What do you think?
Rate this book
I Ching Oracle: A Guide Through The Human Maze
The I Ching Oracle - A guide through the human maze is designed to help the reader find a way through the complexities and challenges of everyday life. Timothy and Johanna Dowdle show the reader how to consult the I Ching oracle and receive clear answers to important questions. They explain the methods used for consulting the oracle and how the oracle responds to the reader's questions. The authors also provide a series of examples from their own consultations to illustrate how the I Ching has guided them through many difficult situations. All of the descriptions of the I Ching hexagrams are based on the authors' real life experiences. These autobiographical narratives can help and support everyone who is living through similar circumstances. For those who are familiar with the I Ching and have been consulting the oracle, this book offers new methods for interpreting hexagrams with multiple moving lines and static hexagrams. These methods have proven to give consistently clear and accurate answers to the authors' questions over many years of consultations.
264 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2021
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 2, 2021
Review by Assistant Meghan
A watered down interpretation of a complex ancient oracle system
The I Ching Oracle by Timothy and Johanna Dowdle is written as a reference guide for the I Ching, or Book of Changes. The I Ching is an oracle system invented thousands of years ago by the Chinese and has been the foundation of many of their philosophical, political, and spiritual achievements. The Book of Changes, whether used for divination or taken from a philosophical standpoint, provides the reader with provocative text from the 64 hexagrams to invoke deep thinking and guidance through the challenges and successes of our lives.
Spirituality and Philosophy have shaped the history of ancient China and it's no surprise that the I Ching has also been influenced by the ancient systems of Confucianism and Daoism, to name just a few. In Dowdle's version of the I Ching, the richness of Chinese's folklore and history is practically erased from the hexagram's passages. Although they've included a brief timeline of the history of the oracle, the authors fail to cover any cultural context of the book of changes. In other translations you will find the Chinese names of the 64 hexagrams, some notes on cultural or historical context. However, the Dowdle's version fails to give us any reference to the culture the oracle comes from and reading the text feels like you're reading any guidebook to some new age oracle deck.
The interpretations of the hexagrams themselves are lacking in textual richness and meaning. The meanings of the hexagrams in other translations are more thought-provoking and poetic. In Dowdle's version, the hexagram interpretations are pretty straight forward and watered down, almost to the point of misinterpretation.
An example of this would be the text entry for Hexagram 21, Shih Ho. From the Dowdle's guide it translate the hexagram's name to "Making a Judgment", where as a more accurate and accepted translation is "Biting Through". Overall, this hexagram is discussing a period where a difficult decision needs to be made, but instead of taking immediate action the reader should wait and analyze the situation before taking action.
Most translations will include a paragraph about the hexagram while being ambiguous to the situation at hand. The changing lines, which are determined by the coin toss, clarify the situation at hand if needed. While reading the Dowdle's interpretation of the I Ching, my main issue with the text was the long winded explanations of each hexagram and the simplified language. Instead of leaving the reader with a message to dive into and interpret they make their passages of the hexagrams self-explanatory.
From a personal standpoint, it is also concerning to me that the couple who wrote the guidebook seems to only be interested in the I Ching as a divination tool, as stated in their author biography. In their section 1.2, Our Relationship with the I Ching, the couple had stated of being baffled by the interpretations of the I Ching when they first began to use the system, and relied many on translations before gaining their own understanding of the oracle "through personal experience". To me, this reads as a red flag because the couple is stating they have decided to alter the meanings of the hexagrams based on their own experiences. While personal experiences can give you a better understanding of the oracle, it is also irresponsible to not acknowledge the historical and cultural significance and meanings of the oracle in question. This would be like stating the Sun card in the tarot deck signifies motherly love; one may feel a joyful connection towards their mother and associate those feelings with the Sun, but that definition does not apply to everyone or the traditional meaning of the Sun card.
Overall, this guidebook is extremely basic and dare I say "white-washed". For those who wish to study the I Ching, I would recommend books by Brian Browne Walker or Ming-Dao Deng.
A watered down interpretation of a complex ancient oracle system
The I Ching Oracle by Timothy and Johanna Dowdle is written as a reference guide for the I Ching, or Book of Changes. The I Ching is an oracle system invented thousands of years ago by the Chinese and has been the foundation of many of their philosophical, political, and spiritual achievements. The Book of Changes, whether used for divination or taken from a philosophical standpoint, provides the reader with provocative text from the 64 hexagrams to invoke deep thinking and guidance through the challenges and successes of our lives.
Spirituality and Philosophy have shaped the history of ancient China and it's no surprise that the I Ching has also been influenced by the ancient systems of Confucianism and Daoism, to name just a few. In Dowdle's version of the I Ching, the richness of Chinese's folklore and history is practically erased from the hexagram's passages. Although they've included a brief timeline of the history of the oracle, the authors fail to cover any cultural context of the book of changes. In other translations you will find the Chinese names of the 64 hexagrams, some notes on cultural or historical context. However, the Dowdle's version fails to give us any reference to the culture the oracle comes from and reading the text feels like you're reading any guidebook to some new age oracle deck.
The interpretations of the hexagrams themselves are lacking in textual richness and meaning. The meanings of the hexagrams in other translations are more thought-provoking and poetic. In Dowdle's version, the hexagram interpretations are pretty straight forward and watered down, almost to the point of misinterpretation.
An example of this would be the text entry for Hexagram 21, Shih Ho. From the Dowdle's guide it translate the hexagram's name to "Making a Judgment", where as a more accurate and accepted translation is "Biting Through". Overall, this hexagram is discussing a period where a difficult decision needs to be made, but instead of taking immediate action the reader should wait and analyze the situation before taking action.
Most translations will include a paragraph about the hexagram while being ambiguous to the situation at hand. The changing lines, which are determined by the coin toss, clarify the situation at hand if needed. While reading the Dowdle's interpretation of the I Ching, my main issue with the text was the long winded explanations of each hexagram and the simplified language. Instead of leaving the reader with a message to dive into and interpret they make their passages of the hexagrams self-explanatory.
From a personal standpoint, it is also concerning to me that the couple who wrote the guidebook seems to only be interested in the I Ching as a divination tool, as stated in their author biography. In their section 1.2, Our Relationship with the I Ching, the couple had stated of being baffled by the interpretations of the I Ching when they first began to use the system, and relied many on translations before gaining their own understanding of the oracle "through personal experience". To me, this reads as a red flag because the couple is stating they have decided to alter the meanings of the hexagrams based on their own experiences. While personal experiences can give you a better understanding of the oracle, it is also irresponsible to not acknowledge the historical and cultural significance and meanings of the oracle in question. This would be like stating the Sun card in the tarot deck signifies motherly love; one may feel a joyful connection towards their mother and associate those feelings with the Sun, but that definition does not apply to everyone or the traditional meaning of the Sun card.
Overall, this guidebook is extremely basic and dare I say "white-washed". For those who wish to study the I Ching, I would recommend books by Brian Browne Walker or Ming-Dao Deng.
March 22, 2022
There are many different translations and versions of the I-Ching's ancient text, but this book is fast becoming my favorite versions of the I-Ching. The author's interpretations of the hexagrams and what each one means is very relatable in our modern era, which is unusual and rather remarkable. You can tell the authors put in a lot of time and effort to understand each and every hexagram. It is obvious much care was given and a strong desires to assure the interpretations are not only correct, but easy to understand. This provides us with the ability to better understand the message and guidance that comes from an I-Ching session.
I highly recommend this book for those who are open to using this tool to get answers, guidance, or clarification about their life journey.
I highly recommend this book for those who are open to using this tool to get answers, guidance, or clarification about their life journey.
April 7, 2022
If you want to understand what this Ancient oracle system is, this book is for you. Timothy and Johanna have created a comprehensive guide which can teach you how to begin to use I Ching. From diagrams to explanations, this book is very helpful.
You can watch Timothy and Johanna discuss their book on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT7Qy...
You can watch Timothy and Johanna discuss their book on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT7Qy...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews