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• What is the Yi Jing, exactly?

  The Yi Jing (易经, "Book of Changes") is the oldest classical text in the Chinese intellectual canon, traditionally attributed to a chain of authors across roughly three thousand years — Fu Xi for the original eight trigrams, King Wen and the Duke of Zhou for the hexagram and line statements, and Confucius's school for the Ten Wings commentaries (十翼). Structurally it is a system of sixty-four hexagrams (六十四卦) — six-line figures built from the eight trigrams (八卦) — each describing a configuration of change. Functionally it is consulted both as a divination tool (through the yarrow stalk or three-coin method) and as a wisdom text in its own right. Every other classical Chinese metaphysics system — BaZi, Feng Shui, Qi Men Dun Jia, Zi Wei Dou Shu — borrows its symbolic engine from the Yi Jing.

• Do I need any prior knowledge?

  No. The course is built from first principles. It starts with what Yin and Yang actually are, what the Tai Ji means, and how polarity generates complexity — before you ever encounter a trigram. If you have studied BaZi or Feng Shui, you will recognize the underlying engines (Yin-Yang, Five Elements, Eight Trigrams) and move faster, but no prerequisite is required.

• How is this different from reading the Wilhelm/Baynes book?

  The Wilhelm-Baynes translation is a respectable mid-20th-century English rendering of the text — but reading a translation is not the same as learning the system. This course teaches the structural engine the text describes: the trigrams, how hexagrams are built from them, what changing lines actually mean, how the Tuan and Xiang treatises function, what the Ten Wings add to a reading, and how to formulate a question that the Yi Jing can answer. You can read Wilhelm cover to cover and still not be able to do an actual reading; the goal of this course is the reading method itself.

• Yarrow stalks or three coins?

  Both. The course teaches both methods and discusses their differences. The yarrow stalk method is the original — slower, more contemplative, and produces a different statistical distribution of moving lines (which classical practitioners argue carries more nuance). The three-coin method is the modern shortcut, faster, and statistically simplified. Most contemporary practitioners use coins for everyday questions and reserve yarrow for matters of unusual weight. The course teaches both because both are part of the tradition.

• How long is the course and what's the time commitment?

  The course runs a full classical foundation, with twelve real case studies and a full six-step reading walkthrough. A focused student can complete the material in two to three months; a careful student in four to six. There is no deadline, and as with every metaphysics discipline, real fluency comes from doing actual readings — the course teaches the framework that makes that practice productive.

• What can I actually do after this course?

  Five concrete capabilities. (1) Read the trigrams and the structure of any hexagram — judgment, line statements, nuclear hexagram, and the relationship between original and transformed. (2) Use both the yarrow stalk and three-coin methods, and choose between them appropriately. (3) Run the six-step reading method on any question and produce a structured written response. (4) Apply the Yi Jing to specific life domains — career, relationships, timing, ethics, health, finances. (5) Structure a professional consultation, including integration with BaZi and Feng Shui.