The I Ching
An oracle older than memory. A companion for the present moment.
The I Ching — the Book of Changes — is one of the oldest texts in human history, consulted for thousands of years across cultures and traditions as a source of wisdom, guidance, and orientation. It is not a fortune teller. It is something far more interesting: a mirror for the moment you are in.
Sixty-four hexagrams. Each one a map of a moment in the eternal flow of change.
A book that speaks back
What the I Ching is
At its heart, the I Ching is a system of sixty-four hexagrams — symbols composed of broken and unbroken lines — each one a map of a particular moment in the eternal flow of change.
To consult the I Ching is to cast a hexagram, read its teaching, and sit with what it reflects back to you. What makes the I Ching remarkable is not that it predicts the future — it doesn't. What it does is something more subtle and more useful: it helps you see where you are.
It asks you to slow down, to hold your question with care, and to listen for the wisdom that is already present in the situation — the wisdom you may not yet have access to through ordinary thinking.
In the Taoist tradition from which it springs, this is called aligning with the Tao — the great current of reality that flows beneath the surface of ordinary life. The I Ching is a tool for finding that current. For stopping the noise long enough to feel which way the water is moving.
Something in it recognizes something in us
Why it spans time & culture
Consulted by emperors and farmers, philosophers and poets, scientists and seekers across thousands of years.
Carl Jung — whose work is central to depth psychology — was so captivated by the I Ching that he wrote the foreword to one of its most beloved Western translations. He saw in it what depth psychology also sees: that there is an intelligence operating beneath the surface of events, and that this intelligence can be contacted.
What has allowed the I Ching to travel so far across time and culture is that it does not belong to a single religion, a single tradition, or a single worldview. It belongs to the practice of paying attention. Of taking your questions seriously. Of believing that wisdom is available — if you ask in the right way, in the right spirit, and with the willingness to hear what you might not expect.
Timeless
One of the oldest continuously consulted texts in human history — unchanged because it doesn't need to be.
Tradition-free
It belongs to no single religion or culture. It belongs to anyone willing to ask a sincere question.
Wisdom-oriented
The I Ching doesn't tell you what to do. It keeps you oriented toward what is true.
A depth companion
Its language of symbol and change speaks directly to the unconscious — making it a natural partner for depth work.
A practice you can carry with you
How we work with it together
A practice you can carry with you — into your own life, at your own thresholds.
In sessions and intensives, we consult the I Ching together. I teach you how — how to form your question, how to cast the hexagram, how to sit with the response and allow it to speak. The I Ching rewards slowness. It rewards a certain quality of openness that is itself a kind of medicine.
At the beginning of a session
When you arrive with something alive and asking to be held differently, we may open with the I Ching — letting it set the tone and direction for the work ahead.
When a question arises
Sometimes in the middle of an intensive or a session, a question surfaces that calls for a different kind of guidance. The I Ching is there for exactly that moment.
As your own ongoing practice
If you feel called to it, you can begin consulting the I Ching in your own life — at your own thresholds, as a companion to your depth work between sessions.
This is one of the things that makes the I Ching so well-suited to depth psychology: it keeps us oriented toward wisdom rather than certainty. It reminds us that we are always in the middle of something larger than we can see — and that this is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be moved through with as much presence and understanding as we can bring.
Begin
The I Ching is consulted in the Grief Ritual Intensive and can be woven into individual sessions when the moment calls for it.
If you're curious about this practice — or ready to begin — a conversation is the natural place to start.
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