Tarot and horoscope

At first glance the I Ching seems like a great chowder of images. Familiar, ordinary ones: a bowl, spoon, window, wheel. Urban, pastoral, alleyways, cows. Bizarre, fairy tale. And there are snatches of strange stories imbedded in fortune cookie epigrams, common sense amid gibberish.
Beneath it all, sixty-four hexagrams. A geometrical reiteration of two elements whose values are the simple inversion of each other (open/closed, black/white, zero/one; broken/ unbroken; male/female [cable connections, plugs]. Responsive/ receptive). Pure, whole numbers. Each hexagram has a name, and from that name come images. From the images come implications and from those implications come potential actions. Each hexagram: the systematic, natural, patterned unfolding of a cycle in graphic form.

The I Ching looks into the person, thing, or event itself for the details and directions of change, rather than to some outside force (mover); it never looks to direct cause and effect, but toward indirect association through compliment and opposition. And since this polarity is relevant to any given situation on some level. An opposite can be established for anything. The I Ching can somehow always be applicable.
The I Ching is inherent and specific. Multiplicity and variety. Vs. External details.
Through the disclosure of elemental cycles and patterns we are able to complete our human affairs— their initiation rightfully belongs to circumstances. For completion to be effective we must penetrate the internal will, and once that has been done, we must determine the actions the situations itself finds necessary. Thus an understanding of the self must be integrated with an understanding of this world. Self-doubt is inevitable at this point. The purpose of the I Ching is to provide a means by which doubt can be dispelled, depersonalized, objectified, or settled, and intention be trained to issue spontaneously in the right direction.
A means of facing a situation objectively. It allows one to address a situation in much the same way a jury is selected, at no point in the process is it desirable for any element to be prejudiced by preconception. Randomness functions as a form of objectivity. A way of looking at circumstance that opens them up without the immediate intrusion of subjective expectation.
Divination is the method. But divination must neither be suspicious, ie a bid for control or power; nor dismissed as illogical, an empty set. Thus divination provides a form of experiential knowing, a framework for the practical self- and situational- analysis.
The image is the creative activity of its opposite, the imageless or non-imagined/unimagined.
(Cf. The imagelessness of Quantum Mechanics Feynman p.242: “We are therefore obliged to be modest in our demands and content ourselves with concepts which are formal in the sense that they do not provide a visual picture of the sort one is accustomed to require.” Bohr)
Once the name emerges from the imageless void of number, the process of interpretation generates meanings specific to the inquiry. If the accumulation of images, and mentioned actions are meaningless, then the situations and those involved are dysfunctional. Though a meaningless ‘reading’ is very rare once use makes one familiar with the I Ching.
Change: an inner tendency according to which development takes place naturally and spontaneously.
Purpose of consultation: to discover the disposition of the present situation so that proper action could be taken.
Interpretation: no one method or approach has gained universal recognition or acceptance.
The theme of the I Ching is the advance and retreat of power, be that the force of a lightning bolt, the prestige and influence of a successful business man, or the gentle wearing away of stone by water.
Chien I = Simplicity & ease. Pien I = continual change. Pu I = constancy.
Simple, abundant, consistent. The World The I Ching poists “… a universe where no potential goes uncounted; where nothing is latent, everything alive; where every possibility makes itself felt in the outcome.” (Gleick, Genius)

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