I built a free I Ching oracle web app | Hacker News Reader

I built a free I Ching oracle web app

iching-silk.vercel.app

23 pointshenrychannel16 comments

Classical Wilhelm-Baynes translation, three coin method, 64 hexagrams. No signup, no ads, free to use.

It also has an optional AI interpretation layer - but the classical text is always shown first, fully intact. Built it because I wanted something that treated the tradition seriously.

Carl Jung wrote the foreword to this exact translation and credited the I Ching with shaping his theory of synchronicity.

Carl Jung also warned that the occult are not to be trifled with and that I ching was not for amusement. It's funny I was just going through some notebooks from 4 decades ago when I was a young thing and saw page after page of questioning "should I do this?" "should I do that?" The misuse of the I Ching is an excellent way to lose your own independent judgment. Beware. (I made some poor choices based on misusing this book.)

Wilhelm's translation is indeed wonderful and for the thoughtful reader of the book, I strongly suggest spending time with 'Book Two' of his translation that focuses on Confucius' metaphysical commentary - it is profound.

Also recommended for the serious reader of the Ching is Richard Wilhem's Lectures On The I Ching - Constancy and Change, also published under the Bollingen.

A counter point is that if you are stuck in a 50/50 position, out sourcing the decision to some random other thing can break the dead lock. Like flipping to a random page on a book and going with the first word you see that is positive or negative (Bibliomancy).

The occult language can make it sound mysterious but it can also sometimes just be a cover for a delegation of decisions.

It's a weak counter point in that it does not consider the long term effects.

Using I Ching to make decisions is like using an LLM to think. At some point, you will atrophy the faculty of independent decision making.

You are also neglecting that I Ching outcomes come with text and commentary that are by definition designed to affect your mindset -- "the image" -- (for the good of course but see below for that). This is precisly what Dr. Jung was saying about trifling with the occult. It affects you at an sub/un-conscious level - this is not some random book. It is the I Ching, and like all world scripture it has a textual potency that affects its readers.

If you are stuck at a 50/50 position, just throw a single coin. Average 3 if you must. Spare yourself the commentaries.

Correct and effective use of the I Ching requires a degree of maturity and self development (think Carl Jung) that is surely lacking in most of us when we are first introduced to this occult artefact in 20th and 21st centuries. That is because in this age of facile information we get our hands on matter that in previous eras were obtained after spending years at the feet of some guru or master!

That's fascinating. The I Ching is centuries old. It's survived this long. The concept that knowledge should be witheld from people until they're ready is so anthical to our current beliefs. Or at least mine. It's history says that's not an invalid way of thinking about the world, so I'll have to think on that.

> The concept that knowledge should be witheld from people until they're ready is so anthical to our current beliefs.

It is not knowledge that is witheld. It is text. I also propose to you to consider the thought that true knowledge is only obtained by experience. The fundamental issue with psychologically potent text and images is that it can induce convictions based on misreading and misunderstanding.

IFF you can exercise the necessary self control to avoid premature utility of the I Ching, the entire work is of course a profound metaphysical model of human reality through the lens of Taoist sages based on a simple and elegant axiomatic framework that uses the concept of state-transitions & numbers 2 (forces) and 3 (places) to develop a comprehensive metaphysical system to consider "all things under the heaven".

> It's survived this long.

Mao tried getting rid of it. (I don't agree with all this btw, but just fyi.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Olds

I don’t think “just throw a single coin” really captures how I Ching divination traditionally works.

The classical Dayan method is based on human participation through division and transformation. It is the only divination method recorded in the Book of Changes. Through repeated divisions, six yin or yang lines are formed, together forming one gua. To me, this feels closer to life: we make choices, exchange one thing for another, and move from one situation into the next.

Maybe the gua is simply a manifestation that helps us see the situation more clearly. Some people believe in it, and others do not. To me, its wisdom is a bit like a zero-knowledge proof: it reveals a pattern without fully exposing the mystery behind it.

It’s great to see people discussing this. I’m a huge fan of the I Ching and built a few websites around it, including https://knowunknowable.love and https://ichingdao.love, where I explore the I Ching, Daoism, and Mozi.

I didn't say that is how the I Ching works. Participation in the process is most certainly an important aspect of binding the psyche of the questioner to the results, which supports the view that the stalk method is indeed the way to consult the book, as that requires contemplating the question while going through the process.

This perspective always fascinates me. I'm not trying to be negative, but am genuinely curious.

If you're truly split like that, why is any ceremony necessary? Just pick one. Does every choice have to be explained? Are you doing this to amuse yourself?

If you don't delegate to a source of randomness, do you feel guilty or ruminate about why you were un/successful? Are you afraid of your own thoughts misleading you once the outcome is clear?

These are fair points and I don’t think the app resolves them - it’s a tool, and tools can be misused regardless of design.

The most I can say is what I aimed for: showing the source text in full rather than just an AI-generated verdict, so the user is reading Wilhelm and Jung’s actual words, not a black box.

Whether that’s enough safeguard against the deeper concern you’re raising, I don’t know.

Are you at least using a TRNG?

Currently Math.random(). random.org’s API would give true randomness sourced from atmospheric noise.

Might add it in a future release.

How good is the RNG on NetBSD's ching(6)?

You can also just stick one of these in your server!

https://www.crowdsupply.com/leetronics/infinite-noise-trng

Also Terence McKenna said he used I Ching analysis/interpretation for his Timewave 2012 software and "Novelty Theory" or whatever his "the world is getting weirder and weirder" philosophy was called.

Really cool, I like the interpretation part

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