The Beatles Hit Inspired By a Theory in the 'I Ching'

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is one of the Beatles’ most legendary songs. It is also one of the 22 songs that George Harrison wrote for the band. Fittingly for Harrison, whose interest in Eastern philosophy greatly influenced the Beatles and much of his own songwriting, the idea for the song came from a theory in the ancient Chinese divination text called the I Ching.

How the Idea For “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” Came About

The I Ching is sometimes called the Book of Changes. For thousands of years, it has served as an oracle and a guidebook to individual lives, governments, and the universe itself, and has been used by leaders, philosophers, and everyday people alike. The book focuses on a method of divination that involves tossing coins and matching the results to a series of sixty-four hexagrams, each of which has a different, nuanced meaning. 

There are a number of legends about the book’s origins. One holds that Fu Xi, the first emperor of China (2852–2737 B.C.), observed a pattern on a turtle’s back and understood that the markings on its shell reflected the flow of energy through life on Earth. Another claims that an ancient clan of female oracles called the “many Fu” read messages on the backs of live turtles and converted them into the I Ching.

It is believed that during the Shang Dynasty, the imprisoned leader King Wen developed the sixty-four hexagrams that characterize the book today. In the next few hundred years, the text became a major source of wisdom and was highly praised and further developed by Confucius. It went on to influence Chinese culture and philosophy in myriad ways.

The book has fascinated all manner of people in more recent years as well, including Carl Jung, who named it a tool for self-evaluation. Terence and Dennis McKenna connected it to the “chemical waves” that powered plant medicine in the Amazonian jungle. Composer John Cage also used it to generate mathematical numbers that he then used in music.

One of the messages that Harrison took away from the book is that every detail, no matter how small, has meaning and plays a role in the greater fabric of the universe. “I wrote ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ at my mother’s house in Warrington. I was thinking about the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes…” Harrison recalled. “The Eastern concept is that whatever happens is all meant to be, and that there’s no such thing as coincidence—every little item that’s going down has a purpose.”

He decided to apply this principle to songwriting. “‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ was a simple study based on that theory,” he continued. “I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book—as it would be a relative to that moment, at that time. I picked up a book at random, opened it, saw ‘gently weeps,’ then laid the book down again and started the song.”

Recording “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

The track wasn’t immediately a hit with the band. “When we actually started recording ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ it was just me playing the acoustic guitar and singing it and nobody was interested,” Harrison said. “Well, Ringo probably was, but John and Paul weren’t. When I went home that night, I was really disappointed, because I thought, 'Well, this is really quite a good song, it’s not as if it’s shitty!' The next day, I happened to drive back into London with Eric Clapton, and while we were in the car I suddenly said, ‘Why don’t you come and play on this track?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that. The other wouldn’t like it.’” 

Of course, Clapton did eventually agree to come in and record the now-legendary guitar on the song. The track has since become a timeless classic—and it all began with Harrison’s decision to find meaning in the smallest details.