Chinese I Ching Hexagram ClipartThe text of the I Ching is a set of oracular statements represented by 64 sets of six lines each called hexagrams. Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines, each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 64 hexagrams represented.The hexagram diagram is composed of four three-line arrangements called trigrams of which there are 32. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining the two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Note also that these numerical sets greatly pre-date the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram systemEach hexagram represents a description of a state or process. When a hexagram is cast using one of the traditional processes of divination with I Ching, each of the yin or yang lines will be indicated as either moving (changing), or fixed (unchanging). Moving (also sometimes called “old”, or “unstable”) lines will change to their opposites, that is “young” lines of the other type — old yang becoming young yin, and old yin becoming young yang.Chinese I Ching Hexagrams Clipart