The Recursive I Ching · read the public-domain book itself

Source Text

The classical Chinese for one hexagram at a time, stacked with this library's own English readings — layer by layer, each one clearly labeled.

Honestly, first: the Chinese below is the public-domain source text — digitized by Project Gutenberg ebook #25501 (易經, catalogued as "Anonymous"). Gutenberg only distributes works confirmed public domain in the US, and this is the ≈3,000-year-old Zhouyi/Yijing text itself — no modern translator, no added copyright layer. The short English hexagram name under each is an AI-generated one-line gloss (Claude Code), a title, not a scholarly translation of the full passage — do not mistake it for Wilhelm, Legge, or any human translation. The other layers below (this site's English reading, the cross-lens gate/sign/chakra reading) are separate, later, clearly-marked works — never confused with the source above them. The two Legge layers (Zhouyi core; Ten Wings Great Image) are James Legge's public-domain translation (1882), stacked in stratigraphic order: the Western Zhou divination core first, the Confucian commentary — added centuries later — after it, each labeled with its own era.

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