The I Ching and Jung: synchronicity

In 1950 the English edition of Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching appeared, and it opened with something remarkable: a foreword by Carl Gustav Jung, one of the most influential psychiatrists of the twentieth century. A respected scientist openly standing behind a three-thousand-year-old oracle book: that was news. The foreword gave the I Ching standing in the West, and it gave us a concept that has never gone away since: synchronicity.

A psychiatrist sticks his neck out

Jung had known the I Ching since the 1920s. He experimented with it for years, first with real yarrow stalks, later with coins, and became friends with Wilhelm, whose German translation had appeared in 1924. When, after Wilhelm's death, Cary Baynes's English translation was ready, Jung wrote a foreword for it, fully aware that colleagues would raise their eyebrows.

In it he does something disarming: he consults the book itself. He asks the I Ching what it thinks of his intention to present it to a Western audience, and receives hexagram 50, The Cauldron: a ritual vessel full of food, ready to be served. Jung reads the answer as if it came from a conversation partner, courteous and with a voice of its own. That is not naivety but method: he wants to show from the inside how a consultation works.

Synchronicity: meaningful coincidence

Western thinking looks for causes. A causes B, and whatever has no cause means nothing. According to Jung the I Ching rests on a different principle, and he gave it a name: synchronicity, an acausal connection. Two events coincide in time, they do not cause each other, and yet they carry meaning for one another. You think of someone you have not spoken to in years, and that same afternoon they call. No one needs to point out a cause to notice that it means something.

Applied to the oracle: your question does not cause the throw, and the throw does not cause your situation. But question, throw and moment coincide, and in Chinese thinking every moment carries a quality of its own. Whoever counts the stalks takes, as it were, a sample of the now, with everything that moves within it. The hexagram is then not a prediction but a photograph of the moment in which you and your question find yourselves.

The text as a mirror for projection

You do not have to follow Jung all the way into metaphysics to understand why he took the book seriously as a psychologist. The texts of the I Ching are old, vivid and ambiguous; your question is new and concrete. What you recognise in the text therefore comes in good part from yourself: you project. In a newspaper that is a problem, here it is the point. The text makes visible what you bring along yourself: your hope, your fear, the decision you had really already made without admitting it.

That is exactly why Jung took the consultation seriously as a psychological instrument: the oracle does not tell you what is going to happen, it shows you where you stand. Whoever throws carelessly gets a careless mirror; a clear, open question and calm attention make the difference. You can read how to go about it in how to consult the I Ching.

A sober reading for today

Do you have to believe in synchronicity to get something out of the I Ching? No. Jung himself left the door wide open: the I Ching offers itself without proofs and without missionary zeal, he wrote, and whoever sees nothing in it can simply leave the book alone.

The sober reading goes like this: the chance of the throw lays an old, wise text in front of you that you did not choose yourself. Precisely because that text is not tailored to your situation, you have to make the connection yourself, and in that work you come to see your own situation more sharply. Whether the moment "really" knows anything may remain open; the pause itself is already a gain. If you want to experience it, you can cast the stalks online, with the same probabilities as the method Jung himself used.

Frequently asked questions

What is synchronicity?

Synchronicity is Jung's name for meaningful coincidence: an inner state and an outer event coincide without causing each other, yet carry meaning for one another. He called it an acausal connecting principle, a complement to cause and effect.

What did Jung write about the I Ching?

Jung wrote the foreword to the 1950 English Wilhelm translation. In it he consults the book itself, explains why the oracle works psychologically, and introduces synchronicity as the principle behind it.

Do you have to believe in synchronicity to use the I Ching?

No. A consultation also works as a purely psychological instrument: the text is a mirror that makes your own projections visible. Jung himself wrote that the book comes without proofs and that whoever sees nothing in it can simply leave it alone.

Which hexagram did Jung receive in his foreword?

When Jung asked the I Ching what it thought of his plan to present the book to the West, he received hexagram 50, The Cauldron: a ritual vessel filled with food. He read it as a favourable answer: the book was ready to be served.