h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The I-Ching (or Yi-Qing) has been my favorite divination tool and best companion for over a decade now. More than really a "divination tool", it is often a help in considering life's issues and choices, a support for meditative reflection on personal subjects... It won't give you the numbers for the next lottery !

Often times, friends have been quite astonished and a little scared to see how precisely accurate the answers can be. Even though the total number of possible combinations is over 20 milion, this fantastic book is only made of 64 sections that summarize pretty well anything that can happen to anyone.

Sometimes, the answers are frighteningly precise and concrete (a friend of mine had lost her cat, the Yi-Qing's announced it's return within 3 days, and adding "there is no flesh on the leg" : the cat returned, his leg serioulsy injured by a wolf-trap had to be amputated...). Some other times, the answer is very vague, but the person who is right into the situation will catch a sentence or two that will put him/her on the right track.

A few times, the oracle was obviously annoyed and made it quite clear !
Ask the same question over and over again, and you'll probably get something like "I answer the first and the second time, but come again and you'll get nothing !".
Once, in the first years, I was very proud of my discovery, and arranged for a friend of mine to ask what that strange book on my coffee table was. When he heard that it was actually a powerful divination tool, the source of all answers, he asked if he could ask a question. I was very happy to indulge, having planed it all. The answer come along the line of : "before you help other people, clean up your own house". My friend was very disappointed that he had not got any practical answer to his question, but I realised immediately that the answer was for me, not for him !
Recently, a friend was day-dreaming about some impossible career, and although we were trying to make him realise how unrealisitic that was, he insisted that we asked the Yi-Qing ; the answer, once again, was quite snappy : "the fantasies of a young boy, nothing good comes of it"...

C.L.

There probably should have been a link in this entry to the I-Ching one: A647840