I-Ching-Reading

Cast an I Ching reading right in your browser: toss three coins six times to build a hexagram from the bottom line up, with changing lines and the second hexagram they turn it into. No sign-up and no libraries.

• Cast a hexagram
• The 64 hexagrams: one page per hexagram, with its meaning, advice, trigrams and lines

What it does

Press Toss Coins to throw three coins for each of the six lines. The coins spin, land, and the line is added to your hexagram, with a log showing each toss and what it made. Click a hexagram for its trigrams, its meaning and its advice, or press Interpret Reading to see the whole reading laid out.

The traditional three-coin method gives each toss a total between 6 and 9 (heads counts 3, tails counts 2):

| Total | Line | Meaning | | ----- | ---- | ------- | | 6 | broken, marked with a cross | old yin, changing | | 7 | solid | young yang, stable | | 8 | broken | young yin, stable | | 9 | solid, marked with a ring | old yang, changing |

Changing lines are where the situation is in motion. Each one flips to its opposite in a second hexagram, so a reading with changing lines gives you two hexagrams: Your hexagram (where things stand) and Becoming (where they are heading). A reading with no changing lines is stable, and the first hexagram is the whole answer.

The interpretation

Interpret Reading lays the reading out in three parts:

• The Situation: your hexagram, with its name, Chinese character, pinyin, keywords and summary.
• What Is Changing: a short note for each changing line, by its position from the first line (the foundation) up to the sixth line (the culmination).
• Where It Is Heading: the second hexagram, if any lines changed.

The hexagrams

All 64 hexagrams are included, in the traditional King Wen sequence, each built from two of the eight trigrams (Heaven, Earth, Thunder, Water, Mountain, Wind, Fire and Lake). Each one has its number, Chinese name, pinyin, English name, keywords, a summary and a line of advice.

The names, characters and trigram structure are the traditional ones. The keywords, summaries and advice are original wording written for this app, and no translation text is reproduced. A reading is a mirror for your own judgment, not a verdict.

Hexagram pages

Every hexagram also has its own static page (hexagrams/1-the-creative.html ... hexagrams/64-before-completion.html), plus a page listing all 64 (hexagrams/index.html), so each hexagram can be found, shared and indexed on its own. Each page shows the hexagram's meaning, advice, trigrams and six lines, and links to its nuclear, opposite and inverse hexagrams. They are generated from the same data as the app:

npm run build

This runs scripts/build-hexagram-pages.js, which reads js/iching-data.js and rewrites the pages, sitemap.xml and robots.txt. It only needs Node. Re-run it after editing the data and commit the result.

How it is built

The app itself is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with no dependencies and no build step. Just open index.html. (The only build step is the optional one above that regenerates the static hexagram pages.)

• The hexagrams are drawn as SVG, so they look the same everywhere.
• The hexagram data is in js/iching-data.js, and the app logic in js/iching.js.
• Three color themes (dark, light and blue) are shared with my other projects.
• The reading in progress is kept in the browser's local storage, so reloading the page picks up where you left off.

I-Ching-Reading is open source at GitHub with MIT license.

Had fun browsing the app? Buy me a coffee by becoming a sponsor.

You may also be interested in my other divination projects Tarot-Reading (demo), Rune-Reading (demo) and Motivational-Numerology (demo). For more mystic arts as small web apps, see Esoterica.

Copyright (c) 2026 Olivier Giulieri.