Philip K. Dick's I Ching

Origin
Philip K. Dick was a science fiction writer whose stories explored corporations, government and altered states by using alternate universes, artificial beings and advanced technologies. Many of his works drew upon his habitual drug use and history of mental disorder for character inspiration. Several titles of his immerse body of work have been adapted into movies, including Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report.

“The Man in the High Castle” was one of Dick’s earliest and more renowned stories. Taking place in an alternate universe where the Axis powers won World War II, the novel details the struggles of living in a totalitarian-occupied America. Many of the characters take reference to the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination text that was widely used to provide guidance. Numbers would be chosen randomly with dice or coins to receive valued numbers, redrawn and ordered into a hexagram of six lines. The following message would change after each use and allows the user to make a decision on what course of actions they should undertake. Dick himself consulted the I Ching several times while writing the novel to decide how to form the plot.

Effects
This I Ching is the coin variety, where the face up sides of the coins decides whether a line will be represented by ying or yang. When used, lets the user see and visit parallel universes of their choice. It is recommended for the person to bring a strong personal token with them to tether them to their home universe. Universes can only be revisited if a person has landed there before or if they are able to repeat the same pattern. If they try to tell information they found out in other worlds to the public, they will start to mentally degrade and lose their grasp between the realities they visited and their own imagination.