The general content of the Book of Changes

The Book of Changes is one of the oldest documents in China, and is regarded as the first of the Five Classics by Confucianism. Three fantastic ancient books: Huangdi Neijing, Yijing and Shanhaijing. The Book of Changes is actually a collection of ancient Lianshan, Ghost Stories and Zhouyi, but Lianshan and Ghost Stories have been lost. The Book of Changes describes the change of state with a set of symbol systems, and shows the philosophy and cosmology of China's classical culture. Its central idea is to describe the changes of everything in the world with the unity of opposites of Yin and Yang.

I ching in a broad sense includes I ching and I ching. The Book of Changes is divided into 30 hexagrams and Xia Jing into 34 hexagrams. Because the Book of Changes was written very early, around the Western Zhou Dynasty, the meaning of words evolved with the development of the times, and the content of the Book of Changes was not easy to read during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, so people in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period wrote Ten Wings to interpret the Book of Changes. It is generally believed that the Book of Changes was originally a book of divination, but its influence spread throughout China's philosophy, religion, medicine, astronomy, arithmetic, literature, music, art, military and martial arts. Since17th century, the Book of Changes has also been introduced to the west.

The content of the Book of Changes is composed of "hexagrams", and * * * has sixty-four hexagrams. Each hexagram consists of six layers, and each layer is called "Yao" (Cantonese: Yao, Yao). Each hexagram represents Yang with a long horizontal line "-",which is called "Yang hexagram"; Or two broken horizontal lines "-"represent Yin, which is called "Yin". From the bottom, there are always six hexagons, and six hexagons match different yin and yang to form 64 different combinations.

Six hexagrams can be divided into the upper half and the lower half, and the three hexagrams of each part cooperate with different yin and yang to form various combinations, which are called hexagrams. The bottom-up interpretation of the six hexagrams is: Chu, Er, San, Si, Wu and Shang. The hexagrams born by the three hexagrams are "upper hexagrams" or "outer hexagrams", and the following are "lower hexagrams" or "inner hexagrams".

Each six-pointed star represents a state or process.

There is also a saying that Fu created hexagrams such as (Gan), (Kun), (Zhen), (Li), (Xun), (Kan), (Gen) and (Right).

Later generations explained the composition of hexagrams by saying "Infinity begets Tai Chi, Tai Chi begets two instruments, two instruments begets four images, four images begets eight diagrams, and eight diagrams begets sixty-four hexagrams". Tai Chi (? ) stands for one, and the traditional Taiji diagram represents the complementarity of Yin and Yang; Divided into two, divided into yin and yang, that is, two instruments; Divided into four, namely, the sun, shaoyang, shaoyin and Taiyin; Eight out of four, that is, gossip; Two gossip overlap, which is 8864 hexagrams. However, some scholars have pointed out that historical data show that divination was sixty-four hexagrams when it first appeared, but gossip was the explanation of later generations.