I Ching

I've neglected to post about this, partly because I haven't much to say about it, and partly because I have not gotten very far in studying it, which may account for my having little to say about it; I'm studying the I Ching.

In Hesse's book, the main character is well versed in the I Ching ("book of changes"), which serves him as a guide within the story, and is described as a predecesor--one of many--to the Glass Bead Game in the introduction.

wiki entry for the I Ching
Basically, the I Ching is a doctrine that focuses on describing the dynamic between opposing concepts and giving order to the seemingly random events of the world. In this way it is very similar in philosophy to the Glass Bead Game, though the Bead Game takes the philosophy into more concrete realms.

The I Ching's use of symbols is also highly suggestive of a possible manifestation of a Bead Game. If you look at the sections "Trigrams" and "Hexagrams" in the wikipedia entry, you'll see what I'm talking about. Using this as a model, my version of the Glass Bead Game could begin forming its own symbolic language in the same way the I Ching has associated these symbols with concepts.