Harry Goldgar, New Orleans Times Picayune
"When this book was first published in 1980, I was convinced that no one could add to the "monumental commentary of Richard Wilhelm... I was wrong. Ms. Anthony has made a genuine contribution to our understanding and use of the oracle."


Book Description
Used by its readers as an oracle, this book, based on the terminology used in the classic Wilhelm/Baynes translation, puts the I Ching into modern language. This allows its wisdom to be applied to the situations of everyday life. Decoded are words such as "the superior man," the "inferior man," "the inferiors," and the "faithful followers," which refer respectively to the true self, the ego, the bodily self, and aspects of character such as patience and perseverance. Expressions such as "crossing the great water," and "seeing the great man," are seen to mean getting past the danger of giving up on oneself, and remembering the potential for good in every person. Understanding such words and phrases occurs in the context of the entire wisdom of the I Ching which counsels those who consult it to follow their innermost feelings, as these bring one into harmony with the ever-loving Cosmos and its protective powers. Judging by the more than 4000 letters written by its readers, this book has been used by adults from all occupations and beliefs as a self-help spiritual guide and educator of the truths of life.


From the Publisher
This book, published first in 1980, is here presented in its third revised and enlarged edition. It remains the best selling I Ching book for its major independent press distributors in the U.S. and England, and it has been translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Croatian. It has attained a dedicated and enthusiastic worldwide following from readers of all interests and backgrounds.


From the Author
I could never have presumed to sit down and write a book on such a wonderful and enormous text as the I Ching. This book simply happened as notes I was keeping for my own use. I wrote the notes during those occasional times when I suddenly realized what the I Ching had been referring to in my daily consulting it. Sometimes these realizations came during the middle of the night; sometimes they came during meditation, or while I was doing something mundane. Always, I felt they were a gift from the Cosmos, for I could not imagine how such wonderful thoughts could come from my mind. They were somehow beyond pure mentality. After seven years these covered every line and hexagram in the I Ching, and when I saw that they were helpful to other users of the I Ching, I published them. Another ten years gave me an even fuller perspective of the underlying principles of the I Ching, and so I shared them in what is here the third edition of the book. I do not offer them as a definitive and final understanding of the I Ching, for I do not believe that such a monumental book of wisdom can be definitively understood. I merely offer it to share what I have myself learned. What I have learned, however, is that the great Tao of the Universe is a friendly consciousness that is always there to help us, so long as we do not block it by negative and arrogant thoughts. To harmonize oneself with its point of view is to find true happiness. It is also a long and ever-engaging process.


From the Back Cover
"A Guide to the I Ching" is an interpretive manual to the classic Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching. Now a classic in its own right and translated into other languages, the Guide is recognized by teachers and long time students of the I Ching as indispensable to its understanding and use. Developed from notes taken over many years, the Guide mirrors the reader's true inner feelings, helping him to bring his life and fate into harmony with the Tao-the way of the Universe. Also by Carol K. Anthony: "The Philosophy of the I Ching, Second Edition," "The Other Way, Meditation Experiences Based on the I Ching," and "Love, An Inner Connection, Based on Principles Drawn from the I Ching."


About the Author
Born Carol Kessler in West Virginia in 1930, Carol K. Anthony was educated at Ward-Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee and the University of Iowa, Iowa City, specializing in Creative Writing. Her writing interest began at age fourteen, when she wrote a full length novel. Commenting on this, she says that while it was no novel, it did teach her how to write. "What took 40 pages to say at the beginning took one page to say at the end." After finishing college, and while raising her four children, she became fascinated with the literature of world drama. Feeling always a sense of destiny, and wondering how her talent for expression might be used, she attempted playwriting. However, after writing four plays, she decided that they read disappointingly like histories. The subject matter of these plays, though, confirmed that her primary interest was in "finding the real underlying the apparent." Her favorite playwrights were Aesculus among the ancients, Shakespeare, Pirandello, and Ibsen among the Europeans, and Eugene O'Niell (especially his Great God Brown and The Iceman Cometh) among the Americans. In later years she found the plays and calendar stories of Berthold Brecht particularly interesting. Of the modern filmmakers she was particularly influenced by Ingmar Bergman's use of symbols to convey meaning, and she credits a systematic study she made of the symbols in Wild Strawberries for helping her to later understand the metaphors of the I Ching. It was during a "mid-life-crisis" in 1971 that, as she puts it, "the I Ching came to her." Immediately she realized that she had found her true teacher. Since then she has been its dedicated student, constantly learning new material that has found expression in her four books. In 1999 she reflects: "It turned my life around 180 degrees, taking me in a direction I never suspected I would ever follow, with endless rewards. Although the I Ching path is called 'the easy,' it has at times been the most difficult of paths, because it required me to give up, one by one, the delusionary mental platforms of safety I had build through the logical processes of my mind. I had to learn to depend entirely on the Unknown in order to experience its wholly friendly, helpful, beneficent nature. This required relinquishing all the 'myths' I had learned from my training about how the cosmos works...not an easy task, but one which has freed me to be who I really am. Of course," she says, "if we could trust being who we really are in the first place, the path would always be easy, but we can't undo all the mistrust caused by those old, suffer-inducing myths right away. The I Ching shows the way, and we cannot overleap one single step in the process of uncovering the heap of ideas that obscure who we really are. To follow this path, though, has been my privilege." Mrs. Anthony, now a grandmother of seven, has lived the last 45 years of her life in a suburban village near Boston, where she also runs Anthony Publishing Company, Inc. a publishing house she founded in 1979. After publishing her first book she began giving seminars and lectures on the I Ching, an activity that now takes her to various places worldwide.