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Cast a reading
Bring a question you have actually been turning over. Then cast — six lines, bottom to top.
Step 1 of 3
What would you like guidance on?
Optional, but a good question is most of a good reading. Ask something open, and ask one thing at a time.
Try: What is the wisest attitude to take here? · What am I not seeing about this? — rather than will it happen?
Step 2 of 3
How do you want to cast?
All three use the same traditional odds. Pick whichever feels right.
Tap each line — bottom first
Each line cycles: young yang → old yang (changing) → young yin → old yin (changing). Changing lines turn the hexagram into a second one.
Casting
Line 1 of 6
Hold the question in mind, then toss.
The I Ching is a reflection tool, not professional advice. For medical, legal or financial decisions, talk to a human who is qualified to help.
How the online cast works
Three coins are thrown six times, once for each line, building the hexagram from the bottom up. Tails counts two and heads counts three, so each line totals 6, 7, 8 or 9 — which is the whole reason the coin method and the yarrow-stalk method behave differently. Coins give you 6 and 9 one time in eight; stalks give you 6 one time in sixteen and 9 three times in sixteen. We use the real distributions, not a coin flip dressed up.
6 is an old yin line and 9 is an old yang line: both are changing. When a line is changing, you read that line's text, and the line flips to its opposite — which gives you a second hexagram. The first describes where you are; the second, where the movement points. If nothing changes, the reading is simpler: the situation is what it is for now.
Read the full guide → or how to cast with three coins →
Which method should you choose?
All three methods answer the same question. They differ in how much of the cast you perform yourself, and in how much weight lands on the rarest outcome.
| Three coins | The traditional everyday method, and the default here. Six tosses, odds of 1/8, 3/8, 3/8, 1/8 for 6, 7, 8 and 9. Changing lines turn up often, which makes it the liveliest of the three. |
|---|---|
| Yarrow stalks | The older and slower method. Its odds are 1/16, 5/16, 7/16, 3/16, so a changing yang line is three times more likely than a changing yin and the rarest outcome is rarer still. We simulate the traditional distribution rather than the eighteen physical operations, and we label it as a simulation instead of pretending otherwise. |
| Manual | For a cast you already have. Click each line to set it to young yang, old yang, young yin or old yin, and the reading is built from exactly those six lines. Use this when you threw coins in the physical world, or when someone has given you a hexagram and you want to read it properly. |
Before you cast: how to ask
The question matters more than the method. Three rules do most of the work.
Ask about the situation, not the outcome. "What should I understand about this offer?" gives you something to work with. "Will I get the job?" gives you a yes or no you will spend the next week arguing with.
Ask one thing at a time. A question with three parts produces a reading you cannot use, because you will never know which part the answer belonged to.
Ask something you do not already know the answer to. If the honest answer is already clear to you, the reading will only tell you what you have decided. That is not the oracle being useless. It is the oracle being exactly what it claims to be: a mirror.
What this will not do
It will not predict a fixed future, and it will not tell you what to do. There is no person on the other end of this page and nothing is being read about you. The text is three thousand years old and describes the shape of situations, not the details of your life. If a reading lands, it is because you recognised something in it, which is the only kind of accuracy the book has ever claimed.