the yarrow stick oracle

the new year is so much like a door or a window. as each receives and lets go what is on either side of them, so the old year departs and the new arrives . . . without judgement or constraint or encouragement.

the old is often personified as an old man and the new as a young child. perhaps that’s where something of the british tradition of “first footing” originates from.

the tradition of first footing in my home county of lancashire holds that if a light-haired man is the first through your door, it is as unlucky as if a woman is the first, and it has become a custom for a dark-haired male to be the one and only first-foot. interestingly (and more tolerantly i might add) in yorkshire (my dad’s home county) it must always be a male who enters the house first, but his fairness is no objection.

the first-foot usually brings a gift of coal and salt. the coal representing "warmth" for the year ahead and the salt representing "flavour".

so, the new year offers an opening - a window or doorway into the future becoming present. for anyone accustomed to conjecture, or who perhaps like me, has an innate desire to know something of what’s coming up, oracular tools are more likely to be consulted (and respected) at this time of the year than at any other time.

for this, i like to consult the i ching.

the i ching or "book of changes" is a very old chinese symbolic system used to identify and describe order in chance events.the i ching incorporates the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and the acceptance of the inevitability of change. the i ching is most widely used as a system of divination in the west.

the text of the i ching is a set of predictions represented by a set of 64 abstract line arrangements called hexagrams. each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines, where each line is either yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). with six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 26 or 64 possible combinations, and so 64 hexagrams represented.

here is the hexagram for wind on water:


each hexagram represents a description of a state or process. when a hexagram is cast, each of the yin or yang lines will be indicated as either moving (that is, changing), or fixed (that is, unchanging). moving (also sometimes called “old”, or “unstable”) lines will change to their opposites, that is “young” lines of the other type -- old yang becoming young yin, and old yin becoming young yang.

the oldest method for casting the hexagrams uses yarrow stalks. i knew someone long ago who had a set of real yarrow stalks. in my own experience, the process is aesthetically more satisfying and feels more right when yarrow stalks are used. however, the yarrow stalk method was gradually replaced during the han dynasty by the three coins method.

of course, the whole idea is that the i ching will select the appropriate answer anyway, regardless of the probabilities or tools used.

the i ching has been used by many people through the centuries including the founder of analytical psychology carl jung. if you are at all intrigued by the connection between the i ching and carl jung then you might like to read the introduction.

for those of you in possession of yarrow sticks or three coins of identical denomination, then you may wish to go here . . . . this site gives a very simple, step-by-step explanation of what to do, (and what happens when you do it) that allows you to progress quickly towards a divination.

for a digital approach that is very simple and provides interesting possibilities in its answers go here to the i ching online.

for a version with richer, more detailed prose then musician akira rabelais' page is a lovely alternative.

amazon.ca offers an item which may be of interest to those of you whose interest is tickled enough to fork over some of your hard-earned coins. have a look at this i ching gift set.