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The Hexagrams of the I Ching by Michael Graeme What you will find here are a few introductory notes and a link to my own reading of the hexagrams and the appended lines of the I Ching. Download from The Rivendale Review Adobe Acrobat File approx 1.2 M Bytes Also Available from Lulu.Com (free to download)
The text has not been "secured" in any way, so you can cut and paste the whole thing into some other format if you prefer, once you've loaded it. The book contains my personal interpretation of the hexagrams, and runs to about 270 A5 pages. It was written primarily for my own use as a working reference, but as it grew I realised I was drawing on a lot of material and condensing it down into a form that others might find useful too. This work is the result of studying a wide range of published and online material and then attempting to put it all into my own words, words that I could understand. This began as a personal project and there was never any intention to seek publication through the normal channels - however, as it is such an easy thing to do, I have now made it available as a print on demand resource from Lulu.com. PDF files are wonderfully easy to search but it is still a pain to have to start up one's PC before being able to read anything. Though there is a charge for the printed version (£6.05 for the paperback) this covers Lulu's printing costs alone and I do not profit personally from the modest distribution of this text. The electronic version will always be free to download, either from here or from the Lulu.com website. Naturally I reserve copyright which I suppose in this context means you can basically do what you like with it, so long as it doesn't involve making money.
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Interpretation of the I Ching can be a tricky business, and the thing to do is read as many editions as you can lay your hands on. I found that in studying other interpretations, some scholarly, some "popular", I was eventually able to arrive at a broader personal understanding of the I Ching. Individual interpretations would inevitably come up with passages that I could not understand. This might be solved by studying the problem from another angle, through another interpretation. However, I found that while solving some problems, each interpretation inevitably presented their own difficulties elsewhere. My aim here then was to present a version of the I Ching that drew on as much material as I could lay my hands on in order to provide as comprehensive an explanation of each hexagram from as many different angles as possible, in words that meant something to me. I keep this version in printed form in an A5 organiser, and find I rely upon it these days more than on any other book. As this is a personal edition, it isn't going to be as meaningful to anyone else, since the metaphors I use represent my own vision of things and may not necessarily fit with someone else. However, if you're working with a published translation The Hexagrams of the I Ching might just serve to clarify a phrase or an idea in ways that allow you to successfully arrive at your own clear vision of things, as the words of others, grasped here and there over the years, have helped me to arrive at mine. My key sources of information in preparing this book were: The I Ching: Richard Wilhelm and Cary F Baynes. Total I Ching - Myths for Change: Stephen Karcher. The I Ching - The Classic Oracle of Change: Stephen Karcher. The I Ching - The Classic of Changes: Wang Bi. The Complete I Ching: Alfred Huang. A Guide to the I Ching: Carol Anthony. The Idiot's Guide to the I Ching: Elizabeth Moran and Master Joseph Yu. The I Ching a guide for life: Will Adcock. Guide to I Ching: Raymond R Bullock. Also Online: LiSe Heyboer: I Ching. Book of the sun and moon Robert Eyler Coates Snr. The Wisdom of the I Ching. Clarity Online Plus further valuable guidance on selected hexagrams came from the monthly newsletter of Clarity Online, Editor: Hillary Barrett. I did ask the I Ching to what extent it would be able to speak to others through my words and it told me that provided a person approaches it with an open, unstructured frame of mind and is prepared to listen to what they might not want to hear, the words are okay. M Graeme January 2008 Copyright © M Graeme 2008 |
