I Ching Online: Toss the Coins, Read Your Hexagram

1. Write your question. Open questions work best, such as "What should I understand about this decision?"
2. Toss the coins. You toss three coins, six times in all. Each toss gives one line of your hexagram, and Vela draws it in her book from the bottom up.
3. Read the result. You get your hexagram's number, its Chinese name with pinyin, its English name, the two trigrams it is made of, and a meaning in plain English. If any of your lines are changing, you also see which ones and the second hexagram they turn into.

This is the common way to cast the I Ching with coins. Each coin has two sides: heads counts as 3 and tails counts as 2. Add up the three coins to get one line.

• 6 (three tails): old yin, a broken line that is changing.
• 7: young yang, a solid line that stays as it is.
• 8: young yin, a broken line that stays as it is.
• 9 (three heads): old yang, a solid line that is changing.

You repeat this six times. The first toss is the bottom line, and the sixth is the top.

A 6 or a 9 is called a changing line, because the line is at the extreme of its kind and is about to turn into its opposite. Old yin becomes yang, and old yang becomes yin. If your cast has no 6s or 9s, you have one hexagram and the reading is about the situation as it stands.

If it has changing lines, you read two things. The first hexagram describes where things are now. The second hexagram, made by flipping each changing line, points to where the situation is heading. The more changing lines you have, the more movement there is in the question.

The I Ching (Yijing), or Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese text that began as a divination manual in the Zhou dynasty, more than 2,500 years ago. Over the centuries it picked up commentaries and became one of the best known works of Chinese philosophy, and people have read it for guidance and reflection ever since.

The book is built from 64 hexagrams. A hexagram is a stack of six lines, each either solid (yang) or broken (yin). Every hexagram is made of two trigrams, three lines each, and there are 8 trigrams in all. Each of the 64 hexagrams has a name and a theme, from The Creative to Difficulty at the Beginning to Peace.

Every hexagram has a lower trigram and an upper trigram. Each trigram stands for a natural force and a quality.

• Qian ☰ (Heaven): strong, creative, and leading, the force that starts things.
• Dui ☱ (Lake): joyful and open, linked to conversation and pleasure.
• Li ☲ (Fire): bright and clinging, linked to clarity, warmth and awareness.
• Zhen ☳ (Thunder): sudden movement and shock that wakes things up.
• Xun ☴ (Wind): gentle and persistent, working by slow influence.
• Kan ☵ (Water): deep and risky, the flow through hard places.
• Gen ☶ (Mountain): still and steady, the force that stops and rests.
• Kun ☷ (Earth): receptive and nurturing, the one that supports and yields.

• Ask an open question. "What do I need to understand about this move?" gives you more to work with than "Will I get the job?"
• Keep it to one situation. A single, focused question gets a clearer answer than three questions bundled together.
• Ask about your own choices and attitude. The I Ching is traditionally read as advice for what you can do.
• Write it down before you toss. Having the exact wording in front of you keeps you from bending the meaning afterward.

The I Ching is used for reflection. A hexagram gives you an image and a theme to think with, and you decide what it means for your own situation. The readings on this site are written for entertainment and reflection. They are not medical, legal, financial or psychological advice, and they are not a prediction of fixed events.

The text here was written for this site in plain, modern English. It is not a quotation of any published translation.