page_title: I Ching
hierarchical_section_title: I Ching
caption_attribution_description: English: A page from a Song Dynasty (960-1279) printed book of the I Ching (Yi Jing, Classic of Changes or Book of Changes), 17.7x11.9cm, printed book, in the National Central Library in Taipei.
context_page_description: The I Ching or Yi Jing, usually translated as Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and among the oldest of the Chinese classics. With more than two and a half millennia's worth of commentary and interpretation, the I Ching is an influential text read throughout the world, providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, philosophy, literature, and art. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period, over the course of the Warring States period and early imperial period it was transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "Ten Wings". After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of Eastern thought.
  The I Ching is used in a type of divination called cleromancy, which uses apparently random numbers. Six numbers between 6 and 9 are turned into a hexagram, which can then be looked up in the text, in which hexagrams arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence.
context_section_description: The I Ching or Yi Jing (Chinese: 易經; pinyin: Yìjīng, Mandarin pronunciation: [î tɕíŋ] (listen)), usually translated as Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and among the oldest of the Chinese classics. With more than two and a half millennia's worth of commentary and interpretation, the I Ching is an influential text read throughout the world, providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, philosophy, literature, and art. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC), over the course of the Warring States period and early imperial period (500–200 BC) it was transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "Ten Wings". After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of Eastern thought.
  The I Ching is used in a type of divination called cleromancy, which uses apparently random numbers. Six numbers between 6 and 9 are turned into a hexagram, which can then be looked up in the text, in which hexagrams arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching is a matter of centuries' debate, and many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision making as informed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing.
caption: Title page of a  Song dynasty (c. 1100) edition of the I Ching
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