How to Consult the I Ching: The Three-Coin Method, Step by Step

Consulting the I Ching is a procedure, not a conversation: one real question, three coins thrown six times, a hexagram built line by line from the bottom, and one reading in the book. The whole cast takes five minutes and no special equipment. What this page gives is the procedure itself (掷钱法, the three-coin method), step by step — how to frame the question, which face of the coin counts what, how the six lines are recorded, how to find the hexagram in the book, and which statements to read when lines move — plus the four values a throw can take, a full worked example, the yarrow-stalk method the coins replaced, and the mistakes most first casts make. The book behind these steps is introduced on What Is the I Ching?; this page is the hands-on half.

What you need before you begin

#

Three things, none of them special:

• Three identical coins. Any three coins of one kind will do. The traditional tool is the Chinese cash coin (铜钱, tongqian) — round bronze, a square hole in the center, four characters cast on one side. Matching matters more than which: three coins of one denomination keep the two faces in clean balance.
• A pen and a page. The cast is written down as it happens — six lines, in order, with the value of each throw beside them. The log keeps the reading honest on the day, and weeks later it is the only record of what the oracle actually said.
• A text of the book. Any complete edition that prints all sixty-four judgments and the 384 line statements; the main English translations are introduced on the introduction page.

Apps will cast for you. This page is for doing it by hand — the version with three thousand years of practice behind it, and the only one where the five quiet minutes of the procedure are actually yours.

Step 1: frame one real question

#

The cast begins before the coins move, and its quality is set there. The book’s own warning about questions is in the judgment of hexagram 4, Meng (蒙, “Youthful Folly”): 「初筮告,再三渎,渎则不告」 — “the first asking is answered; to ask a second and a third time is to profane it; profaned, it is not answered” (《周易·蒙》). Three parts of the discipline follow.

One question. “Should I take the job in the other city?” is one question. “Should I take the job, and is the relationship strong enough for the move, and what about my mother’s health?” is three casts wearing one coat — and the answer that comes back belongs to none of them.

A real dilemma. Divination is for resolving doubt; where there is no doubt, there is nothing to divine — the Zuo Commentary puts the diviner’s rule in one line: 「卜以决疑,不疑何卜」 (《左传》). A cast made to test the book, to see whether it says something true, has nothing at stake and no question behind it.

One matter, held narrow. “How does the coming year look for the new business?” reads better than “tell me about my life.” The sixty-four situations are specific; the question should be too.

Step 2: throw the three coins

#

Cup the three coins in your hands, shake once or twice, and let them all fall together onto a table from a small height. Read the faces, add the values, write the sum down. That is one line. Do it six times, without stopping between throws, and the cast is built.

The values first. One face of the coin carries 3, the other 2 — and this is the one assignment you must fix before the first throw, in writing:

• With a Chinese cash coin, the blank back (背) counts 3; the inscribed side with the four characters (字面) counts 2. This is the assignment Chinese practice keeps — the six-lines school (liu yao), the coin cast’s living tradition, counts backs the same way.
• With Western coins, take the tail for 3 and the head for 2 — the back of the coin, matching the cash-coin rule.

English handbooks commonly print the mirror assignment: heads three, tails two. The two assignments disagree about which physical face carries which number, not about the arithmetic — swap them and every sum turns into its counterpart (6↔9, 7↔8) with the odds untouched. What the procedure cannot survive is switching mid-cast, or keeping no fixed rule at all. Fix one assignment at the top of your log and keep it.

Step 3: record the line, bottom-up

#

The first throw builds the first line — the bottom one. Draw a solid bar ⚊ for the yang line (a 7 or a 9), a broken bar ⚋ for the yin line (a 6 or an 8) — the two forms of the yin-yang pair — and write the value beside it. The second throw builds the second line, drawn above the first; the sixth throw builds the top line. A hexagram grows like masonry, course on course from the ground — not like a sentence, from the top down.

Recording the cast upside-down is the most common first-cast error, and the most expensive: read from the wrong end, the same six throws spell a different hexagram and a different answer. When in doubt, count from the line you drew first.

The four values a throw can take: 6, 7, 8, 9

#

Three coins at 3 and 2 apiece give four possible sums, and the four sums are not just numbers. They are the four states of a line — the four images (四象, sixiang) of the yin-yang ladder stacked two high: old yang, young yin, young yang, old yin.

“Old” means at the turn: an old line is a state at its extreme, about to flip into its opposite — which is why the two old values are the moving lines of the cast. Count the combinations and the odds fall out by themselves (a modern count; the classical texts fix the procedure, not the probabilities): 9 and 6 each come up one throw in eight, 7 and 8 three throws in eight. A single throw yields a moving line one time in four; over a full six-line cast, at least one line moves about five times in six.

Step 4: find the hexagram in the book

#

The six lines split into two threes. Lines one to three form the lower trigram — the inner, earlier side of the situation; lines four to six form the upper trigram — its outer, later development. Name each trigram by its pattern of solid and broken bars, read from the bottom, and the hexagram names itself: a lower trigram of broken-solid-broken is Kan, water; an upper trigram of three solid bars is Qian, heaven; water below heaven is hexagram 6, Song 讼, “Conflict.”

The eight trigrams, bar by bar, are laid out on the eight trigrams page. Every complete edition of the book also prints a hexagram chart: find the upper trigram’s row and the lower trigram’s column, and the chart gives the hexagram’s number in the King Wen sequence — the book’s canonical order, Qian first at 1, Wei Ji 未济 (“Not Yet Across”) last at 64. Turn to its page. What waits there — judgment, image, line statements, the layers of the text — is laid out on the introduction page; the reading order for a cast is below.

Moving lines and the changed hexagram

#

If no throw came up 6 or 9, the cast has no moving lines: the situation is read as standing, from the original hexagram (本卦) alone. If some did, each marks a moving line — the point where the situation is turning. Flag them in your record; many editions print the mark, a circle for an old yang line and a cross for an old yin.

Then flip every moving line — 9 becomes a broken bar, 6 a solid one — and the six bars spell a second hexagram, the changed hexagram (变卦). The original reads the situation now; the changed hexagram, where it is heading. The two, joined by the moving lines, are the whole answer: present and direction of travel.

Step 5: read the answer

#

Read in this order: the original hexagram’s judgment (卦辞, guaci) first — the few characters that name the situation’s overall drift; then the image the old commentary draws from it; then the statement of each moving line, read bottom-up. With no moving lines, judgment and image are the whole answer. With one, that line’s statement is the center of the reading — the exact moment of the situation, the point of the turn.

With two or more moving lines, which statements carry the cast has a classical answer: a set of rules fixed in Zhu Xi’s Yixue Qimeng (易学启蒙, “Introduction to the Study of the Changes”), in its section on reading casts with change:

Last, what the answer is. The book does not say yes and does not say no; it draws one of sixty-four situations — judgment naming the drift, moving lines marking the turn, changed hexagram the direction — and leaves the mapping to the question you actually asked. Read once, slowly, then close the book. The first cast is the cast; a second cast for the same question, thrown because the first was not to your taste, is the profanation the Meng judgment refused to answer — 「再三渎,渎则不告」.

A worked example: one full cast

#

The question: should I move cities for the new job in spring? One question, one matter. Back counts 3, fixed at the top of the log. The cast:

All six bars solid: the lower trigram is three solid lines — Qian, heaven — and so is the upper. Hexagram 1, Qian 乾, the Creative: pure yang, unceasing initiative. And the first line, the only moving line, is a 9.

One moving line, so the cast reads on its statement — the first line of hexagram 1: 「潜龙勿用」 (qian long wu yong), “the dragon is hidden: do not act” (《周易·乾》初九). The dragon is the image of the yang force in motion; a hidden dragon is all force and no season — present, capable, not yet in its time to rise.

Flip the moving line — the first bar, solid, turns broken — and the lower trigram becomes Xun, wind: wind below heaven, hexagram 44, Gou 姤, “Coming to Meet.” That is the direction: the situation developing toward encounter rather than advance.

Mapped back onto the question — and the example is invented, which is exactly why the mapping can be shown honestly — the reading does not choose the city. It says the initiative is real and the timing is not: the strong move now is to hold the force and let the moment ripen toward whatever is coming to meet it. Whether that fits a real spring and a real city is the reader’s own judgment; it always was, and that is the division of labor between the book and the person consulting it.

The older method: yarrow stalks

#

Before coins, there were stalks. The classical cast — yarrow-stalk divination (蓍草法) — handled fifty dried yarrow stalks, one laid aside, and worked the rest through a fixed sequence of divisions and counts; the Xi Ci compresses its arithmetic into one line: 「四营而成易,十有八变而成卦」 — “four operations complete one change; eighteen changes complete the hexagram” (《周易·系辞上》). Three passes build one line, eighteen the hexagram — the better part of an hour for a single cast, and the slowness was no flaw: it was the procedure’s own way of making the question wait.

The coins reproduce the stalk method’s four values with different odds. The famous count (a modern back-calculation, as with the coins):

The two methods send a moving line at the same overall rate — four throws in sixteen — but distribute it differently: coins double the old yin and thin the old yang. Whether you throw coins, count stalks, or let an app simulate one of them is a matter of the five minutes; the reading is the same book either way. A third family skips both and derives the hexagram from numbers and the time of asking — see Plum Blossom Numerology.

Five common beginner mistakes

#

Related: What Is the I Ching? · The Eight Trigrams · back to Divination · Foundations