Coming from tarot

A cast is not a spread

A spread lays several cards in positions that mean past, present, obstacle, outcome. A cast gives you one hexagram, built line by line from the bottom, and that one figure is the whole answer. There are no positions to assign. What a spread gets from its layout, a cast gets from its lines: the lines that come up old (a 6 or a 9) are the part of the answer about you, now, and they point to a second hexagram, which is the direction of travel. So a cast reads like a one-card draw that unfolds into a two-card story.

The question works the same way. One concrete question, held while you throw. The old advice is not to ask the same thing twice in a sitting; the text of 4 蒙 Méng says it plainly: the first asking is answered, the second and third are not.

The 64 as a deck

Think of the hexagrams as a deck of sixty-four numbered cards with names: 1 乾 Qián heaven, 2 坤 Kūn earth, 11 泰 Tài peace, 12 否 Pǐ obstruction, 24 復 Fù return, 64 未濟 Wèi Jì not yet across. Where a tarot card has an image to read, a hexagram has a figure and a text. The figure is two trigrams, one over the other, and the trigrams carry images of their own: thunder under earth is 24 復 Fù, something stirring deep down; fire over water is 64 未濟 Wèi Jì, the two elements pulling apart. The eight trigrams are the nearest thing to the suits, and learning them is the nearest thing to learning the minor arcana.

Unlike a deck, the sixty-four have an order with a logic: they come in pairs, each figure next to itself turned upside down. The page of all 64 shows the pairs and lets you tap from one figure to its neighbours.

Changing lines, not reversals

Tarot has reversals; the I Ching has changing lines, and they do more. Each of a hexagram's six lines has its own short statement, so when line 3 of 42 益 Yì comes up old, you read that statement, and line 3 is also the line that turns the figure into 37 家人 Jiā Rén. One throw gives you a general text, a specific text, and a second figure. If no line changes, the reading is the first hexagram as it stands, which has a meaning of its own: the situation is settled, for now.

A daily hexagram

A daily card has an exact counterpart. Cast once in the morning with no question, or let the date cast for you: the Plum Blossom method on the cast page builds a hexagram from the lunar date and the hour, so everyone casting in the same two hours gets the same figure. There is also a hexagram of the month, in a Han dynasty tradition that lays twelve of them over the year; it is on the home page. Your readings stay in the journal in your browser, so a pattern over weeks is yours to see.

Reading the page

Each hexagram page is in the same order. The name, the figure and a two-sentence plain reading come first. Then the Zhou text itself in Chinese with James Legge's 1882 English beside each clause: Legge is faithful and Victorian, which is why the plain reading is there too. Then the six lines, each with its own page. Then the words in everyday Chinese that came from this hexagram, the related figures, and where the characters of the name come from, back to the oracle bones. The text is three thousand years old and very short; the reading is ours and says so. What you will not find is a promise about what happens next.

Try one

• Cast with three coins, one throw per line. The page names each line as it lands.
• For the whole picture in ten minutes: what the I Ching is, and how to read a hexagram.