“Am Anfang Heil, Am Ende Wirren”: Reconsiderations of the Significance of Richard Wilhelm’s I Ging (1924) and His Recorded Aleatory Practices (1917–1920)

Two main reconsiderations related to Richard Wilhelm’s German translation of the I Ging are explored here. The first deals with the distinctive Christian tone of the text and its relationship to a cross-cultural German Lutheran — Chinese Ruist (“Confucian”) spiritual synthesis that I propose Wilhelm had innovatively created. Largely unknown to others is the fact that Wilhelm practiced and recorded Yijing aleatory acts in a period from about 1917 to 1920, which are described in detail as part of this unusual spiritual synthesis. The second is based upon a careful comparison of Wilhelm’s I Ging published in 1924 and the English rendering produced by Cary F. Baynes in 1950, through which I argue that Baynes’s translation eliminates the Christian tone of the German translation, and unjustifiably adds Jungian psychological terminology to the text as if it is Wilhelm’s own. On the foundation of these two reconsiderations, therefore, I suggest ways to articulate a more nuanced account of the history of reception of Richard Wilhelm’s I Ging .