Articles
When you read a result, knowing what the method is actually looking at changes what you take from it. These go as far as what you can check for yourself.
- Photographing your palm — five things that make the lines showWhen a palm is read from a photograph, the most common problem is that the lines come out too faint to read. Here are five things — the angle of the light, how far to open the hand, how close to stand — that make the lines show clearly.
- The four lines to learn first — life, head, heart and fateThere are a great many lines on a palm, and only four you need at the start. Where the life, head, heart and fate lines run and what each is taken to show, explained so you can follow them on your own hand as you read.
- Face reading — where to look, and what is read thereFace reading takes the features of a face and reads the tendencies of character and fortune in them. From the three zones the face is divided into, through to the eyes, brows, nose and mouth, set out for someone coming to it for the first time.
- The Celtic Cross — what each of the ten positions showsThe Celtic Cross is the tarot spread used most often. In what order the ten cards are laid, and what each of them shows, explained against the arrangement this service actually uses.
- Oracle cards and tarot — which one should you pick?They look alike, and how the number of cards is fixed and how each is read are quite different. Aoi answers a beginner's questions and sets out what separates the two, and how to choose between them.
- Reading the Four Pillars — what the year, month and day pillars showThe Four Pillars turns a date of birth into four columns and reads them. How the pillars are built, how the stems and branches relate to the five elements, and the solar terms that trip most people up.
- Counting the strokes of a name — the four numbers and how they are takenName divination reads fortune from the stroke counts of a name. How the four numbers are worked out, how older and variant character forms are handled, and why different schools reach different results.
- Finding your principal star — born in early February? Take the year beforeWorking out your principal star from a date of birth is a simple calculation, except that anyone born in the first days of February takes the previous year's star. Including how this service decides where the Start of Spring falls.
- Working out a life path number — 11 and 22 are not added downIt is found by adding up a date of birth, except that you stop when 11, 22 or 33 appears. The exact sequence this service uses, and where to stop, shown with worked examples.
- Casting a hexagram — the present figure, the moving lines and where it goesThe I Ching builds six lines into one of sixty-four hexagrams. This service sets the lines at the same probabilities as the three-coin method, and derives a second hexagram when there are moving lines. Here is how, with the actual figures.
- The five elements in a match — producing, checking, and reading by relationshipWood, fire, earth, metal and water stand in relations that produce and relations that check. Why the same pairing reads differently between friends and between a manager and their report, explained from how the judgement is actually made.
- Drawing oracle cards — one card or three, and what changesDrawing one card and laying out three read differently. Whether you may draw again, and why the same card comes up on the same day, answered by Nonoka.
- The twenty-two major arcana — the run from nought to twenty-oneIn the major arcana the order itself carries meaning. What path the twenty-two cards from the Fool to the World describe, explained against the arrangement this service actually uses.
- Reversed tarot cards — how to read them against the uprightA reversed card does not mean a bad one. How to hold its relationship to the upright reading, and how this service decides which way up a card falls, answered by Aoi.
- The Start of Spring — when the year actually turns in these readingsSetsubun falls the day before the Start of Spring, and in these readings that is where the year turns. Why it is not 1 January, and why the date shifts from year to year, explained from the calculation itself.
- There are not twelve signs but sixty — stems, branches and the cycleThe zodiac on a new year card has twelve animals; the one used in these readings has sixty combinations. How the ten stems and twelve branches pair up, explained against the calculation this service uses.
- Yin, yang and the five elements — the circle worth learning onceThis is the idea the eastern methods all stand on. How the five elements circle and how they hold one another back. Learn the order and the Four Pillars, Nine Star Ki and compatibility all read by the same mechanism.
- The monthly star — how it differs from the principal star, and how to find itWhere the principal star shows the nature you were born with, the monthly star is taken to show the nature that appears in everyday behaviour. How it is worked out, and why the month does not begin on the first.
- Choosing a reader — how it is said changes how it landsThe same result lands differently depending on how it is put to you. What separates the gentle, the fiery and the balanced, and a rule of thumb for choosing between them.
- Why today's reading changes daily — how the four periods workThe date of birth does not change, so why does today read differently from tomorrow? How the four points in time — today, tomorrow, a month out and three months out — are built apart from one another.
- Do palms change? Why the lines are said to shiftA palm is not taken to stay the same for life. How long to leave between looks, and what to watch when comparing photographs, explained against how the reading actually works.
- Before you send a photograph — four things worth checkingA photograph of a face or a palm is worth checking the handling of before you send it. Where it goes and how long it stays. Aoi answers the specific points to look for.
- What a date of birth alone can tell you — and what it cannotThere is a limit to what a date of birth shows. What can be read and what cannot, and what changes when the time and place of birth are not used, set out plainly.
- Eyes, brows and mouth — what each feature is read forFace reading is not a matter of gazing vaguely at a whole face. Each feature has its own subject. Here is what is read where, feature by feature.
- Oracle decks by subject — why each one has its own cardsThere is a separate deck for love, wellbeing, work and the people around you. What changes when the cards are divided by subject, and how the ninety-six were built.
- A match reads differently by relationship — the same arrangement, reconsideredThe same two people read differently as friends and as a manager and their report. Why it cannot be settled with a single score, explained from how the judgement is made.
- Reading your letter — why it fits on one page, and how to use itThe letter is built from a few sections and a summary. Where to start reading, and what to watch when printing or saving it.
- Does divination work? How to hold a resultThere is a way of reading that is useful, rather than measuring hits and misses. What divination deals with and what it does not, and how to take a result you did not want.
- Old forms and new — the characters whose stroke counts differThe same name gives different stroke counts depending which form of the character you count. The characters that actually divide opinion, and how this service counts them.
- The ten day stems — reading the difference between themThe day stem is taken to represent the person themselves and carries the most weight in the Four Pillars. What each of the ten is likened to, and what nature it is taken to show, set out in one table.
- The nine stars — from One White Water to Nine Purple FireEach of the nine stars carries an element and an image. What nature each is taken to show, gathered as a list to read once you have found your own star.
- The eight trigrams — reading heaven, lake, fire, thunder and the restThe sixty-four hexagrams are eight symbols stacked two at a time. Once you know what each of the eight stands for, you can guess at a hexagram's content from its name alone.
- Three groups in numerology — independent, steady, expressiveThe nine life path numbers can be read in three groups. What changes within a group and across groups — the division actually used in the compatibility reading.
- The solar terms — the twelve days on which the month turnsOf the twenty-four solar terms, only twelve are used to divide the months in these readings. Which are used and which are not, with the list from the Start of Spring to Minor Cold.
- Is there an age limit? Why only the photograph readings have oneA reading from a name and a date of birth has no age limit. The readings that use photographs are for people aged sixteen and over. Nonoka explains why the line is drawn there.
- Why a free reading is free — how it works and where the limits areA service that costs nothing has a reason it can. What covers the cost, and where the ceilings are, explained concretely from how this service is built.
- Face and palm together — what each one is forBoth read from the body, and they read different things. Whether one alone is enough, and what having both shows, set out from how this family of methods thinks.
- Where your reading goes — a service built not to store itWhere the name and date of birth you enter, and the reading itself, end up. Why nothing is stored, and what that makes impossible, said plainly.
- Reading several methods at once — what it means when they agreeThere are things one method alone cannot show. Set several side by side and read where they overlap. Why this service looks at nine at once, and how to read them.
- The three families of divination — calculated, chance and formThe Four Pillars, tarot, palmistry. Methods that look unrelated sort into three families. What each takes as its material, and the kind of question each suits.
- Why we do not ask your time of birth — stopping at the Sun signA chart properly needs the time and place of birth. This service does not ask, so it produces the Sun sign and no more. What can and cannot be produced, with the reasoning.
- Born on a cusp — decided by calculation, not by a table of datesIs 22 December Sagittarius or Capricorn? Sources disagree because the change of sign moves from year to year. Why this service calculates the Sun's position instead of using a table.
- The thirty-six Lenormand cards — a deck with no reversalsLenormand is a card method like tarot, and it has no upright or reversed. Meaning comes instead from how neighbouring cards combine. The thirty-six cards, and how reading them differs from tarot.
- Reading three Lenormand cards — joining centre, movement and destinationLenormand does not read as three meanings in a row. Joining the three into one sentence is the basis. The three positions this service uses, and how to combine them.
- How the compatibility score is built — weighting four methodsThe score in a compatibility reading combines four methods with weights. What is given the most weight, and why it is not a simple average. How the number is actually made.
- Why there are no ill omens — the breakdown of the twenty-fourOracle decks hold nothing as alarming as the tarot's Tower, and they are not all good news either. How the twenty-four in each deck here are distributed, and the thinking behind it.
- Reading with the major arcana alone — leaving out the minorsA tarot deck is seventy-eight, and drawing from the twenty-two major arcana alone is also a method. What changes with fewer cards, when it suits, and why this service chose twenty-two.
- Characters the stroke dictionary does not hold — outside 13,108A name using a rare or non-standard character is often miscounted by name-divination sites. What is in the stroke dictionary this service uses, and what happens when a character outside it arrives.
- What the five areas actually read — each method looks somewhere differentOverall, people, work, love and home. Five come out of one reading because each method looks at a different part. The assignments are set out here in full.
- How the overall reading is made — what the AI is given, and what it is notOnly the overall reading at the end uses AI. What is handed over and what is withheld, and how the common threads are picked out of nine results. The processing, described concretely.