The I Ching is used as a creative oracle by tossing three coins six times to form a hexagram, then reading its text as a mirror that brings out your intuition about the blocked project. You don't have to believe in divination: it works because it forces you to project what you already intuited, just as the morning pages of Cameron's method uncover what the rational mind silences.
What is the I Ching and why is it interesting to a creator?
The I Ching, or Book of Mutations, is one of the oldest texts in China, with more than two thousand years of history. It consists of sixty-four hexagrams—six-line figures—each with a text that describes a situation and its dynamics of change. Traditionally it is consulted by tossing coins or yarrow sticks to determine which hexagram answers your question.
A creator is not interested as a divination manual, but as a tool for reflection. Carl Jung, who studied it and prefaced a famous edition, understood it like this: not as a prediction machine, but as a device that provokes introspection and makes visible what one already knows but does not dare to formulate. That is exactly the usefulness it has in the event of a blockage.
When a project is stuck, the problem is rarely information: it is that we do not want to see what we already intuit. The I Ching, with its ambiguous and evocative images, creates the space for that intuition to emerge without the rational critic censuring it from the outset.
How to launch: the three coin method
The most accessible method uses three identical coins. Assign a value to each face: for example, heads is worth 3 and tails is worth 2. You flip the three coins at the same time and add: the result will be 6, 7, 8 or 9. That number defines the first line of the hexagram, from bottom to top. You repeat the throw six times in total to build the six lines.
Even numbers (6 and 8) give broken lines (yin) and odd numbers (7 and 9) give solid lines (yang). Furthermore, 6 and 9 are mutant lines, which change and generate a second hexagram, indicating where the situation is evolving. With the six lines you already have your figure, which you look for in any edition of the book to read its text.
The ritual matters as much as the result. Phrasing the question carefully, tossing the coins carefully, jotting down the lines by hand – all of this takes you out of the mental loop and puts you in a state of listening. Not very different, in essence, from the state they seek the morning pages every morning.
How to interpret the answer without believing in magic
The interpretive key is this: do not read the hexagram as an order from the universe, read it as a projective test. When the text talks about the well, the lake above thunder, or the perseverance of the superior man, your mind starts looking for how that applies to your project. And in that application effort, you project what you already knew.
Pay attention to your reaction as much as the text. If a hexagram appears that advises waiting and you feel relief, it means that you wanted to stop. If you feel rejection, it means that deep down you want to move forward. The oracle does not decide for you: it makes visible what your intuition had already decided and your rational mind blocked. That emotional information is gold to unblock a project.
That's why it works the same for skeptics and believers. It does not require faith in hidden forces, just a willingness to use an ambiguous text as a catalyst for your own knowledge. It is the same mechanism that other symbolic tools take advantage of; we develop it in tarot as a creative tool.
The I Ching and Jung's synchronicity
Jung coined the term synchronicity—meaningful coincidences without a causal relationship—in part inspired by the I Ching. His idea was that sometimes the outside world and the inside rhyme in a way that is not chance or magic, but meaning. The hexagram that appears and the situation you are experiencing coincide in a way that is revealing to you, and that is enough.
For the creator, synchronicity is not superstition: it is sensitivity to meaning. Being attentive to coincidences, to images that repeat themselves, to what chance puts in your path, is a form of creative perception that Cameron cultivates with his notion that the universe collaborates with whoever sets out to work. About this, see Jungian synchronicity explained.
How to integrate it into Cameron's method
The I Ching is a natural fit as a complement to Cameron's tools. You can book a consultation for a specific blocking moment: when you don't know whether to start a project, whether to abandon it, whether to change direction. You ask the question, you pitch, and then you write in your morning pages what the hexagram made you think and feel.
That combination is powerful: the oracle opens an image, the pages develop it. A query without writing remains curious; a consultation followed by three pages of reflection becomes clarity. The I Ching poses the symbolic question and the morning pages give you the space to answer it from within.
It can also be an excellent appointment with the artist: spend an afternoon studying the book, understanding its images, making a careful consultation. It is symbolic food for the imagination, which is just what the quote is looking for.
A warning and a first step
The warning is clear: the oracle is a tool for reflection, not an authority to which you delegate your decisions. Using it to avoid thinking, or to justify what you already wanted to do for other reasons, turns it into a crutch and not a mirror. And checking ten times until what you want to hear comes out is cheating on yourself. One consultation, one honest reading, and get to work.
A concrete first step for this week: Take a project you're stuck on, ask an open-ended question—not yes or no, but like, "What attitude does this project need now?"—flip the three coins six times, find your hexagram, and then write a full page about what the image stirred up for you. Don't look for the answer in the book; Look for it in what the book awakens in you.
In short: the I Ching serves the creator not by divining the future, but by returning his intuition in the form of an image. You flip the coins, read the hexagram like a mirror, and watch your own reaction, which reveals what you already knew. Combined with the morning pages, it stops being superstition and becomes a serious tool to unlock what the rational mind had blocked.