The Oracle is easy to use. It takes a minute or two to cast a hexagram and another to read its interpretation. You cast a hexagram by tossing three coins to yield a pattern of heads and tails. Each possible pattern is representative of a hexagram.

The essence of the oracular procedure is chance, so the tossing of the coins must be free of all conscious control. That the fall of the coins be totally unpredictable is the only condition on the use of the Oracle.

Please be aware that the Oracle of Love addresses adult issues. It is not suitable for use by children.

The Oracle of Love is a child of the I Ching. The I Ching (also called the “Book of Changes”) is a collection of ancient Chinese texts whose origins date back to the 24^th century BC. It has been used for thousands of years both as an Oracle and a book of wisdom. The Oracle of Love has inherited the same hexagram structure as the I Ching and is largely consistent with it.

The Oracle of Love has developed out of a contemporary encounter with the I Ching. I have used the I Ching (and latterly the Oracle of Love) for some thirty-five years and have come to know it as a close friend. This began in the nineteen-seventies when I was looking for a guide to help me through the psychedelic mindscape of which science and religion had no knowledge.

The I Ching's uncanny ability to make relevant comment on my most subjective experience led to an intense encounter and within a short period I had memorised all the hexagram interpretations. Then, after many years comparing the hexagrams I cast with events as they unfolded, I began modifying the memorised interpretations to better describe the reality I was experiencing. Now in mature age, I stand with an accumulation of adjusted interpretations and an approach to the I Ching that does not conform with any tradition. I have attempted to integrate my insights into the I Ching by re-formulating it as this Oracle of Love. The Oracle of Love is therefore the reflection of a contemporary experience of the I Ching rather than a scholarly re-work of classical texts. I have not called it the I Ching so as not to offend classicists - but the essence of the I Ching remains, albeit expressed in a modern idiom rather than the traditional symbols of ancient China.

My insights into the hexagrams clarified my understanding of the I Ching as a whole. After screening out the distractions of all the cultural references I came to realise what a pivotal role Love plays in the I Ching. Love has come to the foreground in this interpretation of the I Ching - it is the central theme of the Oracle of Love.

While love takes many forms and we probably each have a different conception of it, the word ‘love’ is used by the Oracle in a very particular sense. When meant in this special sense it will be written with a capital ‘L’, as Love.

Understand Love as a feeling rather than a concept. Get a sensation of vibration that gives you a warm, pleasurable glow. The sensation may arouse movement in a sympathetic response, like a dance inspired by music. Sensations and responses can be repeated and played with, stronger and weaker, or faster and slower, in time or syncopated - vibrations within vibrations arousing feelings of their own. Love is a sensitivity and responsiveness, both creative and passive, to the flows and rhythms of waves and vibrations, which we enjoy for their harmony and variety - as epitomised by music.

‘Feeling’ is meant as an immediately present sensation that is ultimately indescribable, either because a feeling will have changed by the time a description of it has been uttered, or because the feeling may be disrupted by the act of describing it. Perhaps the word ‘emotion’ can be used to denote a feeling that is maintained by a mental state long enough for it to be described, such as sorrow, for example. Love is meant as a wordless feeling rather than a specifiable emotion.

Feelings of Love can be enhanced by specifically paying attention to them. With increased attention we can perceive them more clearly, feel them more deeply, express them more lucidly and appreciate more consciously their detail and their breadth.

The Oracle aspires to developing relations between separate feeling beings (such as ourselves) so that we share and exchange feelings of Love with each other. To this end the Oracle's counsel is invariably directed towards fostering feelings of Love in our relationships and maximising our benefit from them. More so, the Oracle aspires to an intensity of relation in which the feelings of Love are lavished with conscious attention, both in perception and expression. In human terms it aspires to overtly sexual and orgasmic exchanges of feeling between Lovers.

The necessary element in a Loving relation is the exchange of feelings. It is just as easy for different feelings to harmonise as it is for shared feelings to harmonise when in relation. For example, consider a couple dancing face to face. When one partner steps forward the other will step backward in order to maintain the dance. Lovers do not have to be experiencing exactly the same feelings when in relationship. It is important that Lovers be understood to retain their individuality, for it is their differences that power the Love-dance.

Partaking in a Love-dance arouses a feeling in itself and even of this the Lovers need not share the exact same flavour. Love honours the subjective nature of our feelings and is, in turn, honoured by our engaging with others who may be feeling differently. The fact that an exchange takes place in a relational context ensures that the subjectivity is not purely an insular introversion of either participant. Such harmonious exchanges of different feelings between different beings is the ambition of the Oracle of Love.

Love is the domain of the Oracle. Love is the context in which its auguries make sense. To construe its pronouncements in terms of power, fame or fortune is to misunderstand it. The Oracle has only one thing on its mind - all other ambitions are a subtext for Love.

'Spirituality' has a particular meaning for the Oracle as well.

Spirituality is seen as a universal internal connection between everything, connecting all externally disparate entities in a whole without obscuring their individuality.

Internal connections and the spiritual connectedness of things necessarily remain mysterious from the point of view of any of the disparate entities from the inside looking out, which is how we normally address things, especially when making analytical observations of them. But we can also make an address by looking inward, to our own minds and bodies and to increasing our awareness of our internal behaviour, and in this way we can become conscious of our internal connections and even experience the connectedness of all things. The process is exemplified by the practice of meditation, whereby one withdraws attention from the outside world to explore one's inner world instead. The sages of many religions teach that there is a coherent inner reality to be found in this exploration.

For us, the most important aspects of the Oracle's conception of spirituality are firstly its inner direction, that it is addressed by looking inward rather than outward to any external object, which means that the human experience of spirituality is a subjective one that cannot be measured against any external reference. We each have our own personal and unique experiences of spirituality. Secondly, it is by attending to the feelings of Love we encounter in the internal exploration that we become conscious of our inner connections and so can come to experience the universal spiritual connection. The greater benefits of meditation come from attending to our inner feelings (including purely bodily feelings) rather than to our ideas or emotions.

Though subjectivity is important in both Love and spirituality, it is not without hazard. In external interaction it is absolutely necessary to act on commonly agreed objective grounds to avoid conflict with others. Acting on subjective feeling alone can only be contemplated in the context of a very forgiving intimacy or where one is clearly engaged in the harmony of a Love-dance. The internal orientation of spirituality, however, offers an environment where there are no external partner's toes to tread on and so subjectivity can be indulged quite freely. The spiritual partner, it may be said, is always willing and extremely forgiving.

A group experience of spirituality should be understood to be no more than a coincident experience of individual spirituality. Members of the group may acknowledge the simultaneity of their experience but there is no requirement for each participant to undergo the same experience. The performance of a ritual may assist the individual experiences to coincide but there is no spiritual significance in the ritual itself. Only when Love enters the encounter and there is an exchange of feelings as well (as may take place in communal song or dance) may the group experience be enhanced beyond that of each individual.

Love and spirituality may also meet when a Love-dance is so harmonious that the Lovers feel their internal spiritual connection as deeply as they feel their external engagement.

The Oracle often uses hexagrams with spiritual connotations to refer to itself. It sees itself as being of a spiritual nature and aware of the spiritual dynamic in a way that we are not. Being spiritual, we address it by looking into ourselves. A consultation with the Oracle is a private affair.

The Oracle of Love guides us to the issues in our lives with the highest spiritual priority. Look at it as taking an interest in your spiritual health and performing spiritual hygiene. But look at it too, as being considerate of spirit in the same way that we are considerate of others. We cannot presume to know exactly what spirit values are or how spirit might choose to act in any given situation. Being considerate of another means asking how they feel about something before committing ourselves to a course of action. How far we actually alter our intentions to accommodate someone else is a choice that we make with each act.

The object of consulting the Oracle is, therefore, to ascertain spiritual need. While we may address the Oracle with a particular question in mind, its response will direct us to our most pressing spiritual need regardless of our question. Questions are almost superfluous to a consultation. Of course, it is helpful to receive guidance pertaining to problems that are vexing us but that only happens when such problems and the spiritual issues are related. Some problems must be managed as best we can without Oracular help. In my own experience it has often happened that by addressing the spiritual issues, other questions have been put into a clearer perspective and have become significantly less urgent than they originally appeared.

It can take some time to discover which issues the Oracle is indicating as needing attention. This is because spiritual issues are often seen as trivial from our everyday point of view, especially when there are pressing external issues at hand. This is the great value of the Oracle, for it makes known to us the issues of spiritual importance that we would otherwise overlook in favour of the louder external issues that so forcefully demand our attention. These spiritual issues may be so inconspicuous that it is only after a number of consultations that we are able to piece the clues together and arrive at the issue of interest. Discerning the significance of the Oracular messages becomes easier with practice and some helpful advice is offered in the section Interpreting a Hexagram.

Exact instructions for consulting the Oracle are provided in the section How to Cast a Hexagram. The method of consultation for the Oracle also permits hexagrams to be strung together like sentences in a paragraph. While the meanings of the individual hexagrams are sufficiently elaborate to convey a message in their own right, they can also be regarded as the elements of a language from which more complex messages can be built. Guidelines for combining hexagrams are provided in the section Conversations. This replaces the concept of “changing lines” that plays such a large role in the I Ching, whereby one hexagram can change into another. Such transformation of hexagrams is absent from the Oracle of Love.