I Ching: The Chameleon Book

The I Ching (Yijing) is an important text in the canon of world literature. It is also a divination tool familiar to millions of modern users. Books on the I Ching tend to approach it exclusively as one or the other: literary text or oracle. This annotated translation is designed to reconcile a century of provocative new scholarship with the function of divination for the modern reader. The most exciting new scholarship illuminates the epic tale of wise King Wen, valorous King Wu, and the rise of the Zhou dynasty. The emergence of this wonderful story explains countless cryptic allusions in the I Ching. It also provides an elegant way to recover the divinatory function for the modern reader, and suggests how it may have functioned for the original diviners. In this view, to make a divination is to read the moment against the dynasty change narrative -- truly to "consult King Wen".