Understanding the I Ching The Wilhelm Lectures on the B00K of Changes

by Hellmut Wilhelm

The West's foremost translator of the I Ching, Richard Wilhelm thought deeply about how contemporary readers could benefit from this ancient work and its perennially valid insights into change and chance. For him and for his son, Hellmut Wilhelm, the Book of Changes represented not just a mysterious book of oracles or a notable source of the Taoist and Confucian philosophies. In their hands, it emerges, as it did for C. G. Jung, as a vital key to humanity's age-old collective unconscious. Here the observations of the Wilhelms are combined in a volume that will reward specialists and aficionados with its treatment of historical context--and that will serve also as an introduction to the I Ching and the meaning of its famous hexagrams.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, China, Taoism, History, Classics, Psychology

Unknown Binding

First published November 1, 1980

About the author

Hellmut Wilhelm was a German sinologist noted for his broad knowledge of both Chinese literature and Chinese history. His father, Richard Wilhelm, was also a noted sinologist.

Wilhelm was an expert on the ancient Chinese divination text Yi Jing, which he believed to represent the essence of Chinese thought. He also produced one of the most widely-used German-Chinese dictionaries of the 20th century. He held teaching positions at Peking University and the University of Washington.

Reviews

[The Esoteric Jungle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This translation is, with every word, so square and illuminating compared to all other translations I have read. It is a book written to help one evolve beyond problems. One may be a saint but if your timing is off your life will go in circles in the same way. This work shows how that phenomenon happens and how to get out of it.

It was written by one descended, as this work mentions, from the divine twin kings stated upon China’s king lists, mentioned by Gurdjieff (who says they were involved in Egypt, then went to China, and were instrumental in founding the Sarmoung Brotherhood in the second millenium BC); mentioned by The Book of Seth revealed by Manetho (which all modern egyptian chronology still hangs upon today); and the Bible, Moses, even mentions them in that multi-valent symbolic but also simple historic way as the twins of Heber (who is Hermes Trismegistus, the third King, per Artapanus, and implied by Livy).

Now this king (descended from the divine twin kings) who wrote this was caged in a cell by a lesser, regional, petty tyrant of violence whom he had come to warn the people’s of that region to not give heed to. Because the will was not there among the people’s to follow any but the tyrant, this holy sage and world ruler was trapped more by the craven inklings of the masses for intrigue and violence than by this tyrant (whom they alone give impetus to). So he wished, while imprisoned, to contemplate the meaning of how all influences work on earth not only dualistically (which is hypnotically easy to see) but according to the law of three, where neutral third force ever comes in spinning the square into a circle and back again in ways one doesn’t expect.

Ouspensky spent a large part of his lectures once revealing in more detail how all happens according to 3rd force in combinations of doing one must be prepared in advance for. People say the 4th Way teaches the secret of the octave in all things though, 8 - but the I Ching shows but two trigrams, 6. Well it should be remembered there are also the two points of influence revealed coming in amidst the six in the I Ching and this makes the esoteric and perennial Octave. For there are higher and lower, divine harmony to nefarious inferential octaves, mixed within every event that seems simple and only in one political direction in life. This work shows that.

People say Taoism, such as is taught here, is the teaching of how to get beyond dualism. That is not entirely true. According to Plato and esotericism (Lady Hahn, Ouspensky, Hinduism etc.) the next cosmos beyond ours interpenetrating ours as the 4th Dimension to enter into has merely a higher set of law concerning good and evil (duality) that is so much more finely just and nuanced it makes our reasoning seem as the cows reasoning is toward humans when trying to understand life and the moral choices in it’s viscissitudes. So there is dualism but just of a higher octave. Taoism also doesn’t deny the dual nature present in the uni-verse just as much as the triune and fourfold and hex nature is equally present in the uni-verse too. The universe can be parsed by any of the numbers to view it as Buddha said he came to teach.

If one looks at the Tao sign one sees this trans-dualism that never goes away: it is a birds eye view of the spiralling octave between the cosmoses where everything good and evil on one level turns into almost it’s opposite and finer good and evil as it spirals to the next level up in growth (or vice verse in octaves of decay such as in the era of Kali Yuga we are in).

So this book, the I Ching, reveals the timing of when to neutrally act or when to neutrally remain still in such summitting, “spiralling through different timings,” journey as the Bhagivad Ghita shows one must learn to evolve psychologically to the next higer cosmic soul in one. Action or non-action don’t matter, it is your timing and attitude in both that effect the whole in Time and the I Ching helps you with the timing.

The tyrant was finally subdued, by the way.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wilhelm translation of the I Ching is regarded as the best and this book is the best explanation of why. It describes how the most important commentaries became part of each entry and their origins as well as a sea of later commentaries and interpretations. This is more than about the I Ching; you might as well say that the I Ching has governed the development of Chinese philosophy itself. One of the unexpected results for me was the influence of Confucius on later interpretation, and how very Daoist it was. The story of how wu hsing was merged with it later on, and other historical developments puts the I Ching into an essential context that makes for a valuable insight into early Chinese philosophy.

It's not a leisurely read at all; you will need to digest it slowly but it's worth the effort when you come back to the I Ching itself. I had both books at hand and this was a rewarding study. It covers the first two volumes of interpretation and explanation by the Wilhelms: Heaven Earth and Man in the Book of Changes is the necessary last volume.

[Chenoa Siegenthaler]

i don't wanna rate it because i don't get it. some of it i think i understand but a lot of it is really cryptic for me. maybe it's because it came out of a culture that i am not a part of at all. the translator (s) does a good job of translating it into something i can understand only sometimes. but it's really intriguing and i want to keep studying it. i think i've gotten some good insights from reading it...i think.

[C Settles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching is the classic go to translations for westerners. It has held up remarkably well for many years. Wilhelm's Understanding the I Ching is a revealing work offering deep insights into the influences that were at work in Wilhelm as a translator. Many of these show how strong his cultural and religious biases influenced the I Ching translation.

[Foxthyme · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is apparently 'the' I Ching book to get for good translation. I have it as a PDF file, so it's not as easy to cruise through as I would cruise through a book in hand.

[John Hawkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love thisbook. Have been looking at it since 1981. The trick is to look at the writing as symbols, not signs.
What's the difference? Signs mean one thing. You do not have to look at a stop sign to get more meaning from it. A symbol reverberates with meaning, never really settling on one thing.

[Nated Doherty]

Like Chenoa said, I don't feel qualified to rate it, but I'd recommend its study to almost anyone...I feel like I'm just studying the neat ice surface of a super deep ocean planet...or I feel like I should feel that way, heheh

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

historically very interesting, as it was written mostly in Peking during the 1930s. A lot of the lectures in the second half of the book are quite dense and I will need to read them again, and probably again. Glad to have discovered it.