Product Reviews

a practical guide to using the I Ching

I Ching for a New Age, The Book of Answers for Changing Times, edited by Robert G. Benson,2002. Square One Publishers, Garden City Park, New York. I have been studying oracular tools for several years and I confess, I have always been stymied and confused by the texts available on the I Ching. Generally, the texts are too scholarly and bogged down in theoretical discourse or too simplistic to be of any real use. Robert G. Benson has spent ten years assimilating his more than thirty years of experience with the I Ching into a practical guide to using the I Ching and in understanding the philosophy that has emerged from it’s 2000 year history. Benson explains that the I Ching was never designed to give specific outcomes for an ad hoc inquiry but gives the possible and/or impossible probabilities in regard to the situation. Benson also admonishes the practioner that, just as in quantum physics, the attitude and expectations of the inquirer will effect the outcome. The text is complimented with easily understood diagrams. The I Ching definitions are written in language relevant to the Western reader and the hexagram lookup charts are broken down into clearly defined orders and interconnections.Read full review...