Clarity: the acknowledgements section

There are a few websites without which this one would be only a pale shadow of itself. Here are four huge thank yous…

Hermetica.info

This is Bradford Hatcher’s site, and contains much of his life’s work – work that Yi described better than I can. The individual help and support he gave me – for instance by checking and providing feedback on my book, hexagram by hexagram – was extraordinary. I’ve referred heaven-knows-how-many people to his website over the past couple of decades to download his Yijing, both for his unique commentary (which has a distinctly oracular character of its own) and for the character-by-character ‘matrix’ translation. Those two blue volumes are always on my desk.

Yijing Research

The website of Harmen Mesker, fount of information on all things ancient Chinese, its language and divination practices. His scrupulously-researched articles are a rich source of imagination food, and he’s unreservedly generous with his knowledge.

He’s also created the world’s most aptly-named Yijing video channel, Yi-tube, which is full of good things.

Chinese Etymology

Richard Sears has been providing this priceless resource online, free, since 2002: an immense database of Chinese characters, with a great array of ancient versions of each one. If one of my blog posts talks about the etymology of an ancient character, or includes an image of one, odds are it comes from Uncle Hanzi.

Yijing, Oracle of the Moon

I see that in my first newsletter – a printed one, sent in November 2000 – I recommended “a fascinating and beautifully-presented site by a lover of the I Ching from Holland.” I still do.

I often recommend LiSe’s site for the etymologies of the hexagram names – but there are also pages on many of Yi’s most important words, and vivid trigram pages, and brilliant stuff on the layers in hexagrams without which the Yijing Foundations Course would not at all be the same. Also, don’t miss the ShenShu oracle.