The Book of Changes
Three coins, six times, read from the bottom up. Some lines come up already turning into their opposite, and those give a second figure: the situation, and the thing it is becoming.
Hold the question while you throw. The book does not know what it is; you are the one who decides what the figure is about.
How this one is built
A figure is two trigrams stacked, and each trigram is an image with a quality: heaven and force, water and danger, mountain and stillness. The gloss under each figure is composed from that pair, which is how the book’s later Image commentary reads them — eight images crossed with eight, not sixty-four separate essays.
The names and the numbers are the traditional ones and are a matter of record rather than something to invent. The table that assigns them is easy to paste in transposed, which would put every name on the wrong figure, so it is checked against a dozen facts nobody disputes every time the page loads.
It does not predict. A figure is a shape to hold your situation against for a minute, and a changing line says only that one part of it is unstable — not what it will become in your life, which the coins have no way of knowing.
How to consult it here
Think of the question, then press Throw the coins. The page throws three coins six times and builds the figure from the bottom line up, one line a throw. When all six are in, the hexagram you threw is given its traditional number and name, with a short gloss built from its two trigrams. If any lines came up changing, a second figure follows: the same six lines with each changing line turned into its opposite. The result is kept in this browser until you throw again, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Lines, trigrams and hexagrams
Every line is either solid, the firm yang line, or broken, the yielding yin line. Three lines make a trigram, and there are eight of them: Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain and Earth. Two trigrams stacked make a hexagram, and eight times eight gives the sixty-four. The lower trigram is lines one to three, counted from the bottom, and the upper is lines four to six. The numbers used here are those of the King Wen sequence, the traditional order of the received text.
The coin method and changing lines
In the traditional coin method one face of a coin counts three and the other two, so three coins add up to six, seven, eight or nine. Seven is a stable solid line and eight a stable broken one. Nine is a solid line turning broken, and six a broken line turning solid: these are the changing lines. With coins a line changes about one throw in four, so most consultations have at least one. The older method, sorting fifty yarrow stalks, gives the same four kinds of line at different odds, making a changing solid line three times as likely as a changing broken one.
An example
Suppose the three lower lines come up solid and the three upper lines broken. That is Earth over Heaven, number 11, Peace. If the top line was a changing one, it turns solid, the upper trigram becomes Mountain, and the second figure is Mountain over Heaven, number 26, The Taming Power of the Great. The first figure is read as the situation as it stands; the changing line marks the unstable part, here at the top, where a situation is traditionally read as reaching its end; the second figure is the shape it is leaning towards. What that means for your question is for you to decide.
The book also has a short text for each of its three hundred and eighty-four lines, and many readers look up the texts of the changing lines. This page does not reproduce them; it marks which lines are changing and where they sit.
Where the book comes from
The I Ching, or Yijing, the Book of Changes, is one of the oldest Chinese classics. Its core, the hexagrams with their judgements and line statements, is generally dated to the Western Zhou dynasty, roughly three thousand years ago. Commentaries known as the Ten Wings were added over the following centuries and traditionally credited to Confucius; the Image commentary this page borrows its reading of trigram pairs from is one of them. The book has been used for divination and read as philosophy for most of its history.
The Chinese zodiac is another Chinese system on this site, giving the animal and element of a birth year from the Chinese calendar. For a prompt that is drawn rather than thrown, try the three-card spread, and numbers shows numerology with its sums written out.
Questions people ask
How do you read changing lines in the I Ching?
A changing line is one that came up as an old line, a six or a nine, and is turning into its opposite. Read the first hexagram as the situation, note which lines are changing and where they sit, then read the second hexagram, made by turning those lines over, as the shape the situation is leaning towards. Many readers also look up the book’s text for each changing line. On this page the changing lines are marked on the figure.
How does the three-coin method work?
Three coins are thrown six times, and the hexagram is built from the bottom line up. One face of a coin counts three and the other two, so each throw adds up to six, seven, eight or nine. Seven gives a solid line and eight a broken one; nine is a solid line that is changing and six a broken line that is changing. The changing lines produce the second hexagram.
How many hexagrams are there in the I Ching?
Sixty-four. Each is six lines, solid or broken, and can be read as two trigrams stacked, one lower and one upper. There are eight trigrams, and eight times eight gives sixty-four. Their traditional numbers follow the King Wen sequence: number 1, The Creative, is six solid lines, and number 2, The Receptive, is six broken ones.
What does it mean if no lines are changing?
Then there is only one hexagram and no second figure. It is read as a situation that is stable as it stands, which is an answer in its own right. With the coin method each line has about a one-in-four chance of changing, so a throw with no changing lines at all comes up a little less than one time in five.
Can the I Ching predict the future?
This page does not treat it that way. The coins are random and have no way of knowing your circumstances. A figure is best used as a shape to hold a situation against: the first hexagram describes it, and any changing lines point to the part that is unstable. The book has been read as philosophy and a source of reflection for as long as it has been used for divination.