The classic: the hexagrams
64 hexagrams, each with a figure (six lines), a name, a Judgment (one passage on the whole), and six line texts. 64 × 6 = 384 line texts, plus “Use of Nines” and “Use of Sixes” for Qian and Kun.
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I CHING BASICS · Free
Learn the I Ching
Six lessons, from a single line to reading a hexagram on your own. No memorizing 64 names, but every lesson teaches something you will actually use.
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About 5 min
What is a hexagram?
Two kinds of line, why the six lines count upward, and why there are exactly 64.
ONE THING TO REMEMBER
A hexagram is six lines, solid yang or broken yin, stacked from the bottom up. Every possible arrangement of six lines is one of the 64.
Yin and yang are not good and bad
The I Ching uses only two kinds of line: a solid line called yang (⚊) and a broken line called yin (⚋). They are a pair of complementary qualities, not good and bad. Yang leans toward firm, active, outward, visible; yin toward soft, still, inward, gathered. Whether a yang line is helpful in a given hexagram depends on where it stands and what it meets. That is Lesson 5.
Tap any line to flip it
Count from the bottom: the lowest is Line 1. Each flip gives a different hexagram. Six lines can be arranged 2⁶ = 64 ways: exactly the 64 hexagrams, none missing, none repeated.
Now: Hexagram 5Waiting (5)Bottom three lines: Qian; top three: Kan. Lesson 3 explains these two halves.
Each added line doubles the combinations
One line has two forms; two lines make four; three lines make eight, and those eight are the trigrams; six lines make sixty-four, the hexagrams. The Great Commentary says the Supreme Ultimate gives rise to the two forms, the two forms to the four images, and the four images to the eight trigrams. Sixty-four is not an arbitrary number: it is every possible arrangement of six yin/yang lines.
1 line2Two forms: yin, yang
2 lines4Four images
3 lines8Eight trigrams
6 lines
2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2
64The 64 hexagramsThe most common first mistake
Counting from the top. A hexagram grows upward: the bottom line is Line 1, the top line is Line 6.
OPTIONAL · 1 MINWhat the book contains: core text and commentariesNot needed for the practice; Lesson 4 covers it again
The commentaries
Ten texts explaining the classic, the “Ten Wings”. Most used in reading: the Tuan (on the Judgment) and the Xiang (the Great Image on the whole figure, the Small Images on each line). The Shuogua and Xici explain trigrams and method.
Example: Qian, Judgment and Line 1
乾：元亨，利贞。 初九：潜龙勿用。
The Creative: great success; favorable to remain correct. · Line 1: Hidden dragon. Do not act.
Tradition credits Fu Xi with the figures, King Wen with the Judgments, the Duke of Zhou with the line texts, and Confucius with the Ten Wings. Modern scholars generally date the core text to the Western Zhou and the commentaries to the Warring States through early Han, the work of many hands.
Yin and yang are qualities, not verdicts.
Count lines upward; 2⁶ = 64.
The most common mistake is counting from the top: the bottom line is Line 1.
Try it now
Get each small point right once and you pass. A miss is fine: it comes back two questions later, asked a new way.