Mastering the Book of Changes with Wang Bi 18 month program

The book of changes is the most important ancient text in Chinese history and one of the most important in the world.

It is a triumph of binary mathematical statements about the nature of Yin and Yang, time and space, and how to predict and conduct human affairs.

The book of changes is also fundamentally important to the studies of Daoist Meditation and Chinese Medicine, being used in both traditions as the backbone of many of the most important ideas in the traditions.

Do you know there are multiple transmissions of the book of changes which include different arrangements of the famous hexagrams? The most important one is called Zhou Yi, or just Yi Jing and represents the most standard interpretation of the main ideas.

Reading the Zhou Yi by itself, while interesting does not provide us with any clear answers about how it is meant to be used. Another problem is that many of the most important ideas in the text such as arranging lines into sixes and nines, and the various terse lyrics associated with each line, although beautiful and mysterious, only make sense if you have some frame of reference for the text.

Many people have purchased a copy of the book of changes, looked at it for an hour and put it down in frustration since it is totally unclear what the text means.

This isn't only true for twenty first century westerners, it was also true almost as far back as the text was first compiled since according to legend it was organized by Confucius and was already an ancient text when he read it, so anyone who rakes their brains for its meaning is among good company.

The good news is that many ancient masters who read the text left behind deep and broad annotations for us to follow in order to understand its structure, use and how to read and interpret the text.

Among those masters was Wang Bi, a kind of wonderkid of the Cao Wei kingdom who was a leading figure in the Mystery Study School (known in the West as Neo-Daoism), a philosophical school which sought to understand and critique ancient documents in order to find the most perfect direction about how to live life (just like we do).

The Wang Bi annotation of the Book of Changes is structured as follows:

• Scrolls 1 – 6 explain the meaning of all the hexagrams,
• Scroll 7 and 8 are a commentary on the Xi Ci “appended explanations” wing of the book of changes,
• Scroll 9 is the Shuo Gua/Explaining the Hexagrams text of the ten wings,
• Scrolls 10-11 deal with other arrangements of the hexagrams.

Wang Bi explains hexagrams according to several key models:

• what the name of the hexagrams mean according to their relationship with natural phenomena or activities,
• the relationship between the upper and lower portions of each trigram,
• what each line of each trigram means relative to the change of Yin and Yang,
• the significance of each line to human society and individual actions,
• what past masters said about the trigrams and Wang's analysis of who did the best job explaining their meanings.

Unlike documents which view the Yijing through the lens of specific utility such as divination, medicine or Neidan, this document actually explains the inner structure of the text, what it all means, and proposed applications of the principles of change and transformation in day to day life.

This makes it a great root text to study in order to master the foundations of Yijing study to make your other applications of the text more powerful.

Here at IS/Qigong Project we always view things through the Neidan lens, so in our treatment of the text we will also discuss the implications of the hexagrams to meditation as often as possible, but our main job this year and next is to really master the foundational elements of the Yijing in order to be literate enough to apply it within the scope of multiple practices.

What an exciting opportunity!

Here is the structure of the program:

Program length: 18 months, starting March 9, 2025

Structure: PDF translations and video recordings of lectures will be released every Sunday morning EST through the course of the program, and we will meet one Sunday a month (TBA) for a live lecture and chat on ZOOM for those who are interested in participating and asking questions,

Price: $150 USD/Month (discount for yearly and monthly IS subscribers),

Translating these texts is quite a massive undertaking, but I'm truly delighted to invite you to join me on this fascinating journey.

Right now we are setting down the foundations for advanced Yijing study of the Can Tong Qi (the first Daoist Alchemy document) which will begin in 2026 and I think that by truly understanding the inner meanings of the hexagrams you will find it much easier to study Can Tong Qi, Southern School and Wu Liu School Neidan, all of which are hugely influenced by the book of changes.

If you think this sounds like a good opportunity please click “I want this” to register now!!