I Ching: Fifty Stalks

Fifty stalks on a cloth. This is how the Book of Changes was consulted before coins. You bring one question, then work the heap with your hands. One finger stirs the stalks. Two fingers part them, and wherever you divide is where the count begins. Count down in fours until a remainder is left, three times over, and you have one line. Six lines make a hexagram. It takes about few minutes, and that time is the point. The counting occupies your hands and keeps you on the question. The hexagram you get is produced by where your own hands divided the heap, not by a number drawn the instant you tapped a button. What you get at the end is a text to react to, and your reaction is the part that matters. The full classical eighteen-division method is here, along with a shorter three-division method. All sixty-four hexagrams carry the complete Legge translation of 1899: judgment, image, and every…