I Ching
<p>The <em><strong>I Ching</strong></em> or <em><strong>Yi Jing</strong></em> (<a title="Traditional Chinese characters" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_characters">Chinese</a>: <span lang="zh-Hant">易經</span>; <a title="Pinyin" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin">pinyin</a>: <em><span lang="zh-Latn-pinyin">Yìjīng</span></em>; Mandarin pronunciation: <span class="IPA"><a title="Help:IPA/Mandarin" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin">[î tɕíŋ]</a></span> <span class="nowrap">(<span class="unicode haudio"><span class="fn"><img src="/0a929eee-131c-4a4b-8d7d-d5abe2a655bf.png" /><a class="internal" title="YiJing.ogg" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/YiJing.ogg">listen</a></span></span>)</span>), also known as <em><strong>Classic of Changes</strong></em> or <em><strong>Book of Changes</strong></em>, is an ancient Chinese <a title="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divination">divination</a> text and the oldest of the <a title="Chinese classics" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_classics">Chinese classics</a>. Possessing a history of more than two and a half millennia of commentary and interpretation, the <em>I Ching</em> is an <a title="I Ching's influence" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching%27s_influence">influential text</a> read throughout the world, providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, psychoanalysis, literature, and art. Originally a divination manual in the <a title="Western Zhou" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Zhou">Western Zhou</a> period (1000–750 BC), over the course of the <a title="Warring States period" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_States_period">Warring States period</a> and early imperial period (500–200 BC) it was transformed into a <a title="Religious cosmology" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_cosmology">cosmological</a>text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "<a title="Ten Wings" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Wings">Ten Wings</a>".<sup id="cite_ref-FOOTNOTEKern201017_2-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching#cite_note-FOOTNOTEKern201017-2">[1]</a></sup> After becoming part of the <a class="mw-redirect" title="Five Classics" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Classics">Five Classics</a> in the 2nd century BC, the <em>I Ching</em> was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of Eastern thought.</p>
<p>The <em>I Ching</em> uses a type of divination called <a title="Cleromancy" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleromancy">cleromancy</a>, which produces apparently random numbers. Six numbers between 6 and 9 are turned into a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching#Hexagrams">hexagram</a>, which can then be looked up in the <em>I Ching</em> book, arranged in an order known as the <a title="King Wen sequence" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Wen_sequence">King Wen sequence</a>. The interpretation of the readings found in the <em>I Ching</em> is a matter of centuries of debate, and many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision making as informed by <a title="Confucianism" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism">Confucianism</a>, <a title="Taoism" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism">Taoism</a> and <a title="Buddhism" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism">Buddhism</a>. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as <a title="Yin and yang" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang">yin and yang</a> and <a title="Wu Xing" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing">Wu Xing</a>.</p>