References & Sources
Six Lines is assembled from other people's scholarship. This page says whose, and links to the rest of the I-Ching web — which is small, largely maintained by individuals working alone, and much better than its search rankings suggest.
Our own commentary and translations are produced with AI assistance under editorial direction, and audited verse by verse. We say more about how, and why, on the editorial page. Where a source below disagrees with us, prefer the source.
Sources this site is built on
Material from these works appears directly on this site.
- Hermetica — Yijing, Word by Word ↗Bradford Hatcher
The character-by-character gloss on every hexagram page here comes from Hatcher's work. Two volumes, given away free as PDFs, pairing each Chinese character of the judgment, image and line texts with its English sense — plus the most extensive collection of hexagram-name translations anywhere. If you want to read the Zhouyi in the original rather than through a translator's voice, start here rather than with us.
- Chinese Text Project (中國哲學書電子化計劃) ↗Donald Sturgeon
The digital library of pre-modern Chinese texts, over 30,000 titles with a pre-Qin and Han focus. The Chinese text of the 4,096 Yilin verses shown here is ctext's collated edition. Content on ctext.org is © Donald Sturgeon and is not released under an open licence; see ctext.org/faq for their terms.
- Jiaoshi Yilin (焦氏易林) ↗
The Western Han divination manual attributed to Jiao Yanshou — 4,096 verses, one for each hexagram pair. The verse text here follows ctext's modern collated edition. Note that it differs, sometimes substantially, from the 欽定四庫全書 (Siku Quanshu) woodblock edition digitized by Zhejiang University Library via CADAL: a verse-by-verse comparison of the two found genuine textual variants in roughly two thirds of sampled entries, on top of transcription noise. Where a reading matters, check the scans. ctext added AI-generated English across the site in 2026; treat those renderings, and ours, as aids rather than authorities.
- Siku Quanshu scans of the Yilin — CADAL / Internet Archive ↗Zhejiang University Library
The 欽定四庫全書 woodblock edition, 677 pages across four volumes. The independent witness against which the collated text above can be checked.
The wider I-Ching web
- Yijing Dao ↗Steve Marshall
A full transcription of the Zhouyi, a beginner's guide, and a deep archive of scholarly book reviews originally printed in the Oracle journal. Idiosyncratic, opinionated and worth days rather than minutes.
- I Ching with Clarity ↗Hilary Barrett
The most active English-language community around the Yi. A free introductory course, the Answers blog, and a long-running discussion forum. Oriented to divination as practice rather than as a historical subject.
- Yijing.nl ↗Harmen Mesker
A working Yijing scholar's site, with close readings that take the text's Bronze Age context seriously.
- The Tao Page — I-Ching resources ↗
A long-standing collection of texts, images and material on divination procedure.
Link collections
Where to go when this page runs out.
- Yijing Dao — annotated links ↗Steve Marshall
Around a hundred links with real commentary attached, covering translation projects, scholarly papers, tools and the stranger margins of Yijing studies.
- Hermetica — Yijing links ↗Bradford Hatcher
Roughly 150 links across fourteen categories. The page itself warns that it is updated infrequently, so expect some rot — but as a map of the field it is still the widest one going.
- I Ching with Clarity — more I Ching sites ↗Hilary Barrett
Sorted into articles, research and discussion, online readings, complete translations, and other link collections.
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