A closer look

I Ching, or the Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text that uses the casting of yarrow stalks or coins to generate hexagrams that supposedly answer your deepest life questions. The text is over three thousand years old and is built on a complex system of sixty-four hexagrams representing the dynamic balance of opposites like yin and yang. Modern users love to use it to gain profound insights about their romantic relationships, ignoring that the original text is heavily focused on ancient agricultural timing and offering sacrifices to ancestors. Throwing pennies to decide if you should text your ex is a hilarious misuse of a sacred historical document originally intended to help warlords figure out if the harvest would survive the winter