Abstract

The I Ching, a compilation of Chinese nature philosophy, is traditionally used as an oracle. The author hypothesized that such an ambiguously worded text, applicable to a variety of situations, lends itself to the illusion that each reading corresponds to one's situation. To test this hypothesis, 5 series of 64 trials each were conducted. In the 1st series, readings were obtained by the researcher throwing dice directly before a psychotherapeutic session, posing questions about the important contents of the therapeutic hour. The researcher was impressed by the number of apparent correspondences. No matter how he varied the procedure in the following trials, however, including arbitrarily assigning readings in numerical sequence, he continued to find 20-50% apparent correspondence between the I Ching reading and the content to be predicted. It appears practically impossible not to find correspondences, given the nature of the text and the subjective readiness to construe a good fit. Psi phenomena could be neither verified nor ruled out. No criteria emerged to distinguish meaningful from chance correspondences. (English summary) (4 ref)