Yi Jing: The True Images of the Circular Changes (Zhou Yi) Completed by the Four Sages

Since the main purpose of the first book of my trilogy entitled "The True Images, Numbers and Ideas of the Circular Changes" is to disclose the imagery of Zhou Yi's body text from the point of divining outcome interpretation, this is not the place to analyze in details the complex aspects of historical and philosophical background of the oracle's writing. Instead, I will try to reconstruct the original structure and multivalent meanings of the oracular images which has come down to nowadays in various interpretations. One primary flaw lies at the root of every translation that has been published hitherto is that each one seems only to translate the accompanying texts to the diagrams and lines without translating of the figures (gua) and lines (yao) themselves, which silently tell us a lot by virtue of their positions, oppositions, correlations, origins and surroundings. Here, I think, an injustice has been done to the oracle's translations that in the majority of versions sound oversimplified, if not to say 'shallow,' caused by our failure to understand its basic images and numbers (xiang-shu), on which the whole logic, internal structure and ethical principles have been built then throughout centuries. But even if we learn to discern them theoretically, we refuse to use them practically for divination. The Daoist system of the eight trigrams (ba-gua), in every sense of the word, is a source and essence of the "Circular Changes," as the Daoist elements enter largely into all aspects of human life; and a commentator or interpreter who holds fast to this belief is certainly the best expositor of the oracular text that suggests a multilevel communion with subtle constituents of the past and future unfolding in the twenty-four seasons and eight milestones of a yearly cycle with its five elements represented by virtue of casting-out fifty sacred yarrow stalks to reveal the oracular outcome in the light of practical wisdom of the ancients, the usage of which has never died out. (All those who need to see the Dao-Deist material with more granularities, I would refer to my book entitled Decoding of the "Lao-zi" (Dao-De Jing): Numerological Resonance of the Canon's Structure.)