Free I Ching reading online
Ask a question, toss three coins six times, and receive one of the 64 hexagrams of the Book of Changes, with its changing lines and where the situation is heading.
What's on your mind?
Read my cards forThe question is optional. Holding it in mind while you choose is what matters.
How to do this reading
- IWrite your question. The I Ching answers best when you ask how to act: "How should I approach…" rather than "Will…"
- IIToss the three coins six times. Each toss makes one line, from the bottom of the hexagram to the top.
- IIIRead your hexagram. If any lines are changing, the reading shows which lines matter most and the hexagram your situation is moving toward.
How the I Ching is read
The I Ching (易經, Yì Jīng), the Book of Changes, is one of the oldest books in the world. Its core, the Zhouyi, dates to the Western Zhou dynasty, around 3,000 years ago. Each of its 64 hexagrams is a stack of six solid (yang) or broken (yin) lines, with a judgment for the whole and a text for every line.
In the three-coin method, heads count 3 and tails 2. A total of 7 gives a solid line and 8 a broken line. A 9 is an old yang line and a 6 an old yin line: these are changing lines, about to turn into their opposite, and they produce a second, relating hexagram.
Which texts to read follows the rules set out by the Song dynasty scholar Zhu Xi: no changing lines, read the judgment; one changing line, read that line; two, read both with the upper leading; three, read both judgments; four or five, read the unchanging lines of the relating hexagram; all six, read the relating judgment (or the special texts of hexagrams 1 and 2).
Every reading shows the original classical Chinese next to our own English rendering, so you can see exactly what the text says.
Questions
Can I use real coins?
Yes. Toss three coins six times, count heads as 3 and tails as 2, and write the totals from the bottom up. The hexagram list has a lookup table to find your hexagram.
What are changing lines?
Lines that scored 6 or 9. They show where the situation is unstable or in motion, carry the most specific advice, and flip to form the relating hexagram, which shows where things are heading.
How often should I ask the same question?
Traditionally, once. Hexagram 4 (Inexperience) warns that asking again and again muddies the answer. Sit with the reading for a while before asking anything new.
Is this a translation of the I Ching?
The Chinese text is the received Zhouyi. The English is our own rendering and interpretation, written for modern life and checked against the classical commentaries.
Read the hexagrams
Every hexagram in your reading links to its full page: the judgment, the image and all six lines in Chinese and English. Browse all 64 hexagrams, or read what the I Ching is and how it works.