Cast a hexagram
The three-coin method, cast for you six times from the bottom up. If any lines are moving, you'll also see the hexagram your situation is changing into — and the Tarot card it rhymes with.
A solid line is yang, a broken line is yin; a small mark shows a moving line that is turning into its opposite. New to this? Read how the I Ching works, or browse all 64 hexagrams. Want the Tarot's answer to the same question too? Read it two ways → For reflection and insight, not fortune-telling — see our disclaimer.
How the cast works
The traditional method tosses three coins six times. Each throw builds one line of the hexagram from the bottom up, and the mix of heads and tails decides not only whether the line is yang (solid) or yin (broken) but whether it is moving. Three of a kind — three heads or three tails — produces an old, charged line: old yang at its peak, or old yin at the turn. A mixed throw gives a young, settled line — young yang or young yin — that simply rests as it is. This tool runs the same odds for you, so the weight of each line falls where chance and tradition place it.
Moving lines are the heart of the reading. Each one is ripe to flip into its opposite, and together they transform the first hexagram into a second — the changing hexagram, or zhi gua. Read the first as your situation now, the moving lines as where the pressure and the change are gathering, and the second as where things are tending if that movement runs its course. The Judgment and the Image offer the classic counsel for each. None of this predicts a fixed future: the I Ching is less an oracle of fate than a mirror held up to the moment, returning your own question in older, steadier words so you can see it more plainly and choose with a clearer mind.