Actually I'm taking a risk saying these cards are by Helen Walker, since I've torn the deck apart three times looking for any evidence of a name, and found nothing.  I'm going by the name Amazon.com and US Games have this deck listed as being done by.  The deck comes in a red box with an attractive picture on the front, so I thought it would be a nice looking deck.  I was fairly well mistaken.

I don't mean to imply that this deck is ugly or anything.  It's...... um, what's the word I'm looking for...... um, "utilitarian."  All the cards are plain white cards with a red border and the I Ching hexagram on the card in the center in black.  The Chinese character for the keyword for the hexagram appears on the card in red.  The title is written in black in calligraphic letters at the top, and under the hexagram is the number and the keyword explanations for both the upper and lower trigrams that make up the hexagram.

All 64 hexagram cards in the deck look virtually identical.  So much so that I only scanned two card images to show you, there is nothing more to see.  I also included a back design so you can see it.  As you can tell from the picture, the backs on the cards are covered with writing, which is a cheat sheet of sorts so you can identify and work with the card's meaning based on the uncommon lines when you cast down cards.

There is no little white booklet which comes with this deck.  Rather, the deck comes with a series of 9 card faces printed with instructions on them, followed by 12 more card faces of correspondences and charts to use.  I know it is supposed to make things easier, but it confused me.  The 64 hexagram cards also come with 5 blank cards (ten faces, front and back) with the words "I Ching Notes" at the top, for you to write in your own notes.

Additionally, the deck comes with a set of three yin/yang coins for throwing your I Ching the more traditional way.  The most traditional way, of course, is to use the yarrow stalks, but more and more people are using coins or cards.  The coins included in this set are a cheap aluminum-type metal plated with "goldine" which I imagine is some kind of brass alloy or something similar.  I have seen very nice I Ching coins and these are nowhere close to those.  Frankly I would rather toss down three quarters, after first determining that heads up would be yin and tails up would be yang.  It works equally well and I like quarters better aesthetically.

The deck is standard sized and, since there are only 64 cards instead of 78, comfortable to handle and shuffle.  There is no back design since the cheats are on the back.  The edges are smooth but not polished.  The card stock used is thin enough to be flexible but would stand up to years of use.  The entire deck design, while totally utilitarian, would be sturdy enough to last a very long time.

All in all, I don't have anything much to say about this deck.  The stark, utilitarian style would never become outdated, and the deck would probably appeal to people who like to rely on their own images and meditation rather than looking at attractive card images.  Since I Ching never really had images associated with it traditionally, this deck would have nothing to offend anyone, and everyone who uses it is free to come up with their own associations.  However, there's nothing appealing about it for me.  I don't necessarily recommend it for beginners; I think that while it is simplified somewhat, there would be nothing to make a beginner *want* to use it.  It is not attractive enough to be something anyone would collect.  It is just there to be used.

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Review Copyright 1999 by Gina M. Pace

I Ching Cards, copyright 1971 by I Ching Productions
made in Switzerland by AGMuller, ISBN 0-913866-64-4