Chinese astrologists often refer to a text called the I-Ching. What is it?

FYI: Chinese astrologists often refer to a text called the I-Ching. What is it?

One should never answer a question with a question, they say. In this case though, perhaps the most frequent answer is, 'How much time do you have?' Confucius himself wanted to devote more time to the I-Ching's study and Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist, not only wrote the foreword to the first European translation, but used it in his work on synchronicity and the theory of coincidences. He was largely favourable, criticising those who saw the I-Ching as a collection of 'magic spells'.

So what is it? In a nutshell, the I-Ching is the ancient numerical and philosophical way of producing insights and responses to problems and situations that logic cannot muster. It helps make the right move, at the right time. Partly developed about 4,000 years ago by Tang-dynasty buddhist monk Yi Ching, it incorporates a system of cosmology and philosophy. Numerically intricate, it purports to peg and define patterns of change. Consult the I-Ching, believers say, and dilemmas seem easier to solve and decisions easier to live with.

To sceptics, however, it is nothing more than basing the decisions of everyday life on the toss of some coins (three to be precise), or on the settling of 49 yarrow stalks, as was done in ancient China, and some accompanying mumbo-jumbo symbols and meanings.

So how does it work? This is where it gets tricky. The I-Ching encompasses 64 hexagrams, or abstract line arrangements, which represent different yet typical situations such as growth, retiring, turmoil, polarising or ending. How the sticks or coins fall reveals a response. Three coins are thrown six times and produce scores - heads is two, tails is three. Even scores give a broken line, odd an unbroken line. Any score of six or nine gives a changing line. The resultant lines then correspond to one of 64 cards.

Critics say this is too random a means for decision-making, claiming the coins will fall in different ways, on different occasions, producing different results. Let's take a simple question as an example: 'Shall I go to the pub even though I'll probably get wet because it is raining?' This might produce various analyses with various hexagrams, such as hexagram three, Chun, 'initial difficulty' or turmoil. The symbol of this hexagram is a blade of grass pushing against an obstacle as it grows. To a trained seer, it means difficulty exists but the obstacle can be overcome. For instance, using an umbrella or raincoat would assist in the pub dilemma.