I Ching
The I Ching is the Chinese “Book of Changes,” one of the oldest methods of divination: six coin tosses produce a hexagram, which has a number from 1 to 64 and a ready-made interpretation. The calculator below tosses the coins for you and shows what the hexagram changes into if it has changing lines.
How the method works
Each of the six tosses uses three coins at once. Heads counts as 3, tails as 2, and the sum gives the line:
| Sum | Line | Probability |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | changing yin | 1/8 |
| 7 | unchanging yang | 3/8 |
| 8 | unchanging yin | 3/8 |
| 9 | changing yang | 1/8 |
The lines are laid out from the bottom up: the first toss gives the bottom line. Six lines form a hexagram, and its number is found in the King Wen table — the order in which the hexagrams appear in the book and on our pages.
If any of the lines is a 6 or a 9, it changes into its opposite, and a second hexagram results. The first describes the situation now, the second where it is heading.
Why coins and not stalks
The ancient method is sorting 50 yarrow stalks, and it gives different probabilities: in it, a changing yang line comes up more often than a changing yin line. The three-coin method appeared later; it is faster and gives symmetrical odds of 1/8, 3/8, 3/8, 1/8 — and that is the one we use.
The difference is noticeable in practice: with stalks the probability distribution is ordered differently, and some translators consider this significant for interpretation. If the traditional version matters to you, stalks can also be simulated in a browser, but that is a separate algorithm.
How to read the answer
Three rules that save time.
- Phrase your question as a situation, not as a choice between two options. The I Ching is poor at answering “yes” or “no” and good at describing the circumstances and the appropriate way to act.
- Look at the overall image first. The two trigrams and how they sit relative to each other are already half the answer.
- Don’t ask the same question twice. The classic text says so directly: a second answer to the same question is not interpreted.
If there are no changing lines, the situation is stable: it is what it is, and it won’t shift on its own.
What's in this section
64 hexagrams — the meaning of each one: the image, the general meaning, the love and career answers, and advice.
8 trigrams — the three-line figures that hexagrams are built from. The same trigrams are used in feng shui and in calculating the Kua number.
An Honest Look at the Method
The Book of Changes is a cultural monument and a philosophical text, not a prediction tool: coin divination has no verifiable ability to foresee the future, and the result of each toss is random. The value of the method lies elsewhere — the hexagram provides a ready-made frame within which a person puts into words what they already knew about their situation. Decisions about health, money or legal matters should not be made on this basis.
Related in This Section
Other Chinese ways to obtain and read a hexagram: Mei Hua Yi Shu builds it from the date and hour of the question or from numbers you name, and Liu Yao analyzes each line by the elements, the month and the day.