I Ching:  The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change:  The First Complete Translation With Concordance
by Rudolf Ritsema and Stephen Karcher.  I own the latter; the former is said to have been slightly revised.  This massive (816-page) book is a research tool, not a simple translation.  Lots of introductory material; then the translation is made word-by-word, with associated lists of alternative meanings for each word.  The sheer volume of information is almost overwhelming.  It’s the kind of book you would use to make your own translation.

I Ching (Classics of Ancient China) | Hardback
translated by Edward Shaughnessy.  This book fills a niche, as it is a translation of the Mawangdui manuscript discovered in 1973 in the tomb of Li Cang, Lord of Dai, who died in 168 B.C.  The manuscript is by far the oldest that we have in existence, and also contains four previously unknown commentaries.  The text contains a number of variations from our received text, including phonetic loan-words that shed light on the original meaning of some passages.  Plus, the hexagrams are in a different order.

The Laws of Change:  I Ching and the Philosophy of Life
By Jack M. Balkin.  Self-described as an explanation of how the I Ching can benefit one’s everyday life, and an in-depth and scholarly explanation it certainly is.  Treats the I Ching as as a repository of ethical teachings, in a larger sense of how to deal with a changing universe, as opposed to a fortune-telling device.  Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, Balkin offers what may be the clearest explanation of why an educated 21st century westerner should have any interest in “divination”; in the final analysis, the I Ching is a tool for creative thinking.  Also includes a large amount of valuable background information, much of which is distilled from works such as Zhouyi by Richard Rutt, but always credited with helpful references.  For those who wish to dig deeper into the history of I Ching interpretation is an account of the “feud” between the Wang Bi and Chu Hsi (Zhu Xi) schools of thought.  Translation is based on Wilhelm; includes concrete and advice-oriented commentary.

I-hsüeh ch’i meng (Introduction to the Study of the Classic of Change)
by Chu Hsi; translated by Joseph A. Adler.  Chu Hsi (1130-1200), besides turning Neo-Confucianism into what would be the dominant school of Chinese philosophy for the next six centuries, in 1186 published this distillation of the then-current wisdom concerning the origin of the trigrams and hexagrams, the use of yarrow stalks to consult the oracle, and rules of interpreting the outcome based on the number of changing lines.  The part about putting the yarrow stalk remainders between certain fingers of the hand, for example, comes from this book.  He describes in detail what is now our modern method of changing 6’s and 9’s to make the transformed hexagram, and illustrates all the possibilities with extensive charts.  An invaluable work if you want to get down to the origins of things.  Look out for a few misprints, such as missing dots from the River Chart.  Includes the Chinese text alongside the English translation.

Divination, Order, and the Zhouyi
by Richard Gotshalk.  A scholarly examination of what is known about the earliest form of the Zhouyi, and reflections on its progression from simple oracle texts to verbal images, finally becoming a medium for active participation in the present by the inquirer.  Lots of musing about the meaning of divination itself.  The text is critically examined in light of the Mawangdui manuscript, and unabashedly edited in places (such as hexagram 52, whose text is treated as a displaced line 4, leaving it without a primary hexagram text).  Lots of informative technical notes about the text, based on the latest research.

The Original Yijing:  A Text, Phonetic Transcription, Translation, and Indexes, with Sample Glosses
by Richard Alan Kunst (available from UMI Dissertation Express, order number 8525020).  This is Kunst’s unpublished 1985 doctoral thesis, and one of the most highly respected treatments of modern research into the I Ching.  Rutt says that it is “the most convincing translation yet made of the Bronze Age document”; he, Gotshalk, and Shaughnessy all make use of this work.  The I Ching text itself occupies only 128 of the 690 pages of the huge .pdf file; the rest address topics ranging from sociology, folklore, and metaphor, to a meticulous analysis of ancient Chinese phonology and grammar.  The language is a little difficult for consulting; it is more useful for research.  For example, the word usually translated as “sacrifice” or “offering” is now “treat.”  And some ambiguous words are included as-is along with the English.  Hexagram 1, line 3, begins:

The I Ching:  The Book of Changes
translated by James Legge.  The first major English translation; second edition, 1899.  Unlike Legge’s translation of Chuang Tzu, I did not resonate with this I Ching at all.  Which is unfortunate because it was the first I Ching I read, and I then had no further interest in it for years.  It probably didn’t help that Legge scoffs at the book itself.  The hexagrams are not given English names, and the text reads as if it was purposefully made difficult.  Hexagram 3, DIFFICULTY AT THE BEGINNING, is simply called “THE KUN HEXAGRAM:”

I Ching:  The Book of Change
translated by John Blofeld.  One of the earlier English translations and apparently influential.  It doesn’t seem to me that there is much to it compared to many versions that have appeared since.

The Pocket I Ching | Import
translated by Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes; edited and simplified by W. S. Boardman. Sounds like it would be a simple excerpt of the text of the big Wilhelm book, but it’s not; the text is significantly, well, edited and simplified.  For example, hexagram 3, DIFFICULTY AT THE BEGINNING, is now called RESOLVING CHAOS.  The judgment:

Understanding the I Ching
translated by Tom Riseman.  This one, Blofeld, and The Pocket I Ching are almost identical in size.  I think this one reads the best; but there is no index to the hexagrams by name.

I Ching:  The Book of Change
translated by Thomas Cleary.  The smallest “pocket” version of them all (6.7 × 4.1 × 0.5 inches).  Concise, very literal, no commentary, little introductory material.  Doesn’t always read well.

The Taoist I Ching (Shambhala Classics)
translated by Thomas Cleary.  Commentary written by so-called Taoist adept Liu I-Ming in 1796.  Sounds better than it is.  The “Taoism” mainly consists of pervasive references to the relationships and transformations of yin and yang, and sometimes falls short.  From hexagram 7, THE ARMY:

The Fortune Teller’s I Ching
by Man-Ho Kwok, Martin Palmer, and Joanne O’Brien.  Meant to be the I Ching of the streets, “based on the editions of the book as used by Chinese fortune tellers and ordinary people.”  The Chinese text, which is appended, was taken from a 1981 commentary by Sun Tsai Shang; the implication is that it is different from the imperial edition of 1715, but this is not explained in detail.  Describes the modern Pa Ch’ien method of consulting the I Ching, using eight coins to choose two trigrams, then six coins to choose one “line of change.”  The ancient yarrow stalk method is compared to writing books with a quill pen:  historically accurate, but not in current use.  Modern commentary is said to have been distilled from the practice of contemporary diviners and interpreters as well as modern and contemporary commentaries.

I Ching:  The Shamanic Oracle of Change
by Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsay, with Zhao Xiaomin.  A sequel to the above, this time seeking the ancient roots of the I Ching rather than its street use.  The introduction describes the oracle as a grand epic comparable to the Iliad, a “Bayeux Tapestry of China in words.”  It recounts the uprising of the Chou (Zhou), “crossing the great river” to overthrow the Shang, all through the voice of the shaman.  For example, hexagrams 31-34 are said to describe adjusting to post-invasion victory.  Each hexagram is accompanied by a poem by Jay Ramsay.  Modern commentary is appended, rather than interleaved.  A study of the radicals that comprise the hexagram names is included as well.

The I Ching Oracle
by Nigel Richmond.  Privately printed but available in facsimile form, along with its predecessor, Language of the Lines, at Joel Biroco’s site.  When I read Richmond’s works, I feel like I am looking at art made from broken bottles and crushed cans.  The wonder is that the material was used so creatively.  Richmond reasons in reverse, from symbol to concept, that since the common notation for a yang line is unbroken, yang must therefore be changless and static, and yin similarly changing and active.

The Zhouyi and the First Four Wings of the Yijing
by Bradford Hatcher (downloadable from Hermetica.Info).  First comes the “simple, literal,” word-by-word translation of the received text, accompanied by “the Rogue River Commentaries And Miscellaneous Notes.”  The commentaries are intended to be extensions of the original image or metaphor, based on everyday human experience, and often expressed in colloquial and iconoclastic language.  From hexagram 43, line 1:

Yi Jing, book of sun and moon
by LiSe Heyboer.  Viewable online at http://www.yijing.nl/i_ching/.  A popular site which includes a number of articles about the I Ching, and a JavaScript version of consultation called “Virtual yarrow stalks.”  Wherever did she get that idea, you ask?  Before I uploaded my Virtual Yarrow Stalks, I searched for the phrase on Google and Clusty and only found it used in the description of software called “AudioElla.”  But according to Clarity’s discussion groups, it appears that LiSe’s site had existed prior, although “not in an ideal environment.”  Oh, well.

Wu-Weifarer’s Yijing
Viewable online at http://www.geocities.com/wu_weifarer/Yijing.html.  A fairly free but nice-sounding version, all on one page and easy to save for later reading.  Accompanied by a number of Daoist quotes and links.

The Eclectic Energies I Ching
Accompanies an online consultation script at Eclectic Energies.  Translated from the original Chinese by the author of the site, Ewald Berkers.  Said to be intended as a difference in style and interpretation from Wilhelm.  Appears to have been clarified quite a bit by way of amplification; definitely not a literal word-for-word approach.  Viewable piecemeal by consulting the oracle, or can be purchased as a .pdf file.

Yijing Wondering and Wandering
by Jane Schorre and Carrin Dunne.  Describes itself as a “contemplation of Yijing.”  Actually two books in one.  First comes “Wondering,” Jane Schorre’s pair-by-pair examination of the Chinese characters that comprise the hexagram names, dissecting the ancient primitive figures into their components in order to shed light on their meanings.  In “Wandering,” Carrin Dunne explores the arrangement of the hexagrams, in particular the differences between the pairs that are mirror images of each other, and those that are reversed polar opposites.  I found her idea of “foursomes” so intriguing that I generalized it and included it in The Virtual Yarrow Stalks I Ching.

New Directions in the I Ching:  The Yellow River Legacy
by Larry Schoenholtz.  This book, published in 1975, is one of the earliest of the modern English-language analyses of the I Ching.  Several concepts in current use originated here, including “the sixteen system” of using sixteen colored beads to determine each line of a hexagram, and “phantom hexagrams” made by transforming multiple moving lines one at a time.  Stephen Karcher later described the latter as “steps of change.”  An extension of this concept is that of hexagram “first families,” the group of 6 hexagrams made by changing the polarity of each line in the base hexagram, one at a time; they are all “one line away” from the original hexagram, and actually consist of the first 6 changed hexagrams in each of the charts published by Chu Hsi in 1186.

The I Ching Handbook
by Mondo Secter.  A summary of both traditional information and innovative techniques for I Ching consultation and interpretation.  Introduces the transitional and evolutionary hexagrams (which are included in The Virtual Yarrow Stalks I Ching), and a coin method that is mathematically equivalent to using yarrow stalks.  Also describes a method of problem-solving without divination, by choosing two trigrams based one’s own situtation.  Contains some commentary on the hexagram and line texts, but no translation.

Heaven, Earth and Man in the Book of Changes
by Hellmut Wilhelm.  These two books are a collection of lectures by Richard Wilhelm and his son, Hellmut, about deeper historical and philosophical aspects of the I Ching and their intimate understanding of it.  They go way beyond simple commentary.

A Guide to the I Ching
by Carol K. Anthony.  Lots of straightforward commentary with the stated goal of self-development and problem-solving.  Tried-and-true; a good companion to Wilhelm and Baynes.

I Ching, The Oracle of the Cosmic Way
by Carol K. Anthony and Hanna Moog.  Extensive commentary is written from a psychotherapeutic-like standpoint of freeing oneself from the ego; provides an interesting alternative perspective.  Translation is based on Wilhelm.  I had to get past the “retrospective-three-coin method,” which sounds to me like using the I Ching as a Ouija board; one asks the Sage questions like, “Do I need to read the judgment text?” “any part of the main text?” “paragraph 1?” “Does this line refer to me?” “to a member of my family?” “a friend?” “the past?” “present?” “future?”

The Other Way:  Meditation Experiences Based on the I Ching
by Carol K. Anthony.  I expected this book to consist of I Ching readings, but it’s not.  What’s the connection? “The meditation technique I describe was taught me by the I Ching.”

The Everyday I Ching
by Sarah Dening.  A very simple and accessible beginner’s self-help commentary.  Not a translation; does not include any of the actual text or even the identities of the trigrams.  Hexagram names are paraphrased; DARKENING OF THE LIGHT is now called “Keeping a Low Profile.”

I Ching Life:  Becoming Your Authentic Self
by “Wu Wei,” the person who renamed the I Ching “The Book of Answers,” and from whom I bought the yarrow stalks that I use.  I admit, I bought this mainly out of curiosity.  As a beginner’s introduction, it doesn’t seem too bad.  Written in an elementary self-help style:  “A relationship is like a garden.”  Describes using the I Ching in everyday life, with lots of concrete examples.  I like the emphasis on open-ended questions, along the lines of, “What can I expect from this course of action?”

I Ching Made Easy:  Be Your Own Psychic Advisor Using the World’s Oldest Oracle
by Roderic Sorrell and Amy Max Sorrell.  The title and cover of this book make it look like a joke, but it gets better on the inside.  A simple and understandable introduction to the I Ching, it includes some basic introductory material, then a paraphrase of the hexagram and line texts, accompanied by lots of “real-life adventures.”  Somewhat disappointing that it teaches only one method of casting, using six coins to choose exactly one line, with no mention of multiple lines or even a secondary hexagram.  And there is no real translation included; you will need a companion book to go with it.

The I Ching or Book of Changes:  A Guide to Life’s Turning Points
by Brian Browne Walker.  No translation, just advice.  Does contain hexagram names and English trigram names; but there is no index.

The Numerology of the I Ching:  A Sourcebook of Symbols, Structures, and Traditional Wisdom
by Master Alfred Huang.  A follow-up to The Complete I Ching, but doesn't bear much resemblance.  Master Huang says that the inital work follows the Moral and Reason School, while the sequel follows the Symbol and Number School.  It is a compendium of traditional lore about the arrangements of the trigrams and hexagrams, cosmology and the five elements, line relationships, various hexagrams that have special significance, nuclear hexagrams (mutual and core gua), and methods of fortune-telling.

The Tao of I Ching:  Way to Divination
by Tsung Hwa Jou.  If you are looking for “alternative,” this is it.  Describes an unconventional way of using the yarrow stalks:  counting off by eight to get the trigrams, then by six to get one moving line.  Then describes the “Plum Flower Mind I Ching,” which uses numerology based on the date, and symbolism found in unusual events in the environment.  One is also supposed to get ideas from the quaint woodcut images that accompany the text.  Oriented toward fortune-telling; an example is learning that an old man is going to die in five days.

The I Ching and You
by Diana ffarington Hook.  “A guidebook to the I Ching.”

The I Ching and Mankind
by Diana ffarington Hook.  The sequel to the above; broader-ranging in its syncretistic approach to ancient and modern religions and philosophies, and more detailed in its examination of hexagram and numerologic sequences and arrangements.  Describes a system of mutating hexagrams taken from W. A. Sherrill, Heritage of Change, which I incorporated into The Virtual Yarrow Stalks I Ching.  Some of the chapter titles:

An Anthology of I Ching
by W. A. Sherrill and W. K. Chu.  Heritage of Change referred to above does not appear to be readily available, but Anthology is.  Said to be “drawn from a variety of classical Chinese sources,” it is mostly a collection of advanced Symbol and Number School practices, the kind of thing that I am just not into.  Chapter 3, on astrology, is 107 pages long, over 40% of the entire book.  Also included are many variations on the Plum Blossom method, and things like Geomancy (as here defined, something like feng shui) and Directionology (determining what physical direction to travel in a given situation).

I Ching:  The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth
by Hua-Ching Ni.  A free but well-written translation, introduced by a lot of Symbol and Number School material and folklore.  Some of the latter is interesting, such as the relationship between the Big Dipper and the seasons, and diagrams of the 28 constellations of the Chinese zodiac.  A major emphasis is rhythms of life and health, such as the effect of stress on the body, meridian systems, natural medicine, and mental illness.  Describes using small seeds to determine a hexagram and one moving line.  Ends with five brief tales of ancient I Ching practitioners, and some personal notes.

Tao:  The Watercourse Way
by Alan Watts.  One of my early influences.  A very eloquent summary of the deepest Taoist concepts:  the yin-yang polarity, the Tao as that from which one cannot deviate, wu wei, te as real virtue, even a brief description of the Chinese written language.  If you are curious as to what Taoism is all about, or want to give someone else a book so that he or she can see what Taoism is all about, you might want to start here.

Hua Hu Ching:  The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu
translated by Brian Walker, who says it was burned but preserved in oral form during a period of political discord in China, and passed on to him by Hua-Ching Ni.  Unfortunately, there is another Hua Hu Ching in print by by Hua-Ching Ni and Fu Lao Wang which appears to be completely different.  The origin of this work is uncertain to begin with; some consider it a late ideologically-motivated forgery.  Make of all this what you will.

The Analects (Penguin Classics)
by Confucius; translated by D. C. Lau.

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (Penguin Classics)
by Pu Songling (1640–1715).  Translated and edited by John Minford.  I have been entranced by these stories ever since I heard them read by Rainette Yao (sp?) on the Voice of Free China in the 1980’s.  Especially the ones about fox fairies.  “With elegant prose, witty wordplay, and subtle charm, the 104 stories in this collection reveal a world in which nothing is as it seems.  In his tales of shape-shifting spirits, bizarre phenomena, haunted buildings, and enchanted objects, Pu Songling pushes the boundaries of human experience and enlightens as he entertains.”

Chinese Fortune Sticks
by Zhao Xiaomin and Martin Palmer.  I picked this up on my last trip to Hawaii.  Shaking a container of numbered sticks until one falls out is said to be the most common method of divination in real Chinese temples.  This book is an interleaving of the oracle statements of five different deities.  The deity who seems to have the biggest following these days is Kuan Yin, and numerous books are available which are dedicated to her.

Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments
by Martin Gardner.  Contains 21 of his Scientific American Mathematical Games columns, including the one about the I Ching.  Expresses my preference for including user action in the method of consultation, rather than simple mechanical generation of random numbers:

I Ching & the Genetic Code:  The Hidden Key to Life
by Martin Schönberger.

DNA and the I Ching:  The Tao of Life
by Johnson F. Yan.

The Whole Heart of I Ching (The Whole Heart series)
by Reverend Venerable John Bright-Fey.  You can’t judge this book by its cover, which is silky, padded, and nicely bound, with an attractive graphic.  The inside looks like an amateur web page, using several different sans-serif fonts in both black and red, with a white-text-on-red “mystic window” accompanying each hexagram.  The cover might also have pointed out that rather than any sort of translation of the I Ching, the book is actually a guide to Taoist meditation and “alchemic wisdom,” using the structure of the I Ching as a template. Hexagram 3, line 1: