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Divination

Casting the I Ching with Three Coins

Also called Yijing, Book of Changes, coin oracle

Tossing three coins six times to build a hexagram from the Chinese Book of Changes, then reading its text as counsel on a situation.

TraditionChinese Yijing divination
RegionChina
EraCoin method common by the Song dynasty (960 to 1279)
Moon◐ Any moon
DayAny
Element—
Difficulty●●○ Moderate
Time30 minutes

Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.

The working

  1. Write your question as a request for understanding, for example 'What should I know about taking this job?'
  2. Shake the three coins in cupped hands and drop them. Count heads as 3 and tails as 2.
  3. A total of 6 is a changing yin line, 7 an unchanging yang line, 8 an unchanging yin line, 9 a changing yang line.
  4. Draw the line, then repeat five more times, building the hexagram from the bottom up.
  5. Find the hexagram in the book's chart and read its judgment and image.
  6. If you threw any changing lines, read those line texts, then flip them to their opposites to find a second hexagram describing where things are heading.
  7. Record the date, question and both hexagrams.

Take care: Wash hands after handling old coins. The I Ching is a living text in Chinese culture, so use a good translation and treat it with respect.

Versions across time and place

i

Yarrow stalk method

Classical Chinese, reconstructed by Zhu Xi · Zhou roots; reconstruction 12th century

Fifty yarrow stalks are divided and counted out in a long sequence to produce each line. The Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi reconstructed the procedure from the terse instructions in the Great Treatise. It gives different odds from the coins, making changing yang lines more likely than changing yin.

Uses: 50 yarrow stalks

Recorded in: Xici commentary (Great Treatise) of the Yijing; Zhu Xi, Yixue qimeng (1186)
ii

Shang and Zhou bone and shell oracles

Bronze Age Chinese royal divination · c. 1250 to 1046 BCE

Before the Book of Changes, Shang kings had diviners heat ox shoulder blades and turtle plastrons until they cracked, and read the cracks; the questions and results were carved onto the bone. The later Zhou yarrow-and-text system grew up alongside and after this practice.

Recorded in: Richard J. Smith, Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World (2008)
iii

Jung's experiments

20th-century Western psychology · 1920s to 1950

Richard Wilhelm's 1924 German translation, rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes, came with a foreword in which Carl Jung described consulting the coins and used the book to discuss his idea of synchronicity. This edition made the three-coin method the standard Western practice.

Recorded in: Carl Jung, foreword to the Wilhelm/Baynes translation (1950)

History

The Zhouyi, the core text of the Book of Changes, took shape in the Western Zhou period, roughly 1000 to 750 BCE, as a diviner's manual of 64 hexagrams with short line statements. The 'Ten Wings' commentaries, attributed by tradition to Confucius, turned it into a book of philosophy, and it became one of the Confucian classics. Each hexagram has a name, a judgment and six line texts.

The original yarrow procedure had become uncertain by medieval times, and Zhu Xi reconstructed it in the 1100s. Meanwhile the quicker three-coin toss spread and was common by the Song period, though its first appearance is debated. In 1950 the Wilhelm/Baynes translation with Jung's foreword brought the coin method to English readers. Coins made the oracle quick and portable, and most modern Chinese and Western users throw coins today.

Sources

  1. The I Ching or Book of Changes · Richard Wilhelm, trans. Cary F. Baynes, 1950
  2. Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing and Its Evolution in China · Richard J. Smith, 2008
  3. I Ching divination · Wikipedia

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