How to Read the I Ching

1. The Three-Coin Method

Traditionally the I Ching is read by casting three coins six times. Modern practice has largely replaced this with drawing yarrow stalks or simply generating the six lines at random — statistically the outcome is identical, and the coins are easier.

Each toss builds one line, starting at the bottom and working upward. Three coins give eight possible results, which collapse into four types of line:

Six lines give you 64 possible combinations — one for each hexagram. The order the lines come out in is the whole of the reading: read from the bottom up, because that is the order the situation develops in.

2. What Changing Lines Mean

If any of your six lines came out as an old line (6 or 9), it is moving. Flip it, and you get a second hexagram — the one your situation is becoming.

This is the most useful thing the I Ching does, and the part most beginners skip. A hexagram on its own is a snapshot of where you are. The hexagram you change into is the direction of travel. A situation that reads as a warning now and clarity later is a very different message from one that reads as calm now and trouble later — and only the moving lines tell you which you have.

Two or three changing lines is the ordinary case and often the most informative. Four or more moving lines means the situation is genuinely unsettled, and the book tends to point at the middle of the reading rather than any single line. No changing lines at all is rare, and usually means the situation is genuinely settled for now — which is itself a real answer, not a non-answer.

Cast a reading on this site and the tool handles all of this for you: it identifies your hexagram, flips the moving lines, and takes you straight to both readings.

3. The Eight Trigrams

Every hexagram is built from two trigrams — a lower and an upper — and each trigram stands for one of the eight natural forces. Together the pair gives the hexagram its character, which is why the traditional names are images: Heaven over Thunder, Water over Fire, Mountain over Earth. Read the two trigrams first, and the hexagram's basic mood is usually clear before you reach its text.

4. How a Hexagram Is Structured

Each hexagram page on this site follows the same four layers, and it is worth knowing them in order so you know where to look:

1. The judgment (彖). The overall verdict on the situation. Read this first, every time.
2. The image (象). The picture the judgment is built from — a goose, a crane, a tree. Classical Chinese reasoning works by image far more than by definition, and the image is usually the more memorable half.
3. The six lines. Each line describes one layer of the situation, from the bottom (what is just starting) to the top (what is already fully formed). The bottom lines tend to be about beginnings and internal conditions; the top lines about outcomes and consequences.
4. Changing lines. Whichever lines moved, and the hexagram they change into. This is the forward motion of the reading.

One practical note on the lines: the middle lines (two, three and four) usually carry the most usable information, because they describe the heart of a situation rather than its edges. Traditional readers often start there and work outward.

5. The Two Half-Books

The 64 hexagrams are not an arbitrary list. They split into two halves with opposite characters, and the book deliberately ends on its 63rd and 64th hexagrams:

Hexagram 63 (After Completion) and 64 (Before Completion) sit at the very end as a pair, and the closing line of the whole book is a deliberate warning: the person who is entirely sincere can still go one step too far. The book does not end with an assurance that you will get it right. It ends by warning you not to assume it.

6. Where to Start

If you want the structure rather than the theory, read these six — they cover the range of what the book does, and between them you will have seen every kind of reading the I Ching can produce:

Otherwise, cast your own hexagram — it takes about twenty seconds — or browse all 64 hexagrams.