Casting a hexagram — the present figure, the moving lines and where it goes
updated · 5 min read
A result comes back with an unfamiliar name — Difficulty at the Beginning, Great Possession. Looking at the name alone tells you little, and many people stop there.
The name is something like a label for the arrangement of six lines. Once you see how it is put together, you can get a sense of how to read the result.
A hexagram is made of six lines
In the I Ching you stack six lines from the bottom up, each either yang (unbroken) or yin (broken). Each one is called a line. Two possibilities over six places gives sixty-four figures in all.
The six are not handled as one block but split into a lower three and an upper three. There are eight combinations of three, called the trigrams. The pairing of the upper and lower trigrams is what gives a hexagram its name.
| Trigram | Stands for | Trigram | Stands for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qian | Heaven | Xun | Wind |
| Dui | Lake | Kan | Water |
| Li | Fire | Gen | Mountain |
| Zhen | Thunder | Kun | Earth |
Water above and thunder below gives the third hexagram, Difficulty at the Beginning; fire above and heaven below gives the fourteenth, Great Possession. In the Chinese names, the first half is the upper trigram and the second the lower.
This service uses the same probabilities as three coins
There are several ways of setting the lines, and the best known is throwing three coins. This service sets each line at the same probabilities as that method.
| Kind of line | Yin or yang | Moving? | Probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old yang | Yang | Moves | 1 in 8 |
| Young yang | Yang | Does not move | 3 in 8 |
| Young yin | Yin | Does not move | 3 in 8 |
| Old yin | Yin | Moves | 1 in 8 |
Old and young yang together give a half chance of yang, and yin the same half. Nothing is weighted either way, so all sixty-four hexagrams come up equally often.
Moving lines produce a second hexagram
Old yang and old yin are taken to be at their extreme and to carry the force of turning into their opposite. These two are the moving lines. Where one appears, that line alone is flipped to make a second hexagram.
The first is the present hexagram and the flipped one is where it is going. The present is taken to show the situation now, and the second the direction it is moving in.
Each line has a one in four chance of moving. The chance of no moving lines at all across six is three-quarters to the sixth power, about 18 per cent. Put the other way, more than eight times in ten a second hexagram appears as well.
The casting happens on the server
This service runs the casting on the server rather than on your device. Run at your end, a result you disliked could be cast again, or the values altered.
All sixty-four come up at one in sixty-four. Nothing is adjusted to favour particular figures. Only if a favourable and an unfavourable hexagram appear with the same probability does the one you cast mean anything.
The same question gives a different figure each time
The I Ching belongs to the kind of divination that reads from chance, which works differently from methods calculated from a date of birth. Because it finds meaning in the chance of the moment, the same person asking the same thing gets a different result every time.
It is not something to cast again until you are satisfied; taking the figure that came is the proper use. On this service the hexagram is cast afresh for every reading.
Common questions
- What if there are no moving lines at all?
- You read the present hexagram alone; there is no second figure. This is generally taken to mean the present situation holds for a while.
- When several lines move, which do I read?
- Schools differ, and the usual view is that the fewer the moving lines, the more weight each carries. This service tells you the position of every moving line.
- Does the I Ching not use a date of birth?
- It does not. The I Ching reads from the chance of the moment, which works differently from the Four Pillars or Nine Star Ki calculated from a date of birth. This service looks at both together.