As the first of the hundred classics, the prototype of Zhouyi was formed from the western weekend to the early Spring and Autumn Period, that is, the eighth century BC. Gossip prophecy was first popular in the Zhou Dynasty, and it was predicted by yarrow. Initially, the prediction results were kept by the court. Then according to the accumulated prediction results, it was compiled into a book, which became the embryonic form of the Book of Changes.
Later, the gossip prophecy spread from the imperial court to governors and literati everywhere. Since then, it has prevailed on various occasions. Therefore, the hexagrams and epigrams in the Book of Changes are just the prediction results of gossip, which have been compiled.
Many people regard it as the expression of some kind of thought and theory, which I think is inaccurate. In most hexagrams, the meaning of each sentence in the same hexagram is incoherent, and even the meaning of each sentence is incoherent. The reason for this phenomenon is that the hexagrams are only collected from the prediction results.
Because the Book of Changes only records the prediction results of gossip, there is no basic theory to explain the prediction principle of gossip. In order to prevent different predictions, from the end of the Warring States to the beginning of the Han Dynasty, scholars in different periods gradually completed the Ten Wings, thus forming the philosophy of Zhouyi. This is a process from practice to theory, and it is a very important process in the formation of the philosophy of Zhouyi.
Without the theoretical explanation of the Book of Changes, the Book of Changes loses its soul; Without the Book of Changes, the philosophy of the Book of Changes may not have come into being, and the theory of the Book of Changes has also lost its important practical application value, that is, predictive value.