The I Ching (pronounced ee-ching) is the oldest and most respected oracle or divinatory system in the world. There are currently two translations available which offer somewhat conflicting interpretations - the popular Confucian version and an earlier Taoist version called Zhouyi. Reconstructed by twentieth-century scholars and archaeologists, Zhouyi presents the highly imaginative world of myth and ritual that is the hidden base of thousands of years of Eastern thought.

Now, for the first time ever, Stephen Karcher fuses these two traditions using modern scholarship and archaeological...

Kuan Yin, the Compassionate One or literally 'the one who sees and hears the cries of the world' is the principal goddess in the eastern firmament. She is centuries older than the Christian Virgin Mary, but not unconnected with her in that in most illustrations she holds a rosary, suggesting purification of the cycle of birth and death, and a willow branch, a symbol of Buddhist virtues. Kuan Yin's image can be found wherever there are Chinese or Japanese speaking people in the world - in homes, restaurants, workplaces, small urban temples, Buddhist, Taoist and Shinto shrines - and the ritual...