Venerable Master Gangxiao: The Mystery of the I Ching — Psychology, Chapter 1: The Enigmatic I Ching Divination

Chapter 1: The Enigmatic I Ching Divination

It is human nature to be fascinated by where things are headed and how they might turn out. Science earns its prestige precisely because it can tell us: under these conditions, a given phenomenon will unfold in this way and lead to that result. At its core, this is prediction. And if we're curious about the future of events around us, we should be even more curious about our own futures — and indeed we are. For all these years, fortune-telling as a means of predicting the course of a person's life has never truly vanished. Even under suppression, it merely goes quiet, and the moment conditions ease, it surges back with overwhelming force.

In the 1980s and 1990s, books on prediction sold in enormous numbers and became a high-profile category in the book market. According to Psychology of Life Prediction, these titles suddenly became hot sellers. For a time, fortune-telling and divination books of every description flooded street stalls in cities and rural areas alike. Take the I Ching alone: at almost any sidewalk bookstand in any Chinese city, or even in some villages, you'd find one or several newly published books on I Ching studies. They sold fast — a new title might have a print run of 100,000 copies, sometimes several hundred thousand, sometimes over a million. They were snapped up as quickly as water seeping into parched earth. Nearly everyone could feel the heat of this publishing craze.

A representative work of the era is Shao Weihua's I Ching and Prediction Studies, published in Xi'an. The book came out in May and December of 1990 on the mainland and in Hong Kong respectively, with a total circulation exceeding 20 million copies. In September 1990, it was named an outstanding book and exhibited at the Third National Book Fair. On September 27, 1991, the State Press and Publications Administration publicly criticized it on national television. Yet before and after the ban, at least seven printing houses pirated the title.

The I Ching stands first among the Confucian Five Classics, and its method of divination is the most important form of prediction in China. Experience has shown that many of its readings are accurate — which is precisely why it has endured for millennia. Anyone who simply dismisses it as "superstition and ignorance" is, as the saying goes, "either a beast or a god," standing apart from the billions of people over two thousand years who took it seriously, Confucius and countless other major thinkers among them.

Example 1. There are no small matters in an imperial household. The health of a national leader has always been a major political event. In 1984, Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko fell ill. Whether he would recover and remain in power would shape the country's political direction. Since the Soviet Union was one of the world's two superpowers, this also carried enormous implications for the global order. Every nation naturally paid close attention to his condition — some intelligence agencies were even gathering information about his illness.

On December 16, 1984, a high-ranking Chinese official surnamed Zhang told Shao Weihua that he only knew Chernenko was in his seventies, without details such as his exact birth date. Could Shao cast a hexagram to predict whether Chernenko would recover — or when he might die? Shao cast the "Ge (Revolution) changing to Feng (Abundance)" hexagram and predicted that Chernenko would pass away in the first lunar month of 1985. A few days later, the prediction was confirmed: on the nineteenth day of the first lunar month, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Chernenko died. Official Zhang was persuaded, and when Shao's I Ching and Prediction Studies was later published, Zhang inscribed the book's title in support. This story became a source of pride for Shao Weihua and attracted the attention of social psychologists; Psychology of Life Prediction analyzed the incident in detail.

The hexagram logic runs as follows. The Ge (Revolution) hexagram signifies change and transformation. Its fifth line corresponds to the position of the ruler. When this line moves, it transforms into the Feng (Abundance) hexagram — meaning the ruler is on the move, the ruler is changing. Chernenko was the supreme leader, the ruler, and the hexagram showed that the ruler was about to change. However, in spring the wood element is strong, and wood nourishes fire. The "body" trigram representing Chernenko is Li — Fire — so on the face of it, the reading should go like this: although the hexagram says "the ruler will change," the strength of spring's wood might sustain him; perhaps his fate is not yet sealed, and he could simply step down as General Secretary, thereby satisfying the hexagram's indication of a "ruler change." This reading would be fully consistent with standard hexagram principles.

Shao Weihua interpreted things more flexibly — which is exactly why his reading proved so accurate. He pointed out that while the first lunar month technically counts as spring in China, in the far north the wood element is still weak. And Moscow was still buried in snow, frozen solid; wood had no power to feed the fire. He concluded that Chernenko could not be saved. Events confirmed his reading.

Example 2. The Discourses of the States: Jin Discourse records that after Chong'er (the future Duke Wen of Jin) had been exiled from Jin for nineteen years, Duke Mu of Qin prepared to send troops to help him reclaim power. To divine the outcome, Chong'er cast the "Tun (Difficulty at the Beginning) changing to Yu (Delight)" hexagram. A court diviner judged it inauspicious: the upper trigram of Tun is Kan — Water, danger, pitfalls — while the lower trigram is Zhen — a carriage. A carriage meeting water and getting stuck meant the campaign would go badly. He urged Chong'er to abandon the venture.

But the minister Sikong Jizi argued forcefully for decisive action, offering a different reading. The statements of both the Tun and Yu hexagrams contain the phrase "favorable for establishing a lord." If Chong'er didn't seize Jin, how could he establish himself as a lord? (Jin was a vassal state of the Zhou dynasty.) "Favorable for establishing a lord" meant the very business of gaining a state — supremely auspicious. Kan is water, Kun is earth, Tun denotes solidity, Yu denotes joy, Zhen is a carriage: Chong'er would receive unceasing support like a flowing spring (the aid of Duke Mu of Qin), stand on rich, solid ground with cause for joy, and have a carriage to carry him home. "If he is not to possess the state of Jin, how could such signs possibly apply?"

Sure enough, Chong'er returned successfully to Jin and took the throne, becoming the renowned Duke Wen of Jin. Sikong Jizi's reading gave Chong'er the confidence he needed, and this divination went down as one of the famous hexagrams in history.

Example 3. The Zuo Zhuan: Ninth Year of Duke Xiang of Lu records that Mu Jiang, mother of Duke Cheng of Lu, had an affair with the minister Qiao Ru and plotted to depose her own son. The plot failed, and Mu Jiang was confined to a cold, remote palace. Wanting to know what lay ahead, she cast the I Ching and drew the "Gen (Mountain) changing to Sui (Following)" hexagram. The statement for Sui reads: yuan heng, li zhen, wu jiu — "supremely successful, beneficial to persevere, no blame." In other words: auspicious, no problem.

The original hexagram, Gen (Mountain), carries the image of stillness and immobility, but the changed hexagram, Sui (Following), carries the image of movement. Some advised Mu Jiang to flee: perhaps Duke Cheng, out of filial feeling, would turn a blind eye and let her go without pursuing the matter. This was a plausible outcome, and a reading along these lines would likely have proved accurate. But by then Mu Jiang was a broken woman, consumed by remorse. She refused to render an auspicious judgment. She accepted that yuan heng li zhen meant good fortune and that wu jiu meant no blame — but she didn't read them as two parallel statements. She read them as conditional: yuan heng li zhen, therefore wu jiu. She lacked the virtue of yuan heng li zhen. As Duke Cheng's own mother, she had plotted to destroy him; she had brought ruin on herself, thrown the state into chaos, and harmed the people. How could she possibly have no blame? She would die here, in this palace. Her reading came true.

This story is at once a celebrated hexagram case, a well-known historical episode, and a heartbreaking cautionary tale that has moved people for ages. The I Ching is the foremost classic of Confucianism, a tradition that places the highest value on moral cultivation. For someone without virtue, an inauspicious hexagram brings misfortune — and so does an auspicious one. Modern students and practitioners of I Ching divination would do well to remember this.

Additionally, the Lunheng records that when the state of Lu was planning to attack Yue, Zi Gong cast the "Ding (Cauldron) changing to Gu (Decay)" hexagram. The fourth line of Ding moved, and its statement reads: "The cauldron's legs break, the duke's feast is spilled, his person is defiled — inauspicious." The cauldron symbolizes the state; its broken leg suggests the campaign may fail and bring national decline. Moreover, the line statement explicitly marks it as inauspicious. Confucius, however, said: "No — this simply tells us that the people of Yue dwell on the water, so we should prepare plenty of boats. The 'legs' of our horsemen and foot soldiers will be of no use." People said Confucius was the wiser of the two.

The young Zhu Yuanzhang, unwilling to spend his life as an obscure monk, watched the great surging tide of the Red Turban Rebellion and felt his heart stir. He prepared to make a momentous life choice: join the army. He cast a hexagram — inauspicious. He cast two more — both inauspicious. But his mind was already made up. He interpreted the results himself: "Joining the army is an inauspicious undertaking by nature. Since the hexagram came out inauspicious, that means it's telling me to join." Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to enlist; regardless of what the fortune-teller said, he had his own interpretation. The hexagram simply reflected what was already in his heart.

As these examples show, I Ching divination does have a real rate of accuracy. But why is it accurate? There is no scientifically sound explanation — which is why it's so easily dismissed as superstition. Some have tried to offer "scientific explanations," but these tend to be forced, even anti-scientific and absurd.

1. The most common claim of a "scientific basis" for I Ching divination goes like this: when a person shakes the coins while concentrating, the coins (being metal, hence magnetic) and the human body (which also has magnetic properties) together transfer the body's magnetic information into the hexagram through the coins. Shao Weihua's influential I Ching and Prediction Studies makes exactly this argument. It's a purely mechanistic view. One suspects that PhDs in electromagnetism or information theory would find it a bizarre and laughable fantasy — a "scientific principle" that no actual scientist would recognize.

2. The sound philosophical elements of the I Ching don't prove that its use as a divination tool is equally sound or scientific. The I Ching tradition actually comprises two branches: the image-number system (xiangshu) and philosophical principle (yili). As philosophy, yili contains elements that everyone recognizes as reasonable — its dialectical view of how things move and change, for instance, or its proto-materialist understanding of the world through the eight trigrams of heaven, earth, mountain, and so on. But xiangshu — the application to divination — is a separate question. The reasonableness of yili no more validates xiangshu (divination) than the correct statement "this cup can be used for drinking tea" validates the claim "this cup can satisfy hunger," even though both refer to the same cup.

3. The binary system doesn't prove I Ching divination correct. Why does the binary system exist? Because in electronics there are only two states — on and off — so binary is the natural choice. Even with zero knowledge of yin, yang, or the eight trigrams, mathematics has independently established that binary, octal, even sexagesimal systems are all perfectly valid. We use sexagesimal time every day: one hour equals sixty minutes. You can claim binary derives from the yin-yang duality; you can argue the octal system corresponds to the eight trigrams. But what about decimal? Sexagesimal? The countless other theoretically possible bases? What do those correspond to?

4. Some say that in 1941, Liu Zihua, a Chinese student in France, used the eight trigrams to calculate the speed, density, and orbit of a tenth planet, solving a major problem in astronomy and stunning the world. Even if this did happen, it would be an error in the history of science: to this day, every scientific text acknowledges only nine major planets in the solar system. Anyone today claiming a tenth planet can only be scientifically illiterate.

In conclusion, the divination craze is a significant social phenomenon, one that deserves serious study. In practice, I Ching prediction does show a measurable rate of accuracy. Yet to this day, no scientifically valid explanation has been offered for how it works. The purpose of this short book is to attempt a new explanation — one grounded in scientific principles.