To be understood at all, the Changes must be considered in context, that is, in terms of historically and culturally defined values and in the light of clearly identified interpretive communities. To be sure, there are now a number of excellent works by Western scholars that show us how the classic was used and understood by certain individuals and certain groups in a few key periods in Chinese history. But there has never been a detailed analysis of its overall evolution in any Western language. My research has taken me nearly everywhere the document itself has been, from East Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and India to Russia, Europe, and the Americas. Along the way I acquired massive amounts of material, from rare primary documents in a variety of Asian and Western languages to artifacts and images reflecting the influence of the Changes in popular culture in both East and West.

There are, of course, mythological accounts of its genesis, but archaeological and philological investigations over the last century have called most of these accounts into question. Rather than remaining as a separate syllable, the suffix in a large majority of cases becomes part of the rhyme to which it is suffixed, bringing with it the phonetic property of rhoticity and causing the rhyme to undergo rhotacization. There are cross-speaker variations, but the general patterns are similar. The merit of the sages in constructing the Classic of Changes is equivalent to the creation of all things and the ordering of the world. The topic is too big and too complicated, they said, and they were right. Still, by almost any standard, the Classic of Changes is one of the most important documents not only in Chinese history but, arguably, in world history as well, and for this reason alone it deserves to be better understood, particularly by Westerners.

Several willows drooped over the pond. The flowers drooped soon after we picked them. The old woman's body drooped with weariness. “Dappled shadows” and “secret fragrance” thus are two coordinate images for the plum blossom, referring to its shape and smell, respectively. All these changes are affected by ‘slackening’ or ‘clarifying’ - to be compared with Ancient Greek terms such as ‘turning’ or ‘stretching’. As on a Babylonian or Greek lyre, these are all available within the compass of one-and-the-same octave+one note. Today we are aware of the possible impact, East and West, of knowledge not only of the ancient Greek achievement, but also for that of the Old Babylonians, as a source of Chinese knowledge of string-length ratios. These movements relate immediately to the stopping of strings in a great variety of ways. The advantage of this sequence is, that with this set of ‘natural’ notes, the number of degrees that require sharpening or flattening to effect transposition.