Casting a hexagram

As a matter of principle in casting a hexagram, to arrive at a correct result for a hexagram all three factors have to be there: the right person casting, the right hexagram, the right person reading it — otherwise it's only guesswork.

The three factors of a correct casting

• The right person casting: the person asking must know exactly what they are asking, and what detail within their question needs the weight. For example, someone asks about romance, but ask carefully which part of romance they want to ask about: if it's the ordinary case, then Wealth for a man and Officer for a woman; but if the person cares about property after marriage, look further at whether that property is real estate, or money, or jewellery. Real estate is Parents while money is Wealth. It's the same in other cases: only the person asking knows what they want, so don't want it on their behalf. And if for some reason the person concerned isn't able to ask, reading on their behalf needs a technique of its own, different from the technique for reading for the asker themselves; they have to be kept apart to avoid mistakes.
• The right hexagram: whether the hexagram is right depends first on the person asking knowing what they want, so that they can concentrate on the casting. It has nothing to do with any spiritual method or rite; any spiritual rite that comes with it has no purpose beyond making the caster concentrate better. The most important thing while casting is not to think about many things at once; if there are several tangles, take them in the order of what matters most to you within the narrow space. For example, someone asks about work and about love: if in the last few days the love affair has been on their mind, then read romance first; if, say, they have been together a long time and work has lately gone unsteady, so that it worries them, then take work first.
• The right person reading: at this point all that remains lies in the technique of the person reading the hexagram.

The yin and yang convention in casting

There's no particular convention about yin and yang for each individual coin used in casting, only the general convention for what makes a yin or a yang line, as follows.

With old cash coins

With old cash coins such as Khải Định Thông Bảo or Càn Long Thông Bảo…, the convention is:

• Two inscribed faces and one plain face: Yang
• Two plain faces and one inscribed face: Yin
• Three inscribed faces: Yin moving
• Three plain faces: Yang moving

With modern coins

With modern coins (on condition that all three coins used are the same), the convention is:

• Two number faces (Tails) and one head face (Heads) is Yang
• Two head faces (Heads) and one number face (Tails) is Yin
• Three number faces (Tails) is Yin moving
• Three head faces (Heads) is Yang moving

How the hexagram is written

Write from the bottom upwards: line 1 corresponds to the first throw, and so on up to line 6.

Ways of obtaining a hexagram of the Yi

The ways of obtaining a hexagram of the Yi are:

• Taking it from the time
• The second way is casting with coins

The second way is casting with coins

Written in order from the bottom up, with the convention that the inscribed face is C and the plain face is H:

Three coins	Line	Name	Mark
CCH		Yang	—
CHH		Yin	- -
HHH		Moving yang	○
CCC		Moving yin	×

Example: six tosses, recorded bottom to top

1. Toss 6CCC
2. Toss 5CCH
3. Toss 4HHC
4. Toss 3CCH
5. Toss 2HHH
6. Toss 1CCH

Result

Waiting (Xu) changes to The Family (Jia Ren) Earth (Kun) Palace · Earth

Wealth	Zi Water			×		Officer line · Mao Wood
Siblings	Xu Earth
Offspring	Shen Metal	Self
Siblings	Chen Earth
Officer line	Yin Wood			○		Siblings · Chou Earth
Wealth	Zi Water	Resp.

Referred against the 64 hexagrams, this gives the chart of each hexagram.

See also

• Casting a hexagram from the time
• The eight palaces and the 64 hexagrams, The 64 hexagrams and how they are named
• Target line — the next step once the chart is out
• Moving line, Principles of reading a hexagram