The I Ching, or Book of Changes, was initially dismissed as an archaic magical text by the first Westerners to encounter it, only to become widely popular with the rise of Sixties counterculture. It was the much-praised joint translation of Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes that brought the Chinese classic to the attention of millions; yet many still found it difficult and actually based their understanding on the Foreword by Carl Jung, which explained it in psychological language that was generally familiar to Western readers. It helped that the famous Swiss-German psychiatrist began with reassurance that non-sinologues could comprehend and make use of this “great and singular book,” (xxi) which itself declared “I contain (spiritual) nourishment.” (xxvii) This was based on Jung’s reading of 鼎 Ting 50.2, which he claims, correctly I think, that, “Anyone with a little commonsense can understand the meaning of [this] answer…” (xxviii). Yet elsewhere he defends his use of the I Ching quite differently, stating “The heavy-handed pedagogic approach that attempts to fit irrational phenomena into a preconceived rational pattern is anathema to me,” (xxiv) consistent with his view that modern Western society over-emphasizes rationality over emotion and intuition. While the apparent efficacy of divination can be explained rationally as “cold reading, “a means of covertly extracting personal information, Jung instead proposed his famous concept of “synchronicity,” defined by him in multiple ways, most directly as “an acausal connecting principle.” (xxiv n. 2) In current use, this term now mainly refers to subjectively meaningful coincidences, rather than to paranormal phenomena. One of Jung’s central concepts was “individuation,” which he defined as integration of the unconscious and conscious minds. In less abstract terms this means discovering the individual life path that will bring fulfillment. this it was a major progenitor of the self-help movement, but at best minimally influential in medical psychiatric practice.