Links to I Ching sites – and only I Ching sites – are listed here. (If you know one I should add, please let me know!)
The links are roughly sorted into…
- articles, research and discussion
- online readings
- complete translations and commentaries
- link collections
- I Ching art
- products and software
- I Ching readers and teachers
- non-English-language pages
Articles, Research and Discussion
Stephen Karcher’s website: information on upcoming events, consultations, and a huge, in-depth ‘resource library’ that describes his approach and tools for divination. Dive in! Or pick one interpretive approach that’s new to you, and try it out in your readings for a while.
Subtitled ‘The Yijing in the information age’, Andreas Schoter’s site makes interesting and surprisingly intelligible use of algebra to analyse and add to the ‘interpreter’s toolkit’. The site includes links, book reviews, contact details for personal readings and study in Scotland, and – the highlight – detailed papers in pdf format. These include one written jointly with Stephen Karcher, developing ideas for new interpretive methods.
I Ching articles from Harmen Mesker
The website of Harmen Mesker, a Yijing scholar of real integrity, with fascinating insights. He concentrates on intensive research into the original meaning of characters, to arrive at a practical interpretation to use in readings, and is currently working quietly and thoroughly through the Zhouyi, translating line by line. If you have the smallest interest in the currents flowing under the smooth surface of your Yijing translation, have a look at this.
Yijing Dao – Calling crane in the shade
A radiantly designed I Ching site from Steve Marshall, author of the fascinating Mandate of Heaven. Its core is an excellent collection of witty and scholarly book reviews originally printed in the Oracle Yijing journal. There’s also a very good introduction to the I Ching: the articles on ruling lines and on what to avoid in your divination practice are particularly good… so is the description of the cycles of yin and yang on the front page. The links page lists some sites you probably won’t have found elsewhere, and is also very funny. This is a lovely site – and to cap it all, it’s named after my favourite line of the I Ching.
The I Ching isn’t just words, images and structural relationships; it’s also rhythm. Here’s a complete description of a method for drumming the I Ching, using this as a form of divination, meditation and healing. Includes a hexagram chart to drum from.
Casting I Ching hexagrams by Remo Dentato
The most comprehensive listing imaginable of ways to consult the I Ching, with coins, marbles, cards, sticks, dice – and a few others… But this is not just a random collection, it’s very thoughtfully put together, with good (if technical) background information on statistics and clear navigation.
The site also includes an online reading that’s unusual in that it gives you a choice of destination to read the results, including both Clarity and LiSe’s site.
Yitoons by Sparhawk
Yijing-inspired cartoons and a Yijing blog, by Luis Andrade – a Clarity member who keeps his tremendous depth and breadth of Yijing wisdom very quiet.
Contemplating the I Ching by Barbara Davis
Reviews of good quality I Ching books, I Ching art and other news.
Chris Lofting’s Emotional I Ching
If you…
- are more interested in the I Ching as an all-encompassing system than as an oracle…
- feel that traditional divination is defunct and would rather trust human intelligence to find the right hexagram…
- have a very high IQ and lots of time to read…
…then the late Chris Lofting’s work should be your next port of call. It’s as different from onlineClarity as you can imagine. His work is becoming harder to find online, but there is a short version at the above Scribd link, and a longer one is still available from Amazon.
Online readings
If you haven’t already found your way to Clarity’s free online I Ching, do have a look!
Remo Dentato’s site includes a neat little I Ching casting app which has the unusual feature of letting you choose the translation to read from a variety of sites (including Clarity’s). Cast once, and compare and contrast several translations and commentaries.
An elegant, well-designed reading from Ewald Berkers, who also wrote the translation and commentary used at this site (which you can purchase from his online shop). You have the option of throwing virtual coins, entering the values of coins you throw yourself, or simply entering the lines directly.
A simple, direct online version of consultation with yarrow stalks, using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation. You can actually save this one to your own computer as a single file.
An interesting online reading, with the option of entering the results of your own casting, acting as a minimalist interface to the Wilhelm translation. I say ‘interesting’ because this version gives you one-click access to both nuclear hexagram and the ‘before heaven’ hexagrams, which are created by substituting trigrams from the ‘Fuxi’ arrangement for those in the ‘King Wen’ arrangement. There’s a page of explanation, and a table of hexagrams giving direct access to the text.
This isn’t precisely an online reading, but you can use the I Ching Browser to enter the hexagram you received and explore both its texts and a miscellaneous set of trigram associations, as well as trigram arrangements and five element theory.
Online I Ching in English or German
…and with plans to add more languages in future. A simple three-coin reading is available here, using the Wilhelm translation, and also a ‘hexagram of the day’ and hexagrams generated from your name and date of birth.
A simple online reading using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation. The reading gives you access just to the translation, but you can click through to read all the Book I commentary as well, or browse the translation by hexagram.
Translation and Commentary
The most popular website with people at the I Ching Community, LiSe Heyboer’s beautiful site includes her own I Ching translation and commentary. If you could buy this as a book, it would be on my ‘recommended books’ page – but it is online, and it is free. The translation is faithful, the commentary is sensitive, imaginative and profoundly original – it compares very favourably with published versions. Especially fascinating – the images of the most ancient forms of the title ideograms.
The translation is the core of the site, but there’s a lot more to explore while you’re there. Don’t miss the trigram pages, or the ‘origins’ articles. Visit and enjoy!
Hermetica: Bradford Hatcher’s I Ching
An exceptional translation of the I Ching, available online for free, and vastly better than about 99.7% of the I Ching books you’ll find in the bookstore. Brad’s book includes a very readable translation with incisive semi-poetic commentary, a ‘matrix translation’ that allows you to read character by character, as well as in-depth chapters on history, structural dimensions, and a whole lot more. Priceless.
An online oracle and translation, oriented towards family life, created by Stephen Karcher in collaboration with ‘In the Family Way’. The online oracle uses a method that forces every reading to give a single changing line, but the full translation is available here for you to use with any divination method you choose
Ewald uses his own translation and commentary for the online reading at this site; there’s also a shop where you can buy a downloadable copy, and very well-designed, user-friendly I Ching software. Other sections of the same site: chakras, acupressure, exercises, energy and enneagram.
A complete translation-come-commentary, making good use of the Wings to produce an authentic, understandable version.
The ‘reading’ from clicking the wandering sage simply takes you to a random hexagram – no changing lines. The real value of this site is in the simple summary of each hexagram and its lines – and in the note at the foot of every hexagram about the real meaning of ‘negative’ lines.
An old project of mine, a co-operative effort from I Ching users the world over: this is a collection of real I Ching divination experiences from a great variety of perspsectives, usefully organised by hexagram. Though it’s really been overtaken by Clarity’s WikiWing, you are still very welcome to contribute your own readings – anonymously if you prefer.
A complete English version of the Wilhelm translation, Wings and prefaces included, available to browse. There’s also an elegantly-presented online reading using a digitised version of the three coin method – again with the Wilhelm text and commentary.
Link Collections
Greg Whincup is the author of a very interesting I Ching book, and you can read two sample hexagrams from his translation here. There are also plenty of good I Ching links (though some out-of-date), categorised into translations, Chinese text, conventional and unconventional commentary, online divination and software.
SJ Marshall’s link collection with knowledgeable comments – and see also his page of links to the Yijing on Youtube.
from Bradford Hatcher – a pretty comprehensive list, not completely up-to-date but with some good things.
I Ching art
Vivid images, poems and occasional Flash presentations for both hexagrams and individual lines.
Pictures from an exhibition. The artist says, “About half way through making the work I started to throw for the the names of the individual pieces so about half are named by the universe!”
Barry Fishman: Yin Yang and the Ten Thousand Things
Paintings created over the course of many years, representing lines, bigrams, trigrams and the hexagrams.
Products and Software
Before you go…
…do download and try Clarity’s own Resonance Journal software.
People often ask me where they can get yarrow stalks for I Ching consultation. This is the answer: yarrow grown, cut and prepared specially for us. The stalks are about 20cm (8″) long, very delicate and sweet-scented – lovely to handle.
This site features some unusually good I Ching software, with a very well-thought-out set of features. Sadly, it hasn’t been updated since 2006, so you might or might not want to trust your journal to it – but it’s still worth taking a look, if only for its extensive reference material: translations, commentary, original Chinese text, essays on structure, history, philosophy, Wings and divination, and a Yijing lexicon.
The divination features are also excellent, though the program feels a bit clunky, and it’s tricky at first to work out how to access all its capabilities: there is no help file. But costs only £29.99, and you can download it for a free trial from the San Shan Yi Jing website.
64 vivid, evocative hexagram cards. Click a little way into this site, and you can see a gallery of several good-quality images. Unsurprisingly, the card descriptions are feeble and inadequate compared with the words of the original, but the cards themselves are beautiful.
A new way of consulting the I Ching with a special card deck, with extensive information about the cards and the approach they embody on a beautifully-designed site. This is the only I Ching card set I know of that includes separate trigram cards. The set as ordered from here also includes a ‘pocket’ I Ching by Thomas Cleary which is actually a real translation.
I Ching readers and teachers
Yijing consultation with Stephen Karcher
Part of Stephen Karcher’s substantial I Ching, Living Change website: one-off readings with a very insightful, practical diviner starting at $150.
I Ching with Wen Wang Gua Course
As part of their ‘Seven Steps to Feng Shui Mastery’ course, the Feng Shui School includes a very comprehensive course in technical I Ching/ Wen Wang Gua divination. Reading through its table of contents will give you a good idea of what’s involved. (Their claims about the antiquity of the method can be taken with a pinch of salt!)
Readings with Bradford Hatcher
– who is extraordinarily knowledgeable about the Yi. In his own words:
Potential clients should expect readings to be more like counseling sessions than a sideshow act. No tricks. My facility is in understanding the Yi text as multi-dimensional metaphor and getting these metaphors to speak to specific questions and contexts.
I Ching sites not in English
Harmen Mesker’s work in Dutch, plus links to his workshops and courses.
Centre Djohi: Association pour l’étude et l’usage du Yi Jing
Cyrille Javary’s work – with basic articles and links to courses and conferences.
The work of a French artist, including a wealth of colourful and absorbing I Ching-inspired mandalas.
Online I Ching in Dutch and German
Huub Fleuren’s minimalist I Ching interface to the Wilhelm translation. Includes one-click links for every hexagram to its nuclear hexagram and its ‘before heaven’ equivalent.
A Brazilian centre for Taoist studies, with links to courses. There is also an active Portugese-language I Ching mailing list.
German I Ching information including the entirety of Wilhelm’s translation (Books I, II and III) made searchable.
“Wenn Sie Ihr Leben aktiv gestalten möchten und den Wunsch haben es nach Ihren persönlichen Fähigkeiten/Erbanlagen auszurichten, dann kann das I Ging wertvolle Hilfe leisten…”
Several articles by Hubert Geurts on individual hexagrams and on the I Ching in general and in partnership with TCM, family therapy and kinesiology; in-person readings are also available.
Spanish I Ching resource site with links to in-depth hexagram-by-hexagram commentary and further articles.