Y-Kim, Book of
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
A Chinese mystical book attributed to the Emperor Fo-Hi, and ascribed to the year, 3468 B.C. It consists of ten chapters, and is stated by Eliphas Levi in his History of Magic to be a complement and an appendix to the Kabalistic Zohar , or record of the utterances of Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai. The Zohar, says Levi, explains universal equilibrium, and the Y-Kim is the hieroglyphic and ciphered demonstration thereof. The key to the Y-Kim is a pantacle known as the Trigrams of Fo-Hi. In the Vay-Ky of Leon-Tao-Yuen, composed in the Som dynasty (about eleventh century) it is recounted that the Emperor Fo-Hi was one day seated on the banks of a river, deep in meditation, when to him there appeared an animal having the parts of both a horse and a dragon. Its back was covered with scales, on each of which shone the mystic Trigrammic symbol. This animal initiated the just and righteous Fo-Hi into universal science. Numbering its scales, he combined the Trigrams in such a manner that there arose in his mind a synthesis of sciences compared and united with one another through the harmonies of nature. From this synthesis sprang the tables of the Y-Kim. The numbers of Fo-Hi are identical with those of the Kabala, and his pantacle is similar to that of Solomon . His tables are in correspondence with the subject-matter of the Sephir Yetzirah and the Zohar. The whole is a commentary upon the Absolute which is concealed from the profane, concludes Levi, but as he had little real acquaintance with the subject, these analogies must be taken as of small value. Yadachi, or weather conjurer: (See Siberia .)
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The 1920 account, following Eliphas Levi, treats the book as a 3468 B.C. revelation to the Emperor "Fo-Hi" from a horse-dragon and as an appendix to the Kabbalistic Zohar; even the Encyclopaedia of Occultism concedes Levi "had little real acquaintance with the subject." Today the work is known as the Yijing or I Ching, the Book of Changes: scholars date its divinatory core, the Zhou yi, to the early Western Zhou period around 1000-750 B.C., with the ten appended "Wings" of commentary largely later, down to Han times, and Fuxi is treated as legend rather than author. Manuscript finds have transformed study of it, above all the silk Yijing recovered in 1973 from the Mawangdui tomb sealed in 168 B.C., which preserves a hexagram sequence quite unlike the received one, and bamboo fragments from the Warring States period. Meanwhile Richard Wilhelm's translation, rendered into English by Cary Baynes, carried the book far beyond occult circles and made it a fixture of mid-century Western culture, consulted by composers, novelists and readers with no interest in pantacles at all.
Written for this edition, 2026.