How to cast and read a hexagram

What is the I Ching?

The I Ching (Zhouyi, “Book of Changes”) is one of the oldest books in Chinese culture. At its heart are 64 hexagrams. Each hexagram is a stack of 6 lines, and each line is either yang (a solid line) or yin (a broken line). The different combinations stand for 64 kinds of situations.

Every hexagram comes with a judgment, a short text on the situation as a whole, and each of its lines has its own line text about the details and how things may change.

In Tenwings, a hexagram is a mirror, not a forecast. It won't tell you what will happen. It helps you look at your question from a new angle, and what you do next is always up to you.

How to ask

Ask about one thing at a time. If you have several questions, cast once for each.

Open questions work best: “How should I approach…” or “How might … develop?” They give you far more to think about than a yes-or-no question.

Once the question is clear, silently repeat it to yourself, then start tossing.

How the three-coin method works

You toss three coins to get one line, and repeat six times to get six lines.

The inscribed side is yin and counts 2; the reverse is yang and counts 3.

The total of the three coins is always 6, 7, 8 or 9. Check it against this table:

Lines that total 6 or 9 are called changing lines. More on those below.

How the six lines are stacked

Lines are stacked from the bottom up. The first toss is the first line, at the very bottom. The sixth toss is the top line, at the very top.

From bottom to top they are called: first line, second line, third line, fourth line, fifth line and top line.

Primary hexagram, changing lines and resulting hexagram

The hexagram you get from the six tosses is the primary hexagram. It describes where things stand right now.

A line that totals 6 (old yin) or 9 (old yang) is a changing line. It is in the middle of turning into its opposite: yin becomes yang, and yang becomes yin.

Flip every changing line and you get a new hexagram, the resulting hexagram (also called the changed hexagram). It points to where things may be heading.

If you toss no 6 and no 9, there are no changing lines and no resulting hexagram. Just read the primary hexagram.

In short: the primary hexagram is about now, the resulting hexagram is about direction.

How to read a hexagram

You can go in this order:

1. Start with the name and judgment of the primary hexagram to get the overall picture.
2. Next, read the text marked “What to read first” on the result page. Depending on how many lines changed, it may be a line text or a judgment (see below). It is often closest to what you asked.
3. Then look at the resulting hexagram to see where things are heading.
4. Put it together: how do these texts speak to your question?
5. Finally, come back to your own question and situation. Notice which words strike a chord. The AI reading is only a reference, not an answer.

Which text to read, by number of changing lines

• None: read the primary hexagram's judgment.
• One: read that changing line.
• Two: read both changing lines; the upper one is the main.
• Three: read the judgments of the primary and resulting hexagrams; the primary is the main.
• Four: read the two lines that did not change, in the resulting hexagram; the lower one is the main.
• Five: read the one line that did not change, in the resulting hexagram.
• All six: read the resulting hexagram's judgment. If it is Qian or Kun, read “using nines” (Qian) or “using sixes” (Kun) instead.
• This is Zhu Xi's traditional rule, the most widely used one. The result page marks the text for you.

Upper and lower trigrams, the eight trigrams

Each hexagram is made of two three-line figures stacked together, called trigrams. The lower one is the lower trigram and the upper one is the upper trigram.

There are eight trigrams in all, each tied to an image from nature: