Text: Michael Riversong wrote (8/4/01): The I Ching is a very important document. What most people don't know, is that it was written as a physics text. In its original form, it was not intended for divination. Students were supposed to memorize the 8 Trigrams and 64 Hexagrams derived from those, so that at any time they would know what situation they were seeing, and could determine the likely ways that the situation could change. So the I Ching is a mathematically based classification of all the situations that can arise from the way this planet is structured. The 64 Hexagrams correlate with a number of other ideas, including sounds, colors, and shapes. Note that each Hexagram is half of a pair, with each side a mirror image of the other. Throwing coins to build up a hexagram is a later development. We're pretty sure that coins didn't even exist for the first couple of thousand years after the I Ching was written. The first traditional method for divination using the I Ching involved a precise and complex manipulation of 52 yarrow stalks. I have tried this on several occasions. Interestingly enough, every time I did it, my mathematical abilities were sharper for several weeks afterwards. But even doing the yarrow stalks is a shortcut, which was apparently not condoned by the early scholars. I had a long talk with Ben Iverson at one point. He said that the I Ching is essential to studying Quantum Arithmetic, and is a primary embodiment of many mathematical principles. I started using the I Ching for divination back in 1972. Very quickly, I fell into the trap, which is warned against in the excellent Wilhelm/Baynes translation, of asking the question over again when I didn't like the answer. Several fascinating disasters happened after that. In general, from experience, I have found that there is a very good reason why the Bible warns against divination in many ways. We can trap ourselves by getting locked into some reading that came about, whether it is right or wrong. We also can too easily come to depend on answers from these sources, which distracts us from hearing God's will. (The same thing would apply to secular counseling.) Instead, we are consistently asked to pray and to do things that keep our minds open to the voice of our Creator. Going back to the I Ching, the best way to use it is as originally intended, so you have a better understanding of how this world is structured. Therefore, it is just another part of science. Students were encouraged to see for ourselves how the 64 situations manifest in ordinary life. This is not necessarily a spiritual or mystical discipline -- it is purely scientific. If you still think that the I Ching has some mystical significance and can be beneficial if used for divination, observe what happened to China. In the 1800's, thousands of fortune tellers infested the streets of every city in China. Due to a lousy, decaying government, most people were in desperate straits. People thus swarmed to these fortune tellers. History shows us that none of this did any good. Eventually, China went through several cataclysmic revolutions and natural disasters, culminating in the formation of a despicable but very strong totalitarian government. One of this government's first actions was to outlaw fortune telling.

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