The I Ching, the Book of Changes, is one of the oldest books in the world still in daily use. For around three thousand years people have turned to it in times of doubt, not to be told their future, but to see their present more clearly. This is a quiet place to meet it.
Before you ask your first question, I would gently invite you to read a little first: where the book comes from, how to use it well, and how to use it with care. It takes about ten minutes, and it will make every reading richer.
Free to consult, with a free PDF of your reading to keep. Personal readings from S. Y. Kelake from £20.
An old saying tells of a finger pointing at the moon. Stare at the finger for too long and you miss the moon entirely. This site is a finger. My words are a finger. Even the coins are a finger. The moon is what you discover for yourself when you sit with the I Ching, come back to it, and let it work on you slowly.
You may discover a great deal, or very little. Both are right for the moment you meet it in. The point is to return, again and again.
The I Ching has two histories. One is the story the tradition tells, full of sages and kings. The other is what historians have pieced together from bone, bronze and silk. Both are worth knowing, and knowing the difference between them is the first lesson in reading the book with clear eyes.
Fu Xi, a legendary sage-ruler, looked up at the patterns in the heavens and down at the markings on the earth, and from them drew the eight trigrams. Fu Xi belongs to legend rather than recorded history, but his story tells us what the trigrams meant to those who kept them: an attempt to map how the whole world changes.
Kings asked questions of their ancestors by heating turtle shells and ox bones and reading the cracks. Many thousands of these oracle bones survive. Divination by counting yarrow stalks grew up alongside them, and the I Ching's line-by-line method comes out of that world.
King Wen of Zhou, held prisoner by the last Shang king, arranged the sixty-four hexagrams in the order still used today and wrote the Judgment for each. His son, the Duke of Zhou, is credited with the texts for the six lines. This is why the core text is called the Zhouyi, the Changes of Zhou.
Most scholars now date the core text to this period, gathered over generations by court diviners rather than written by a single hand. King Wen and the Duke of Zhou are best understood as the patrons the tradition honoured, rather than its proven authors.
Confucius is said to have studied the book so hard in old age that the leather thongs binding his bamboo copy wore through three times, and he is recorded as wishing for more years to give to it. The tradition credits him with the Ten Wings, the commentaries that turned an oracle into a book of moral philosophy. Scholars think the Wings were written by later followers, between about the fourth and second centuries BC.
When the first emperor of Qin ordered books to be burned, the I Ching was spared because it counted as a practical manual of divination. Its philosophy survived by looking like fortune-telling.
The I Ching became one of the Five Classics at the heart of Chinese learning for the next two thousand years. Taoists and Confucians alike claimed it as their own.
Archaeologists at Mawangdui opened a tomb sealed in 168 BC and found a copy written on silk, with the hexagrams in a different order from the one we know. Even the Book of Changes has changed.
Jesuit missionaries carried the book to Europe. The philosopher Leibniz noticed that one traditional arrangement of the hexagrams, read as broken and unbroken lines, follows the binary number system he had been working on. Every computer today counts in something very like yin and yang.
James Legge published an English translation in 1882. Richard Wilhelm, who studied the book with a Chinese scholar, published his German translation in 1924. Cary F. Baynes's English version of Wilhelm appeared in 1950 with a foreword by the psychologist C. G. Jung, and it is the edition most Western readers have met since.
The book is read as poetry, philosophy, psychology and oracle, sometimes all four in one afternoon. This site stands in that long line: one more voice, offering one interpretation.
The I Ching does not give answers in the way a search engine does. It gives you an image of your situation and asks you to look at it. Used that way, it is wise company. Used as a fortune-telling machine, it is mostly confusing.
| Less helpful | Try instead |
|---|---|
| Will I get the job? | What should I understand about how I am approaching this job? |
| Does she love me? | What do I need to see about my own part in this relationship? |
| Will the shares go up? | What is my attitude to risk teaching me at the moment? |
| Should I stop my medication? | That one belongs with your doctor. You might ask: what would help me have an honest conversation with my doctor? |
Three coins, six throws. Heads are worth three and tails two, so every throw adds up to 6, 7, 8 or 9.
7 is a steady yang line (solid). 8 is a steady yin line (broken). 9 is yang at its fullest, so full it is about to turn into yin, and is marked ○. 6 is yin at its fullest, about to turn into yang, and is marked ×.
These turning lines are the Degrees of Change you read closely. Flip each one into its opposite and a second hexagram appears, showing where the situation is heading.
The lower three lines are the inner trigram, the situation as you feel it. The upper three are the outer trigram, the situation as it meets the world. You can see all sixty-four on the Grid.
I want everyone who uses this site to leave a little clearer and a little steadier than they arrived. That means being honest about what the I Ching can and cannot do, and about where other kinds of help are better.
Notice what you hoped the answer would be. Ask what else the reading could mean. A striking coincidence is not proof; meaning is something you bring to the text. And if a reading ever seems to push you towards harming yourself or someone else, trust your conscience over the coins every time.
Nothing on this site is medical, psychological, legal or financial advice. For your health, speak to your GP or call NHS 111. For legal and money matters, speak to a qualified adviser. The I Ching can help you prepare for those conversations. It should never replace them.
If you find yourself reaching for the coins many times a day, or feeling unable to act without a reading, take that as a sign to step back. The book itself prizes self-reliance. Use it less, and live with each reading longer.
Your questions, readings and journal stay in the browser on your own device. Nothing is sent to me unless you download a PDF or ask for a reading; then your email and that reading come to me, are used only for that, and are never shared. Clearing your browser data will clear your journal too, so download any reading you want to keep as a PDF.
I am S. Y. Kelake, a writer and lifelong student of the classic texts of China. My books are companions rather than commentaries. The Quiet Door walks through the Tao Te Ching, The Whole Walk through the Zhuangzi, and The Book of Changes: A First Walk Through the I Ching through all sixty-four hexagrams. They are published by SYK Publishing Ltd.
In the West the I Ching has often been treated either as an exotic fortune-telling game or as a scholarly puzzle too dense to enter. It is neither. It is a practical and deeply humane book about how to meet change with good character. I built this oracle so that people could meet it honestly: its history told straight, its method explained plainly, and its limits stated clearly.
All the interpretations here are my own, written from my study of the I Ching. Where I draw on the old tradition, I say so.
Read more about me · My books · The Divine Triangle numerology readings
My interpretation is mine. I am happy to share it; it may serve some use, it may not, and both are good and correct. My interpretations are there to help, not to shape your understanding. If they shape, they clone. You must engage. If you see the same, that is good. If you don't, that is good. If you don't know, that is also good. Just flow.
S. Y. Kelake
Ask an open question rather than a yes or no. "What should I understand about this new job?" will serve you better than "Should I take it?" Write it down, take a breath, and let it settle before you throw.
Heads count three, tails count two. Each throw makes one line, built from the bottom upward, as a house is built from its foundation.
Throw your three coins, then tap each one to match how it landed.
0 heads, 3 tails · 2 + 2 + 2 = 6 · moving yin ×
Line 1 of 6
The text above is the same for everyone who casts this hexagram. A personal reading is different: I read your hexagram and its moving lines in the light of your own question and situation, and write back to you.
For The Full Picture, please add your full name at birth and date of birth in the box above.
I reply with how to pay before any work begins. Readings are for reflection, not prediction.
Kept privately in this browser. Return to them. The same hexagram often says something new the second time.
Every hexagram is two trigrams, one on top of the other. Find the lower trigram down the side and the upper trigram along the top; where they meet is the hexagram. Tap any square to read it. After a reading, your hexagram is filled in green and the one it is moving towards is ringed in red.
Shaded squares are the eight doubled hexagrams, where a trigram meets itself.