I Ching

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is one of the oldest surviving texts of Chinese civilization, dating to approximately the eighth–seventh centuries BCE, though its roots reach even deeper. Originally a divination practice, it became a foundational philosophical text consulted by Confucius, Daoist thinkers, and generations of Chinese scholars. In the West, the system became widely known after Richard Wilhelm's translation (1924), which drew Carl Jung's attention to it.

At the core of the system are 64 hexagrams, each composed of six lines: solid (yang) or broken (yin). A hexagram is obtained through tossing coins or sorting yarrow stalks, and this random process is understood as a resonance with the present moment of the situation. Each hexagram has a name, a core image, and an extended commentary describing the quality of the moment, its dynamics, and the possible direction of development.

The philosophy of the I Ching is built on the idea of continuous change: no situation is static, and every phenomenon moves toward its opposite. Moving lines point to a transitional hexagram — an image of what the situation is transforming into. The method does not predict specific events in the Western sense; rather, it describes the quality of the current moment and offers guidance for action or non-action.

In the Errarium atlas, the I Ching belongs to symbolic-cyclic systems: it works with archetypal images (64 situations as a complete set of possible states of the world) and with the cyclic logic of change, which is fundamentally different from linear cause-and-effect thinking. This makes it the closest analogue to Tarot in the Chinese tradition — despite all the differences in cultural contexts and working mechanisms.