I Ching (周易) — yarrow stalks or three coins
Throws six lines by simulating the ritual itself: fifty yarrow stalks divided three times per line, or three coins. The two give different odds — a changing yang is three times as likely as a changing yin with stalks, equally likely with coins — and the page prints which you used and the arithmetic of every line. The Chinese text sits beside the translation.
The 周易 answers by hexagram: six lines thrown from the bottom up, each either ordinary or *changing*, and the changing ones turn the figure into a second one. This page throws them by simulating the actual procedures — fifty yarrow stalks divided three times per line, or three coins — and shows the arithmetic of every throw, because the two methods do not give the same odds and most pages that offer both do not say so.
This is entertainment. The throw is real randomness and the texts are three thousand years old, but nothing here knows anything about your situation and the 周易 predicts nothing.
Old yin 1/16 · old yang 3/16 · young yang 5/16 · young yin 7/16. The ritual is simulated: the pile really is divided three times per line.
The two are not the same oracle. With stalks a changing yang is three times as likely as a changing yin; with coins they are equally likely.
The lines are built from the bottom up, one throw each.
Sources
- The Chinese text is the 周易 from Chinese Wikisource: the 卦辭 and the six 爻辭 only. The Ten Wings are commentary and are deliberately left out.
- The English is James Legge, The Yî King (Sacred Books of the East XVI, Oxford, 1882), transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of the first printing. Public domain.
- The Korean is our own translation from the Chinese, checked against Legge. It is not a quotation and the page says so.
- The throw uses crypto.getRandomValues. Both methods are simulated as the procedures they are, and the resulting line frequencies are asserted in the tests.
- Judgments and line texts quoted from James Legge, The Yî King (Sacred Books of the East XVI, Oxford, 1882), transcribed from the Internet Archive scan. Public domain.
How to use it
Write the question down first
The box is for you, not for us — it is not sent anywhere and it does not touch the throw. It is there because a hexagram read against a question you have already fixed reads very differently from one you fit a question to afterwards.
Choose stalks or coins, knowing they differ
With fifty stalks the four outcomes come up 1/16, 3/16, 5/16 and 7/16 of the time; with three coins it is 1/8, 3/8, 3/8, 1/8. The stalk ritual makes a changing yang three times as likely as a changing yin, which the coins flatten out. Neither is more correct; they are different oracles, and the page prints the odds beside each.
Read the changing lines, not the whole hexagram
The tradition reads the judgment of the hexagram you threw, then the texts of the lines that changed — and only those. The lines that did not change are not part of the answer. With no changing line at all there is one hexagram and the judgment is the whole of it.
Check the original beside the translation
Every text is shown in Chinese as well. The English is Legge’s 1882 wording, quoted; the Korean is ours, made from the Chinese with Legge alongside. The page labels which is which, because those two things do not carry the same weight.
Common questions
Why are the yarrow probabilities uneven?
Because the ritual is arithmetic, not a die. Each line takes three passes; the first sets aside 5 or 9 stalks and the other two set aside 4 or 8, and the pile that is left over, divided by four, is the line. Only one of the four first-pass remainders produces a 9, which is where the 1/16 comes from. We simulate the divisions rather than looking up the four numbers, and the tests measure what comes out.
Is this the whole book?
No. It is the 易經 proper: the judgment on each of the 64 hexagrams and the six line texts under it — 450 passages. The Ten Wings (彖傳, 象傳, 文言 and the rest) are commentary written centuries later, they are several times longer, and a divination page that quietly folds them into the oracle is misrepresenting what it quotes.
Whose Korean translation is this?
Ours. There is no public-domain modern Korean translation to quote — the Joseon-era 주역언해 is unreadable in modern orthography and every modern edition is in copyright — so rather than lift someone’s work we translated from the Chinese with Legge’s English as a check, and the page says on its face that this half is not a quotation.
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