Tài Xuán Jīng

Tài Xuán Jīng (Tai Hsuan Ching; Chinese: 太玄經, "Canon of Supreme Mystery") is a Chinese text, detailing a divination system &mdash; similar to the more commonly known I Ching (Yì Jīng) system &mdash; based on a set of 81 tetragrams, composed by the Confucian writer Yáng Xióng (Yang Hsiung; Chinese: 揚雄/扬雄). It has been popularized to some extent in English as The Elemental Changes and The Alternative I Ching.

System
The world of the Tai Xuan Jing is described in terms of the interaction of three forces (as monograms) &mdash; tiān (t'ien; 天, "heaven", represented as an unbroken line [&#x268A;]), dì (ti; 地, "earth", once broken line [&#x268b;]), and rén (jen; 人, "man", twice broken line [&#x1d300;]) &mdash; grouped into nine digrams (bigrams), generating the final 81 "shou" tetragrams (quadragrams).

Books

 * The Canon of Supreme Mystery by Yang Hsiung: Translation with Commentary of the "T'ai Hsuan Ching" by Michael Nylan (hardcover, pp. 680; 1993, SUNY)
 * The Elemental Changes: The Ancient Chinese Companion to the I Ching- The T'ai Hsuan Ching of Master Yang Hsiung Text and Commentaries, translated by Michael Nylan (softcover, pp. 390; 1994, SUNY)
 * The Alternative I Ching by Derek Walters (softcover, pp. 224; 1987, Aquarian)