality ranging from cheap hardwood to very expensive red sandalwood, etc.) which are plain, lacquered, or varnished. Hexagrams may be generated by the manipulation of yarrow stalks. millefolium) stalks, used for I Ching divination. When thick material was to be cracked, the underside was thinned by carving with a knife.Ī bunch of 50 yarrow ( Achillea millefolium subsp. Ī variant on this method was to use ox shoulder bones, a practice called scapulimancy. ![]() This oracle predated the earliest versions of the Zhou Yi (dated from about 1100 BC) by hundreds of years. The cracks were sometimes annotated with inscriptions, the oldest Chinese writings that have been discovered. The diviner would apply heat to a piece of a turtle shell (sometimes with a hot poker), and interpret the resulting cracks. Plastromancy or the turtle-shell oracle is probably the earliest recorded form of fortune telling. Precursor to I Ching: Cracks in turtle shell The yarrow-stalk method favours static lines over moving lines in the ratio 3:1. Several of the methods described below force exactly one, or no, moving lines the traditional yarrow-stalk method allows from zero to six moving lines. There are also methods to generate a hexagram by interpreting the time, direction, person, etc., instead of throwing coins or dividing and counting yarrow stalks. Coin methods, and others, are used either by those short of time, or by fortune-tellers who need a quick reading. The method used by the diviner to generate the hexagram(s) depends on their circumstances and beliefs the yarrow-stalk method is usually employed by traditionalists who find significance in its complexity, and in the resulting time needed to manipulate the stalks to produce a hexagram. Then, the lines are appropriately changed (any old yin lines into young yang lines, and any old yang lines into young yin lines), which-with the young lines in the original hexagram remaining the same-results in a second, different, hexagram, the commentarial material on which is then also studied. Then, the commentaries applying to the generated hexagram are studied if the hexagram contains no old lines at all, that concludes the consultation, but if there are one or more old lines, the separate commentary for each such line is also studied. The six lines are produced in order using the chosen method (see below for examples), beginning at the first (lowest) one and proceeding upward to the sixth (uppermost) line, each with its corresponding number. The usual methods for consulting the I Ching as an oracle produce a "sacred" or "ritual" number for each type of line: 6 (for an old yin line), 7 (young yang), 8 (young yin), or 9 (old yang). The text relating to the hexagram(s) and old lines (if any) is studied, and the meanings derived from such study can be interpreted as an oracle.Įach hexagram is six lines, written sequentially one above the other each of the lines represents a state that is either yin ( 陰 yīn: dark, feminine, etc., represented by a broken line) or yang ( 陽 yáng: light, masculine, etc., a solid line), and either old (moving or changing, represented by an "X" written on the middle of a yin line, or a circle written on the middle of a yang line) or young (static, unchanging). Some of the lines may be designated "old" lines, in which case the lines are subsequently changed to create a second hexagram. There are two main methods of building up the lines of the hexagram, using either 50 yarrow sticks or three coins. ![]() The text of the I Ching consists of sixty-four hexagrams: six-line figures of yin (broken) or yang (solid) lines, and commentaries on them. I Ching divination is a form of cleromancy applied to the I Ching. ![]()
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