I Ching Reflections

The three-coin method

Three coins and a pen are all you need to cast an I Ching reading yourself. The method has been in use for about a thousand years and is the most common way of consulting the book today.

What you need

  • Three similar coins.
  • Paper and a pen, or this site's "Enter my own cast" option.
  • A few quiet minutes and your question in mind.

Values of the coins

Give one side of the coin the value 3 and the other the value 2. The usual convention is heads = 3and tails = 2. Some traditions use the opposite; what matters is that you stay consistent.

Casting, line by line

  1. Hold your question in mind and toss all three coins.
  2. Add the values: the total is 6, 7, 8 or 9.
    • 6 (three tails): old yin, a broken line that is changing. Draw – – ×
    • 7 (two tails, one head): young yang, a solid line. Draw ———
    • 8 (two heads, one tail): young yin, a broken line. Draw – –
    • 9 (three heads): old yang, a solid line that is changing. Draw ——— ○
  3. This is line 1, the bottom line. Write it at the bottom of your page.
  4. Repeat five more times, drawing each new line above the previous one, until you have six lines.

Finding the hexagram

The bottom three lines form the lower trigram and the top three form the upper trigram. Look them up in thetrigram table, or enter the six values on the casting pageunder "Enter my own cast" to get the full reading, including the resulting hexagram.

Probabilities

With three fair coins, a 7 or an 8 each come up 3 times in 8, and a 6 or a 9 each come up once in 8. So most readings have one or two changing lines, and about one in six has none.