What this is

Six Lines Oracle is built on the I Ching (Yi Jing), the Chinese Book of Changes — an oracle that has been consulted for around three thousand years. You ask one question and toss three coins six times. Each toss draws one line, and the six lines form one of 64 hexagrams — each a picture of a situation and where it is heading.

When a line in your hexagram is changing, we tell you its story first — the scene the old text sets, told in plain English. Then we bring it down onto the exact thing you asked, in plain, spoken language, the way a good teacher would put it. When the hexagram speaks as a whole instead, you get the answer on its own. No mysticism, no menu of extras. One question, six tosses, one answer.

It is not a prediction machine. The reading tells you what the moment favours and what it warns against; what you do with that is yours. We don't tell you what will happen. We tell you how to stand.

One question, once. If you ask the same thing again too soon, we'll show you the answer you already have. The oracle doesn't repeat itself — and neither should you.

Ask the same thing again too soon and we'll show you the answer you already have, rather than a new one.

You can push past that and cast anyway; it is not a hard door. Casting again costs one credit, and neither your free reading nor the monthly pass covers it — a repeat goes straight to credits.

Your readings stay on your casts page, and open from their links, for two years.

Every reading is grounded in the original Zhou Yi — the oldest layer of the I Ching. You can open the classical text on any result page. When several lines change at once, which of them speaks follows the rule Zhu Xi set down in the twelfth century. The stories are written in English for this site; we don't use copyrighted translations.