易經 · The Book of Changes
Ask a real
question.
Cast the change.
The I Ching is not a fortune-teller. It is a mirror with sixty-four faces — a three-thousand-year-old method for thinking clearly about a moment you cannot yet see whole. Hold your situation in mind, throw the lines, and read where it is already turning.
Hold a real question in mind for a breath, then cast. Each throw builds six lines from the ground up — and where lines are changing, read the full text below.
Each line is thrown from the ground up. Solid lines are yang, open lines are yin; a line marked in cinnabar is changing — already becoming its opposite, and pointing to the hexagram your situation is moving toward.
八卦 · Bagua
The eight trigrams
Every hexagram is two trigrams stacked — a lower force and an upper one. There are only eight, and each has been translated a dozen ways. Move through them, and turn each card to compare how Wilhelm, Legge, Huang and the older traditions render the same three lines.
六十四卦 · Complete
All sixty-four hexagrams
The full sequence, in the traditional King Wen order. Open any hexagram for the complete classical text — James Legge’s 1882 translation of the Judgment, the Image, and all six line statements. Search by name, number, or theme.
How to read it
A method, not a magic trick
The I Ching — the Yi Jing, or Book of Changes — is one of the oldest books in continuous use on Earth. Confucius is said to have wished for fifty more years to study it; Leibniz read the hexagrams as binary; Jung used them to talk about synchronicity. What survives the mysticism is a genuinely useful instrument: a structured way to slow down and look at a situation from an angle you would not have chosen yourself.
A reading works in three moves. First, the primary hexagram — the shape of the situation right now, read as an upper trigram acting on a lower one. Second, the changing lines — the places where the pattern is unstable and already turning. Third, the relating hexagram — where those changes are carrying you, if nothing intervenes. The skill is not in the casting. It is in reading the figure honestly against a question you actually care about.
Ask something concrete and open — not “will this happen,” but “what am I not seeing about this.” Cast once. Read the primary hexagram first and let it land before you look at where it leads. The oracle is a prompt for your own judgment, sharpened by a frame older than almost everything else you will read today.
Index of the sixty-four hexagrams
1 The Creative 乾; 2 The Receptive 坤; 3 Difficulty at the Beginning 屯; 4 Youthful Folly 蒙; 5 Waiting 需; 6 Conflict 訟; 7 The Army 師; 8 Holding Together 比; 9 Small Taming 小畜; 10 Treading 履; 11 Peace 泰; 12 Standstill 否; 13 Fellowship 同人; 14 Great Possession 大有; 15 Modesty 謙; 16 Enthusiasm 豫; 17 Following 隨; 18 Work on the Decayed 蠱; 19 Approach 臨; 20 Contemplation 觀; 21 Biting Through 噬嗑; 22 Grace 賁; 23 Splitting Apart 剝; 24 Return 復; 25 Innocence 無妄; 26 Great Taming 大畜; 27 Nourishment 頤; 28 Great Preponderance 大過; 29 The Abysmal 坎; 30 The Clinging 離; 31 Influence 咸; 32 Duration 恆; 33 Retreat 遯; 34 Great Power 大壯; 35 Progress 晉; 36 Darkening of the Light 明夷; 37 The Family 家人; 38 Opposition 睽; 39 Obstruction 蹇; 40 Deliverance 解; 41 Decrease 損; 42 Increase 益; 43 Breakthrough 夬; 44 Coming to Meet 姤; 45 Gathering Together 萃; 46 Pushing Upward 升; 47 Oppression 困; 48 The Well 井; 49 Revolution 革; 50 The Cauldron 鼎; 51 The Arousing 震; 52 Keeping Still 艮; 53 Development 漸; 54 The Marrying Maiden 歸妹; 55 Abundance 豐; 56 The Wanderer 旅; 57 The Gentle 巽; 58 The Joyous 兌; 59 Dispersion 渙; 60 Limitation 節; 61 Inner Truth 中孚; 62 Small Preponderance 小過; 63 After Completion 既濟; 64 Before Completion 未濟.