The I Ching: 3,000 Years of Structured Randomness

Sometime around 1000 BCE, someone in ancient China had an idea that would outlast empires.

Take 50 yarrow stalks. Divide them according to a specific algorithm—set one aside, split the rest randomly, count off by fours, track the remainders. Do this three times to generate one line. Do it six times to generate a hexagram. Then consult the book.

The Book of Changes—the I Ching—contains 64 hexagrams, each composed of six lines, each line either solid (yang) or broken (yin). The hexagrams have names like "The Well," "The Wanderer," "Before Completion." They come with cryptic judgments, line interpretations, and commentaries accumulated over millennia.

This is the oldest continuously used divination system on Earth. It's also, arguably, the most sophisticated—a 64-state combinatorial system with clear mathematical structure, used by everyone from Zhou dynasty kings to Carl Jung to Philip K. Dick.

Why has this particular oracle lasted so long? And what does its structure reveal about the human need for meaning in randomness?

The Binary Foundation

Strip away the mysticism for a moment and look at the mathematics.

A hexagram is six binary digits. Solid line = 1. Broken line = 0. Six positions, two possibilities each: 2^6 = 64 possible hexagrams.

This is a 6-bit system. The ancient Chinese, without knowing anything about information theory, created a complete combinatorial space that maps perfectly onto modern binary logic.

But they did something more interesting than just generate random numbers. They gave each of the 64 states semantic content—names, images, interpretations, relationships to other states.

The hexagrams aren't arbitrary. They're organized. Heaven (six solid lines) and Earth (six broken lines) are polar opposites. Other hexagrams relate through inversion, complementarity, transformation. The system has internal logic.

This is structured randomness. Not chaos, but a constrained space with meaning attached to each region.

The Yarrow Stalk Algorithm

The traditional method for generating hexagrams is fascinating. It's not a simple coin flip.

Fifty yarrow stalks. Remove one (it's never used). Divide the remaining 49 randomly into two piles. Take one stalk from the right pile. Count off the left pile by fours. Place the remainder between your fingers. Do the same with the right pile. The stalks between your fingers determine the first "change."

Repeat twice more. The three changes determine whether your line is: - Old yin (changing broken line) - Young yang (stable solid line) - Young yin (stable broken line) - Old yang (changing solid line)

The probabilities aren't uniform. Old yang (changing solid) has probability 1/16. Old yin (changing broken) has probability 3/16. Young yang has probability 5/16. Young yin has probability 7/16.

The algorithm is weighted toward stability. Changing lines are rarer than stable lines. Solid lines are slightly less likely than broken lines. The system has bias built in—and the bias matches the philosophy.

Yin (receptive, broken) is more common. Change is less common than persistence. The mathematics encodes a worldview.

The Images

Each hexagram has a name and an image. These aren't random labels—they're carefully chosen metaphors that structure interpretation.

Hexagram 4: Meng (Youthful Folly) Above: Mountain. Below: Water. Image: A spring at the foot of a mountain.

The spring doesn't know where to go. It bubbles up and needs guidance. The hexagram is about education, immaturity, the relationship between student and teacher. "It is not I who seek the young fool; the young fool seeks me."

Hexagram 29: K'an (The Abysmal) Above: Water. Below: Water. Image: Water flowing, water upon water.

Danger. Repeated danger. The hexagram warns about difficulties that compound. But also: water finds its way. It keeps flowing through darkness. The counsel is persistence through peril.

Hexagram 63: Chi Chi (After Completion) Above: Water. Below: Fire. Image: Fire under water.

Everything is in its right place. Success has been achieved. But this is not a purely positive hexagram—it warns that completion is unstable. When everything is perfect, decline begins. The smallest disorder can upset the balance.

Each image is a seed for narrative. When you receive a hexagram, you don't get a fortune—you get a metaphor. Then you have to figure out what that metaphor means for your situation.

The Changing Lines

Here's where it gets interesting.

Old lines—the ones with probability 1/16 and 3/16—are "changing." They transform into their opposites. Solid becomes broken. Broken becomes solid.

So you don't just receive one hexagram. You receive a primary hexagram (your current situation) and a secondary hexagram (where things are heading). The changing lines tell you which specific aspects of your situation are in flux.

This is not static fortune-telling. It's dynamic modeling. The I Ching doesn't say "here's your fate." It says "here's your current state, here's the trend, and here are the specific points of transformation."

If you receive Hexagram 3 (Difficulty at the Beginning) with a changing line in the fifth position, you read both the general interpretation of Hexagram 3 and the specific commentary on that line—and then you see what hexagram emerges when that line transforms.

The system models change. It's right there in the name: the Book of Changes.

Jung's Fascination

Carl Jung was obsessed with the I Ching. He wrote the foreword to Richard Wilhelm's famous translation. He used it personally and professionally. He saw it as evidence for his concept of synchronicity.

Synchronicity, for Jung, wasn't magic causation. It was "meaningful coincidence"—the observation that sometimes random events align with psychological states in ways that feel significant, even though no causal mechanism connects them.

When you cast the I Ching, you generate a random hexagram. But Jung argued that the hexagram you receive often feels meaningful—connected to your actual situation in ways that "shouldn't" happen by chance.

His explanation wasn't that the cosmos is reading your mind. His explanation was that the psyche recognizes patterns. You project meaning onto the hexagram. You find connections because your mind is primed to find connections. The hexagram becomes a Rorschach test with philosophical content.

But Jung went further. He suggested that the moment of casting—the specific configuration of yarrow stalks at that specific instant—might somehow capture the "quality of the moment." Not through causation but through correspondence. The microcosm reflecting the macrocosm.

You don't have to believe this to find the I Ching useful. But Jung's fascination reveals something: even sophisticated psychological thinkers found value in this 3,000-year-old system.

Philip K. Dick's Oracle

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick used the I Ching to plot The Man in the High Castle, his alternate history novel where the Axis powers won World War II.

He didn't just use it for inspiration. He cast hexagrams to make narrative decisions. When characters in the novel consult the I Ching (which they do, frequently), Dick cast actual hexagrams and used the results.

In an interview, he said: "The hexagrams I got when casting for the novel are part of the novel. They're intrinsic to it."

This is generative randomness. Dick wasn't asking the I Ching to tell him what would happen. He was using it to inject unpredictability into his creative process—to force narrative directions he wouldn't have chosen consciously.

The result was one of the most acclaimed science fiction novels of the 20th century. Whatever you believe about divination, the method worked for generating compelling fiction.

The Math of Meaning

Here's a way to understand what the I Ching does, stripped of mysticism.

You face a situation. The situation is complex—it has many features, many possible framings. You don't know which features matter or how to think about them.

The I Ching generates a random pointer into a 64-state semantic space. Each state has associated images, interpretations, relationships. You read the interpretation. Then you ask: how does this map onto my situation?

This is random metaphor generation. You get a metaphor you didn't choose—"The Wanderer," "Holding Together," "Breakthrough"—and then you have to find the correspondence.

The finding is the work. And the work is clarifying.

Because to map a metaphor onto your situation, you have to articulate your situation. You have to identify the features that might correspond. You have to decide what "holding together" means in your context.

The hexagram doesn't contain wisdom. It triggers wisdom. The randomness breaks you out of familiar framings. The structure gives you something to work with. The images provide raw material for your own meaning-making.

Why It Persists

The I Ching has outlasted the Qin dynasty, the Han dynasty, the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. It survived the Cultural Revolution (barely). It's been translated into every major language. It's available as mobile apps.

Why?

Because it's extremely good at what divination systems do.

It provides structured randomness—not pure noise but a constrained space with semantic content. It models change explicitly, acknowledging that situations evolve. It offers images and metaphors rather than concrete predictions, inviting projection and interpretation.

And it has accumulated 3,000 years of commentary, creating layers of meaning that new users can draw on.

The I Ching isn't magic. It's technology—psychological technology, narrative technology, decision-making technology. And like any good technology, it's proven its utility by persisting.

Using It

If you want to try the I Ching, you don't need yarrow stalks. Three coins work fine (though the probabilities are slightly different—coin-flip hexagrams weight changing lines equally at 1/4, losing the traditional bias toward stability).

The Wilhelm/Baynes translation remains the standard scholarly version. Apps like "I Ching: Book of Changes" make casting easy.

But here's the approach that actually works:

1. Frame a real question. Not "what will happen?" but "what do I need to understand about this situation?"

2. Cast the hexagram. Use whatever method feels right.

3. Read the primary hexagram. Notice what images and phrases resonate.

4. Check the changing lines. These are the specific points of transformation.

5. Read the secondary hexagram. This is the direction of change.

6. Ask yourself: "If this metaphor applies, what does that imply?"

You're not asking the universe for answers. You're using structured randomness to break out of your habitual patterns of thinking and find new angles on familiar problems.

That's the actual function. And after 3,000 years, it still works.

Further Reading

- Wilhelm, R. (trans.) (1950). The I Ching or Book of Changes. Princeton University Press. - Jung, C. G. (1949). "Foreword to the I Ching." In Wilhelm translation. - Smith, R. J. (2012). The I Ching: A Biography. Princeton University Press.

This is Part 2 of the Divination Systems series. Next: "Tarot: How 78 Cards Became a Mirror."