THE ORIGINAL BLOG IS WRITTEN BY A WONDERFUL POET AND YIJING PRACTIONER REM TANAUAN. 

REM PASSED AWAY SUDDENLY ALMOST A YEAR AGO. WE NEVER MET, ONLY ON YIJING PORTALS, BUT I MISS HIS POEMS AND HIS OPEN-HEARTED ATTITUDE. SADLY BLOG HAD BEEN TAKEN DOWN. THERE IS STILL FACEBOOK PAGE WITH SOME VERY INTERESTING POSTS.

IT IS A VERY WELL-WRITTEN BLOG THAT EXPLAINS HOW YIJING DEVINATIONS WORK IN A SIMPLE AND UNDERSTANDABLE WAY. 

“What can you expect from a detailed Yijing reading?

First Timers
When I ask my clients if they already know Yijing before our reading session, this is the answer I always hear from them:

“It’s my first time to hear the Yijing.”

I understand this, as Yijing is not as popular as other methods like Tarot, Runes, and Angel Cards. Many people are already familiar with these methods, and they can easily expect what they will get from reading.

So in this post, I thought of laying down the contents of a detailed Yijing reading, which I always offer in a 1-hour or 2-hour session. I hope to give you some familiarity with the beauty of Yijing as an oracle reading system, particularly on how I structure a reading in my practice.

Reading Elements
I always base my Yijing readings on what I call reading elements. These elements are parts of the reading that I unpack and interpret for the client. It is almost similar to the Minor and Major Arcana in reading Tarot. These reading elements help me see and reveal the insights that clients need to answer their inquiries.

There are two (2) major sets of reading elements in Yijing:

1. Symbols

2. Text

Let’s explore each set and understand what they exactly contribute to a Yijing reading.

Yijing Symbols
Yijing has no set of cards with beautiful illustrations unlike Tarot, or ancient letters unlike Runes. Instead, it uses two (2) kinds of abstract symbols which in ancient Chinese is called gua 卦.

Trigrams are gua 卦 or three-line symbols. These symbols are what you see arranged in a bagua 八卦 the octagon-shaped artifact mounted on top of many front doors. (Bagua means “8 trigrams”)

Each trigram has rich associations, but let me give you some basics here, in relation to movement:

These are just one of so many associations with every trigram. They can be associated with body parts, colors, directions, animals, events, virtues, and other similar natural phenomena.

Hexagrams are another set of gua 卦 with six lines. When 2 trigrams are stacked together, they form a hexagram. So 8 trigrams stacked on each other produce 64 hexagrams. Here is a chart to see how these combinations take place:

This is where it gets interesting. The position of the trigram in a hexagram reveals so many meaningful insights in a reading:

So hexagram as a whole (combined trigrams) shows us the big picture, how the client’s perception of his or her situation affects the outside situation he or she is facing.

Yijing Symbols as Answers
Why do symbols answer your inquiry? To answer this, I’d like to ask you another question: why do we chat using emojis? Emojis are symbols, too. When you see a heart or a smiley face, it needs no explanation. They already reveal their meaning, without even using a single word. This is the same with trigrams and hexagrams.

Not just text
Though Yijing has been known as an ancient book, and many practitioners tend to use it by reading the text, it is first and foremost a combination of symbols. Thus, even if you don’t exactly read the text, the symbols can reveal enough information to make a reading insightful and meaningful.