How to consult the I Ching with coins or yarrow stalks

Written by Orbitarot · Sources: listed at the end of this guide · Updated October 7, 2026

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Key finding: Three coins give lines of 6, 7, 8 and 9 with odds of 1/8, 3/8, 3/8 and 1/8, against 1/16, 5/16, 7/16 and 3/16 for yarrow; our 400,000-line yarrow simulation came out at 5.20%, 28.91%, 44.90% and 20.99%.

How do you consult the I Ching?

To consult the I Ching, write one clear question, then cast six lines from the bottom up with three coins or 49 yarrow stalks. Each cast gives a 6, 7, 8 or 9. The six lines form a hexagram, and any 6s and 9s are changing lines that turn it into a second hexagram.

The whole process takes a few minutes with coins and much longer with stalks, since each line needs three divisions. You can do it by hand and enter your numbers, or let our free I Ching reading tool toss the coins or divide the stalks for you. Either way, the steps below are the same, and the odds behind them are exact enough to check with a pencil.

How should you phrase your question?

Ask an open question about something you can act on, such as "What should I understand about this job offer?" or "What attitude helps me in this conflict?" The I Ching answers with a situation and an attitude, not a yes or no, so questions that start with what or how get the most usable readings.

Write the question down before you cast, keep it to one subject, and ask it once. The book itself is direct about repeat asking. The judgment of hexagram 4, Youthful Folly, speaks in the voice of a teacher:

"When he shows (the sincerity that marks) the first recourse to divination, I instruct him. If he apply a second and third time, that is troublesome; and I do not instruct the troublesome." (James Legge, The I Ching, 1882, hexagram 4)

The practical lesson: if you dislike an answer, sit with it for a day rather than casting again. For more on wording, our guide on how to ask good questions was written for tarot, but the same rules apply here. Keep health, legal and money decisions with qualified people; a reading is for reflection.

How does the three-coin method work?

Toss three coins together six times. Count heads as 3 and tails as 2, then add the three coins. The total is always 6, 7, 8 or 9: 6 is old yin (broken, changing), 7 is young yang (solid), 8 is young yin (broken) and 9 is old yang (solid, changing). Each toss gives one line.

1. Hold three ordinary coins of the same kind. Decide in advance which side counts as heads.
2. Keep your question in mind and toss all three at once.
3. Add the values: heads 3, tails 2. Write the total down.
4. Repeat five more times, for six totals in all.
5. Draw each line: 7 and 9 are solid, 6 and 8 are broken. Mark 6 and 9 as changing.

Some books count heads as 2 and tails as 3. It makes no difference to the odds: swapping the values turns every 6 into a 9 and every 7 into an 8, and since 6 and 9 are equally likely with coins, as are 7 and 8, the four probabilities stay the same.

How do you write the lines and find your hexagram?

Write the first toss at the bottom and build upward, so line 1 is the lowest and line 6 the top. The bottom three lines form the lower trigram and the top three the upper trigram. Look up the pair in a hexagram table to get a number from 1 to 64.

Here is a real example. Suppose your six tosses, in order, total 7, 9, 8, 8, 6, 7. Written bottom-up, the lines are solid, solid (changing), broken, broken, broken (changing), solid.

The lower trigram (lines 1 to 3: solid, solid, broken) is Lake, and the upper trigram (lines 4 to 6: broken, broken, solid) is Mountain. Mountain over Lake is hexagram 41, Decrease. Flip the two changing lines and you get Wind over Thunder, hexagram 42, Increase. Our guide to the eight trigrams has the full 8 by 8 lookup table, and the list of all 64 hexagrams lets you jump straight to any number.

What are the exact odds of each line with coins and with yarrow?

With three coins, each line comes out 6 with probability 1/8, 7 with 3/8, 8 with 3/8 and 9 with 1/8. With the traditional yarrow stalk method the figures are 1/16, 5/16, 7/16 and 3/16. Both methods give a changing line one time in four, but they split those changes differently.

The coin figures follow from counting. Three coins have 2 x 2 x 2 = 8 equally likely outcomes. Only tails, tails, tails gives 2 + 2 + 2 = 6, and only heads, heads, heads gives 3 + 3 + 3 = 9, so each has 1 chance in 8. A total of 7 needs exactly one head, which can be the first, second or third coin: 3 chances in 8. A total of 8 needs exactly two heads: also 3 in 8.

Three things follow from this table:

• Yang and yin are equally likely with both methods. Coins: 3/8 + 1/8 = 1/2 yang. Yarrow: 5/16 + 3/16 = 8/16 = 1/2 yang. So any given hexagram has the same 1 in 64 chance either way.
• Changing lines are equally common with both methods. Coins: 1/8 + 1/8 = 1/4. Yarrow: 1/16 + 3/16 = 4/16 = 1/4.
• The kind of change differs. With coins, old yang and old yin are equally likely (1/8 each). With yarrow, old yang is three times as likely as old yin (3/16 against 1/16). So with yarrow, three changing lines in four are solid lines turning broken.

How many changing lines should you expect per reading?

On average you get 1.5 changing lines per hexagram with either method, because each of the six lines changes with probability 1/4 and 6 x 1/4 = 1.5. About 17.8% of readings have no changing lines at all, and about 82.2% have at least one.

The no-change figure is (3/4) to the sixth power: 729/4096 = 17.8%. One minus that, 3367/4096, is the 82.2% chance of at least one changing line. The full spread, from 0 up to all 6 lines changing, is worked out in our guide to I Ching changing lines, along with the rules for which text to read in each case.

Where the methods differ is in the direction of change. With coins you expect 0.75 old yang and 0.75 old yin lines per hexagram (6 x 1/8 each). With yarrow you expect 1.125 old yang lines (6 x 3/16) and only 0.375 old yin lines (6 x 1/16).

What did our 400,000-line yarrow simulation show?

We simulated 400,000 lines of the 49-stalk division exactly as our tool performs it. Old yin came out at 5.20%, young yang 28.91%, young yin 44.90% and old yang 20.99%. That is close to the traditional 1/16, 5/16, 7/16 and 3/16, but not exactly on them.

The simulation copies the steps in our tool's code: start with 49 stalks; split them at a random point that leaves at least one stalk in each pile; take one stalk from the right pile and set it aside; count each pile off by fours, keeping the remainder (1, 2, 3 or 4, never 0); remove the set-aside stalk and both remainders. Do that three times. The stalks left over are 24, 28, 32 or 36, and dividing by 4 gives 6, 7, 8 or 9.

Changing lines came out at 26.19% of all lines instead of 25%, which means about 1.57 changing lines per hexagram (6 x 0.2619) instead of 1.5. Old yang outnumbered old yin by about 4.0 to 1 instead of 3 to 1.

Why the gap? The traditional fractions assume that each remainder of 1, 2, 3 or 4 is equally likely. A real pile cannot quite deliver that. In the first division, the left pile holds anywhere from 1 to 47 stalks, and only 11 of those 47 sizes (4, 8, and so on up to 44) leave a remainder of 4. So the large first removal of 9 stalks happens 11 times in 47, or 23.4%, rather than 25%. The second and third divisions have similar small edge effects. We worked out the exact odds of this splitting rule as a check, and they match the simulation to within 0.15 percentage points: old yin 5.17%, young yang 28.87%, young yin 44.84%, old yang 21.12%.

Human hands do not necessarily split a bundle uniformly at random, so hand-divided stalks need not hit 1/5/7/3 exactly either. The broad pattern holds: yarrow gives more old yang than old yin, coins give them equally.

Should you use coins or yarrow stalks?

Use coins if you want a quick, simple reading; use yarrow if you value the slower ritual or the traditional odds. Both give yang and yin half the time and a changing line about one time in four. The real difference is that yarrow tilts changes toward old yang lines.

That tilt matters for which hexagram you move toward. With yarrow, a line in your second hexagram is solid with probability 5/16 + 1/16 = 6/16 = 3/8 (a young yang that stays solid, or an old yin that turns solid). With coins it is 3/8 + 1/8 = 1/2. So yarrow readings lean slightly toward yin in the second hexagram. Whether that matters to you is a question of taste and tradition, not accuracy. Both methods are random, and the meaning comes from how you read the text against your situation.

How do you read the answer once you have your hexagram?

Read the judgment of your first hexagram, then the text of each changing line, then the judgment of the second hexagram if you have one. Take the first hexagram as the situation now and the second as the direction it is moving. Relate each text to your question before looking for advice.

For the example above, you would read the judgment of hexagram 41, the line texts for line 2 and line 5, and then hexagram 42 as the direction. Every hexagram page on this site gives Legge's 1882 judgment and line texts alongside a plain-language reading, so you can compare the old wording with a modern one. If you keep a record of readings in your reading journal, you can look back later at what a hexagram meant in practice. If you also use tarot, our guide on how to read tarot covers the same habit of reading for reflection rather than prediction.

A good final step is to write one sentence in your own words: what the reading suggests you notice or do. That keeps the decision with you, where it belongs.

Questions

How do you do the I Ching coin toss?

Toss three coins six times, counting heads as 3 and tails as 2. Each total of 6, 7, 8 or 9 is one line, written from the bottom up; 6 and 9 are changing lines.

What coins should I use for the I Ching?

Any three coins of the same kind work. Traditional Chinese coins with a square hole are popular, but the odds depend only on each coin landing heads or tails with equal chance.

Are coins or yarrow stalks more accurate?

Neither is more accurate. Both give yang and yin half the time and a changing line one time in four; yarrow makes old yang three times as likely as old yin, while coins make them equal.

Can I ask the I Ching the same question twice?

Tradition discourages it. The judgment of hexagram 4 says that asking a second and third time is troublesome, so it is better to reflect on the first answer.

What if I get no changing lines?

That happens in about 17.8% of readings (729/4096). Read the judgment of your one hexagram as a description of a settled situation.

Sources

• James Legge, The I Ching (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16), 1882: James Legge, trans., The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Confucianism, Part II, The Yi King, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882 (public domain)
• Coin and yarrow line probabilities: Computed by us: three coins have 8 equally likely outcomes; yarrow figures are the traditional 1, 5, 7, 3 in 16
• Yarrow simulation: Our own simulation, October 2026: 400,000 lines of the 49-stalk division as implemented in this site's I Ching tool (Python, fixed seed)

Spotted a mistake? hello@orbitarot.com.

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