Liu Yao
Liu Yao, the “Six Lines,” is the most detailed Chinese way of reading an I Ching hexagram. Each line gets a branch with its element, a relative and a spirit, and the answer is sought not in the text of the book but in the strength of the relevant line in the month and on the day. The calculator tosses the coins, lays out the hexagram by the Na Jia rules and shows how the tradition reads the question you chose.
Frame your question and press “Toss the coins”: the calculator tosses three coins six times, from the bottom up, and fills in the time of the toss. If you tossed real coins, choose the line values yourself: the side without an inscription counts as 3, the side with one as 2. The time is taken from your device's clock.
What's in the Reading
- The main and changed hexagrams, with links to their interpretations.
- The palace (八宫) and its element, the hexagram's “generation,” and the Self (世) and Other (应) lines.
- Each line: its Na Jia stem and branch, element, relative (六亲) in relation to the palace element, and spirit (六神) from the day stem.
- The moving lines and what they change into: the branch and relative of the changed line, advancing and retreating, returning generation and returning control.
- Time: the year, month and day pillars and the day's Void (旬空); hidden spirits (伏神) for relatives missing from the hexagram.
- The Use God (用神): its strength by month and day, the Void, clashes, and the relatives that generate and threaten it, with the traditional reading.
How the Hexagram Is Laid Out
- Lines. Three coins give 6, 7, 8 or 9 points: 7 is young yang, 8 young yin, 9 old yang, 6 old yin. Old lines move: in the changed hexagram, yang becomes yin and vice versa. The probabilities are 1/8 for 6 and 9 and 3/8 for 7 and 8.
- Palace. The 64 hexagrams fall into eight palaces, one for each of the eight trigrams. Each palace has a pure hexagram, five “generations” in which lines 1 through 5 change one at a time from the bottom up, a “Wandering Soul” (line 4 changes back again) and a “Returning Soul” (the lower trigram reverts to the palace trigram).
- Self and Other. The Self line is line 6 in a pure hexagram, lines 1–5 in the generations according to their number, line 4 in a Wandering Soul and line 3 in a Returning Soul. The Other line is three places from Self, with two lines in between.
- Na Jia. Each trigram is assigned a stem and three branches, separately for the lower and the upper position (see the table below).
- The Six Relatives follow the element of the branch compared with the palace element: the same element is Siblings, an element the palace generates is Offspring, an element the palace controls is Wealth, an element that controls the palace is Officer, and an element that generates the palace is Parents. The relatives of changed lines are counted from the element of the main palace.
- The Six Spirits run from the bottom up, starting from the day stem: 甲 and 乙 — Azure Dragon, 丙 and 丁 — Vermilion Bird, 戊 — Hooked Array, 己 — Flying Snake, 庚 and 辛 — White Tiger, 壬 and 癸 — Dark Warrior.
- Hidden spirits. If a relative is missing from the hexagram, it is taken from the pure hexagram of the palace: in the same position, it is “hidden” under the line of the main hexagram.
| Trigram | Lower, lines 1–3 | Upper, lines 4–6 |
|---|---|---|
| Qian 乾 | 甲 子 寅 辰 | 壬 午 申 戌 |
| Kun 坤 | 乙 未 巳 卯 | 癸 丑 亥 酉 |
| Zhen 震 | 庚 子 寅 辰 | 庚 午 申 戌 |
| Xun 巽 | 辛 丑 亥 酉 | 辛 未 巳 卯 |
| Kan 坎 | 戊 寅 辰 午 | 戊 申 戌 子 |
| Li 离 | 己 卯 丑 亥 | 己 酉 未 巳 |
| Gen 艮 | 丙 辰 午 申 | 丙 戌 子 寅 |
| Dui 兑 | 丁 巳 卯 丑 | 丁 亥 酉 未 |
The time of the question is taken from your device's clock. The day changes at 23:00 (you can choose midnight in the form), and the month changes at the jie solar term, not by the lunar calendar. The Void is the two branches that found no place in the day's decade.
We checked the layout against two independent open-source libraries, @astralium/liuyao and najia, on five thousand random hexagrams with dates from 1950 to 2049: the palace, generation, Self and Other, stems and branches, relatives, spirits, Void, month branch and hidden spirits matched in every case. A third library, ichingshifa, matched in everything except the Other line in fourth-generation hexagrams: it puts it on line 6, although by the rule and the classical tables it is line 1.
How to Read
First, choose the Use God (用神): the relative that governs the topic.
| Question | Use God |
|---|---|
| money, a deal, property; a wife or girlfriend when a man asks | Wealth (妻财) |
| work, a position, bosses, the authorities, a court case; a husband when a woman asks | Officer (官鬼) |
| documents, contracts, home, study, parents, transport | Parents (父母) |
| children, students, medicine and treatment, rest | Offspring (子孙) |
| brothers and sisters, friends, colleagues, rivals | Siblings (兄弟) |
| yourself, a general question | the Self line (世) |
- Strength. The Use God is strong if its element is prosperous or growing in the month and the day supports it, by generating it, sharing its element or matching its branch. A clash with the month branch is a “Month Break”; a clash with the day branch breaks a weak still line, while a strong one is “secretly set in motion.”
- Void. A line in the day's Void is as good as absent. For a strong or moving line the Void is temporary; for a weak, still line it is real.
- Movement. A moving line is what changes in the matter. What it changes into is important: returning generation helps, returning control harms, advancing (for example, 寅 → 卯) means the matter is gaining momentum, and retreating means it is backing off.
- Help and threat. The generating relative, the Source God (原神), feeds the Use God, while the threatening one, the Taboo God (忌神), controls it; if the threatening relative is moving, tradition considers this the main danger.
- The spirits color a line: Azure Dragon is joy, Vermilion Bird is words and documents, White Tiger is harshness, Dark Warrior is secrecy and deceit.
An Honest Look at the Method
The Na Jia system is attributed to Jing Fang (1st century BC), and Liu Yao took its present form in books of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the “Bu Shi Zheng Zong” and the “Zeng Shan Bu Yi.” The layout is unambiguous, and the calculator computes it exactly. The reading is not: schools differ in how they assess strength, in how they choose the Use God when several lines fit, and in timing.
The predictive power of the method has not been tested. A reading is useful as a prompt to break a question down into parts — who is involved, what helps, what gets in the way — but not as a basis for decisions about health, money and safety.
Related in This Section
Frequently asked questions
How do I toss the coins properly?
Focus on a single question and toss three coins six times; the first toss gives the bottom line. The side without an inscription counts as 3 and the side with one as 2: a total of 7 is young yang, 8 is young yin, 9 is old yang and 6 is old yin. The “Toss the coins” button does the same thing.
Why do the date and time matter?
In Liu Yao, the strength of the lines is judged by the month and day of the question, and the spirits and the Void depend on the day pillar. So the same hexagram reads differently on different days.
What if the relative I need isn't in the hexagram?
Then it is hidden under one of the lines: the calculator finds it from the pure hexagram of the palace and judges it the same way, by the month and day. Traditionally, a hidden Use God means a matter that has not yet surfaced.
How is Liu Yao different from reading the Book of Changes?
In the classical I Ching, you read the texts of the hexagram and the moving lines. Liu Yao barely uses the text: the answer is sought in the elements — which relative governs the question, whether it is strong in this month and on this day, and what helps and harms it.