The Book of Changes: Love Edition

Ask about the relationship, then cast the coins

The I Ching — the Book of Changes — has been consulted for roughly three thousand years, and most of that consulting was about love, marriage and whether a particular person was worth the trouble. This edition puts that tradition to work on a single modern question about the relationship you are already in.

You are not filling in a profile and you are not entering birthdates. You are asking something, then casting.

How the casting works

Type the question you are actually sitting with — whether to move in, whether this is the year, what to do about the thing the two of you keep circling. The field is optional, and the tool is built so it stays a sixty-second experience either way, but a specific question tends to make the answer land harder than a vague one.

One press casts the hexagram using the traditional coin method: three coins thrown six times, each throw producing a line, and the six lines stacked into a figure. Each of the sixty-four hexagrams has a name and a keyword, and the result arrives with its illustration and a passage written for the love domain specifically rather than the general-purpose text.

Roughly half of all casts produce changing lines, and that is where the reading gets interesting. When lines are changing, the tool gives you both figures: the hexagram you are standing in now, and the resulting hexagram your situation is said to be shifting toward. You will see the second one named alongside the first, with the reading weaving the two together into one passage about where you are and where the change points. If your cast has no changing lines, you get the primary hexagram on its own, which is the traditional answer to a settled situation.

How to use it well

Ask before you cast, not after. The tradition is explicit about this: the question is the work, and the hexagram is a lens for looking at it. Read the passage twice — once for the primary figure, once with the shifting direction in mind — and notice which sentence you keep returning to.

Then stop. Recasting until you get a nicer answer is the most common way people ruin the experience, and every reading in this edition is written to be sat with rather than repeated. The result comes with a shareable card if you want to keep it or send it to your partner, and it is kept on your own device rather than in an account somewhere.

It is free, and it is a modern reading in the I Ching's tradition rather than a scholarly translation of it — wise-sounding guidance for thinking, not a prediction and not advice about your relationship.

Questions about the cast

Do I need to enter any details?

Only your question, and only if you want to. There are no names, dates or birth details in this tool at all.

What are changing lines?

Lines that flip when cast, which turn one hexagram into another. Around half of casts have them, and they signal movement rather than stasis.

Can I cast again about the same thing?

You can, but the tradition advises against it. Sit with the first answer for a day before asking anything else.

Will it tell me what to do?

It offers a reflective reading in an ancient tradition. Decisions, and any professional guidance you need for them, remain yours.

More readings like this

The Rune of Union answers a relationship question with a single drawn rune, and The Union Reading compares what the two of you say separately. The Akashic Love Story narrates the history you are asking about.