I had great experience with a software called I CHING DREAMTELLER. It “decodes” each of your dreams by cross-referencing it to the correct oracle in the ancient Chinese book called “The Book of Changes”( www.ichingdreamteller.com).

I'm not going to comment on this bogus sales pitch because...

33. Retreat
The superior man keeps the inferior man at a distance,
not angrily but with reserve.
..
Nothing against the product. I encourage anything that promotes the wisdom of the I Ching. I just don't like people pretending to be neutral third parties when the truth is something quite different. What's the point of studying the I Ching if it doesn't make you strong enough to hear and speak the truth?

Just deleted 4 other copies of this thread.
Not so interested, now, in the program.
Readings about marketing strategy are available at my usual rates.

If it weren't for the four identical threads I just had to delete, I'd find the software interesting. There must be some programming behind the scenes 'reading' the dream imagery and matching it up with hexagrams - which is all well and good, though I'd actually prefer to ask Yi direct what my dream means, rather than asking the program to find a 'match'.

But with a program that can match themes in some way, you could do something much more interesting: store an I Ching journal (and a dream journal, tarot journal, synchronicity journal, and however many more you liked) and have the software point out the recurrent imagery and themes. Not just 'hm, that's the fourth time this month you've received hexagram 4' but 'you know, that links up with your dream about the mountain stream, and what about the recurring can't-find-the-classroom one?'

Actually I've been sitting on this idea for a while - but projects don't tend to hatch by themselves when sat on. Does anyone else think it's a good idea, or is it just me?

I don't understand how the software would work. How would it improve on the bare practice of journaling?

As for 'dream books and dream guides and dream software', I don't think much of them. If I dream of a horse, it could well have a different meaning for me than the meaning it has if *you* dream of a horse. It might have something to with the receptivity and acceptance that Hex 2 talks about, it might have something to do with the progress and honor that Hex 35 talks about, it might have something to do with the being held back that 26.3 talks about, or it might have something to do with something else entirely. I really disesteem the mechanicality of dream books. It ain't the dream imagery, it's the DREAM IMAGERY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DREAMER'S LIFE that carries the meaning.

Well, such software would be kind of Babel Fishy, computers are and will perhaps always remain artificially stupid. But it's not difficult to write a program that finds all hexagrams and lines (in the W/B translation, for instance) in which 'horse' or 'horns' or 'New York' appears ("Sorry, no reference to New York found" ) and perhaps this could help a bit?

I think your idea is a good one, Hilary, altho the software would have to be smart. If the software was designed to allow one to ask questions of the yi and record the answers/personal notes, record dreams and personal notes relating the dreams to I ching, and then had a feature which could be asked to show recurring images, recurring phrases it would be helpful...and quite interesting. I am not sure a program could be smart enough, though, to make connections between things that are not obvious, there would have to words that matched. BUt if it included one's personal notes in the analysis, I am sure many common themes would come to light, beyond just showing what hexagrams recurred.

There is a tarot site that offers readings ( not free) but then has a feature which can show you your most dominant suits and cards over say a year or more. It is helpful because it saves one all the time of poring thru a journal........and very often you can forget that you had a certain card many times over the year, or that one suit was predominant in your readings

The more i consider this the more it seems to me the human brain and its connection to the soul - our own psyche, will always do a much much better job. Software runs to logic doesn't it ? Our connections we make ourselves go way beyond that. The software thing could be useful as a kind of advanced filing system but it can't think for us. Connections aren't always so obvious, we don't always mean the same things even when we ourselves use the same words

listener said:

There is a tarot site that offers readings ( not free) but then has a feature which can show you your most dominant suits and cards over say a year or more. It is helpful because it saves one all the time of poring thru a journal........and very often you can forget that you had a certain card many times over the year, or that one suit was predominant in your readings

Click to expand...

Then again theres alot to be said for that particular function. Its so frustrating knowing you had a certain answer time and time over but not being able to find out exactly when without spending hours going through journals.