Free I Ching Reading

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is one of the oldest Chinese classics. You hold a question in mind and build a hexagram of six lines from the bottom up. Lines that are “old” are changing, and they point to a second hexagram showing where the situation is heading.

How the I Ching works

Each line of a hexagram is yin (broken) or yang (solid). With three coins, heads count 3 and tails 2: a total of 7 is a stable yang line, 8 a stable yin line, 9 an old yang line and 6 an old yin line, both of which change into their opposite. The yarrow-stalk method gives the same four values with different odds (1, 5, 7 and 3 in 16), which this page can imitate. The 64 hexagrams are pairs of the eight trigrams: Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain and Earth.