10 ways to make your I Ching experience difficult and frustrating

One of the meanings of the “I” in “I Ching” is “easy” or “simple”. Given the smallest opening, it will speak to your heart, reconnect you with the deeper patterns and meanings of your life, and let you move with the flow instead of swimming doggedly upstream.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s actually possible to work with the I Ching to multiply your confusions and frustrations. Here are the top 10 ways to complicate and obfuscate your readings and minimise the danger of their prompting any positive changes. Some are widely known and used; some of the more advanced techniques (notably 5 and 9) I’ve tried and tested for you myself.

1. Never pick up the I Ching unless you’re so distressed you can’t think straight.

It also helps to be in a great hurry. When you’re not in panic mode, you don’t need an oracle, do you? Dust the book occasionally, if you must, but don’t get to know it.

2. Keep your question confusing.

There are a few different ways you can accomplish this. One is to spend 45 minutes composing a question, taking excruciating care not to leave anything out. For example:

“Given my feelings for X, and what Y said about my experience with her over the past 9 years, especially that time in the lobby, and in the light of the astrological challenges I can expect, according to my chart of last Tuesday, over the coming 3 months, should I continue to wait for her response, and if so should I leave my phone on, or should I contact her, and if so would email, texting, post, phone or visiting be better, and what should I say or write, and what will she think if I do?”

This example actually models many best practices, including asking about several alternative options at once, asking what you should do without clarifying what you’re aiming for, and asking about another person’s thought processes. But you can generate almost as much confusion with considerably less effort by using just one of these methods, for instance, “Should I call her or not?”

Now, before you can engage with the I Ching’s answer at all, you first need to determine whether it’s describing a) what you should do, b) the consequences of calling, or c) the consequences of not calling. And if ‘a’, you also have to work out whether its advice corresponds to calling or not. You will probably find yourself trying to interpret the reading from all three perspectives simultaneously.

At the same time you have masterfully limited the reading, making your question a small and rigid box inside which you’re safely defended against any broader, more useful advice the oracle might offer.

3. Ask about what will happen to you…

…but (and this is the important part) never mention anything you might do. Forget “Should I call her or not?” – go for “Will she call me?” Even if you interpret the answer correctly, the risks of this causing you to do anything to improve your life are greatly reduced.

4. Forget your question.

Even if you can only manage a fairly simple, direct question about your own choices, don’t panic. You can keep things hopelessly confusing by the simple expedient of forgetting your question. Needless to say, don’t write it down.

5. Forget the hexagram.

You might want to follow this up by not quite remembering the answer. Write down your hexagram, if you must, on the back of an envelope, or a sweet wrapper. Now lose it. (Or – interesting variant – convince yourself you can remember the hexagram as you cast it without writing it down, and do this at 2am.) It’s OK to remember a few things about the reading, for instance the name of the first hexagram, but you should be uncertain as to which lines were moving. Now you can attempt to interpret several alternative readings, and try to guess which one was yours.

6. Demand it ‘make sense’.

Expect – no, demand – that your answer should make perfect sense at once. If it doesn’t, something has gone wrong. Consult again. Repeat as necessary.

7. Don’t read the I Ching

Avoid the words of the I Ching itself, which have a distressing tendency to speak directly to your soul. Read commentaries, read ‘simplified versions for the modern world’ that replace the imagery and stories with moral abstractions, and read lots of them. If you read enough, you should be able to find one that says what you want. You will also find several that contradict it. This proves that the reading didn’t work. Consult again.

8. Second-guess.

If you accidentally catch sight of an authentic text and your answer does, in fact, make perfect sense at once, all is not lost. Get out of your heart and into your head, and use your natural reserves of indecision and over-analysis. Consider that your intuitive response might be wrong after all, and you can’t really be sure. Consult again. Continue until the answers become mutually contradictory. This proves that the I Ching doesn’t work – but continue to consult anyway.

9. Lose sight of the reading.

Worst case scenario: your question is clear and simple, you remember both question and answer, the answer speaks to you and moves you profoundly, and everything falls into place with extraordinary clarity. I can tell you from personal experience: all is still not lost. If you can’t altogether avoid keeping a record, at least ensure you won’t be able to find it again. Write a long, poetic journal entry recording your discovery, if you must, but don’t look at it for at least a year. There is some risk that the effect of the reading will seep out into your daily life, but you should be able substantially to forget it and continue as normal.

10. Take it seriously.

Perhaps most important: take your divination absolutely and profoundly seriously at all times.