r/iching

I asked "what to know about this cats in yard situation ?" and got hex 48 changing lines 5 and 6

Thoughts on what this answer can mean ?

We been putting water for cats who pass in our yard for a long time now ..... but in last few weeks we started to feed them near our door too , now i wondered if we should keep feeding them , stop feeding them , or even take them inside the house (unlike free outside cats now)

* later edit : asked "should i adopt (make one cat an indoors cat) this one cat ?"(one of them tries to sneak into the house everytime we live it open and got hex 4 changing lines 2 and 6)

But since i read someplace at least once some advice of asking the i ching what he has to say about the situation ....

Than unlike usual i did not ask "what to do about this cats (with the 3 above options in mind) but asked "what to know about this cat situation ? "

I even during asking was a bit going back and forth between what i should know and just asking " about cat situation" and even popped to mind during "what i should do about it"(which is what i really want to know) and also just saying when asking (splitting the yarrow stalks) "cats" and also a bit of "what is your advice on" ....

So i wonder if i made a mistake and should have asked in stead "what i should do about the cat situation?"

Recently had a recurrent argument with my partner and it makes me wonder what I should do..

Asked and casted--

1. What do I need to know about my romantic partner's true intentions towards me -- 45(gathering), 4&6 transforming to 20

2. What the cost will be if I continue the relationship as is currently -- 36(darkening), 5 transforming to 63

3. What I can do to protect myself in my current relationship -- I received 59(dispersion), 3&6 transforming to 48

I wonder if I am clouded during this reading or I'm just emotionally charged. I interpret it as that the getting together was sincere albeit caused sorrow, which if continued is going to result on "dimming of light" like someone who has to hide their true self. And to protect myself is to let the problem go(dissolve self) and leave the connection(dissolve blood). I wonder if I am oversimplifying this.. wonder if the hive mind has any different take on this reading

Edit- protect as in emotionally/from further heartache, but I didn't really specify, just thought it that way

I’ve been stuck thinking about a situation that never fully became a relationship, but still left a strong impression on me.

There was someone I got close to in a very undefined way. It wasn’t clearly dating, but it also wasn’t nothing. Things felt open at first. It was comfortable, even a bit meaningful, but there was always this lack of direction underneath it.

Over time, I started noticing a pattern where I was more emotionally invested than they were. Nothing explicit was ever said, but the dynamic started to feel uneven. There were moments of closeness followed by distance, and I never really knew where I stood.

Eventually, things just didn’t develop further. There wasn’t a clear ending or conflict. It just slowly dissolved into distance and silence. We still exist in the same broader space, so there’s an awareness of each other, but no real interaction anymore.

What’s been bothering me is that I keep trying to assign meaning to it after the fact. I find myself replaying conversations and moments, wondering if I misunderstood it completely or if there really was something there that just never had the conditions to grow.

I recently got a reading of 24 → 2, which I understand as “returning” moving into “receptive/grounded stillness.” But I’m not sure if I’m interpreting that in a healthy way or just using it to justify staying mentally attached to something that already ended naturally.

Now I feel stuck between thinking maybe this was something that could have returned or developed under different timing, and thinking it was simply a brief connection that I’m over-analyzing because it never had closure

I’m not trying to force anything to happen anymore, but I can’t tell if I’m supposed to “let it cycle back naturally” or if I’m just holding onto something that was always meant to settle and end quietly.

Has anyone dealt with something that never officially started but still took up this much mental space afterward?

What could this mean? I get irritated by some pulls

When chatting with someone on another post, I started thinking about what I like about the i ching. What are your favorite things about it? How do you like to use it?

I love it's history, and it's legacy as both an investigative tool of the self & the world around us, and as an esoteric pursuit. I also love that there are so many different ways to use it!

I've recently developed tinnitus, jaw and cranial nerve pain, and it's been one of the hardest things I've gone through. I've been seeing doctors and practitioners and am experiencing some progress, not with the tinnitus, but with the pain, anxiety, and inability to sleep.

I asked the i-ching for a message about my tinnitus, and received #29 unchanging. It's hard for me not to interpret this negatively.

Is there anything positive I can take from it? I feel like the best I can consider is that this is a bad situation and that I just need to take all the positive steps I can without expecting an outcome

We never really dated, he was against relationship and only wanted casual or fwb. I have feelings for him. We shared intimacy (not-psychical because I was in another country) and it was intense. After that he disappeared and wrote only few days later that he was very horny last days, he showed emotions and admitting having some feelings but he said has no plans. Few weeks later when I returned he asked me if i want to meet. But then went distant again, I asked what happened and he said he is scared. Eventually we had a very hurting conversation (i had a meltdown), he asked when i want to meet again, scheduled the day. The night before he asked me the time when i want to meet.. but then he freaked out and said again that he is scared for real. I didn’t answer anything. We kept meeting each other since we live in the same neighbourhood but both were actively ignoring each other. I tried to act like I don’t care and he was nervously avoiding and almost hiding. A month later after meeting him by accident I sent him that I think we are acting silly. He answered that he is trying to avoid a contact to not cause a scene and that he understands that he might have caused me some pain but he didn’t mean to. I said that i just regret that we didn’t really have fun time and it went too serious too fast, and he answered that he just can’t. I tried to avoid the usual places to avoid meeting him by accident but still met him a few times after. One of these times he passed by and said hi and I didn’t respond. I recently unblocked him on social media. It’s been a few months and I just cannot move on. He keeps going away every time he sees me. I guess I do chase him now because I continue going to places where we might see each other.. So, I guess “no game in the field” is exactly right. But I don’t understand why hexagrams seem to be positive or am i mistaken?

Hey everyone, I built a minimal web app for I Ching readings. I wanted something fast with zero friction - no signup, no ads, just the core 64 hexagrams using the classical Wilhelm-Baynes translation.

I also added an optional AI interpretation layer to give a plain-language reading connected to your specific question, though the classical text always shows up first, fully intact.

Built it to scratch a personal itch and keep the tool completely accessible. Check it out here if you want to try it: https://iching-silk.vercel.app/

Would love any feedback on the UI or the AI layer!

I got hexagram 35 PROGRESS with changing line 4th to hexagram 23 SPLITTING

I have a chronic disease that it isn't known to any doctors in the world. Nobody knows if I can manage or be cured in time. I am left without doctors and all alone, treating myself the most possible way which at least worked somehow in the past when a doc gave the protocol and I have to go to maintenance. I started my own treatment again without any help and so anxious about this. Only doctor who is eager to see me is 5k miles away and even he is not hopefull and told me not to come if this is financially hard for me.

So I asked "Am I doing my treatment properly without missing anything? ”

And 39 OBSTRUCTION

Changing lines are from down to top 1,2 and 6

Changed hexagram is 9 TAMING

Yes I know nature of the disease is confusing and with or without treatment still sick because this is how it is but all I want to understand if I am missing something or not because I want to understand that if there is more or if I am missing something, I will give all I have to see someone

That made no sense to me, can you interpret?

The ☱ 兌 Duì trigram, the name of which means "joy", "opening a passage" and "going through", is associated with the natural image of 澤 zé, meaning "marsh", in the I Ching commentary on the greater images (i.e. the one that tells what the noble person or a king of old would do in each hexagram). It's most often translated as "lake", but that is a mistranslation.

In ancient Chinese, 澤 zé means low-lying and well-watered open terrain: marsh(y), marshland, mere; palustral, according to Kroll's Classical Chinese dictionary. Actual words for "lake" would have been 湖 hú or 潢 huáng, or possibly 池 chí (meaning pool or a small lake). The Ten Wings commentary writers (in ca. 4th to 2nd century BC) had every opportunity to use another word for it if it was truly intended to mean "lake". It may be worthy of note that the Zhouyi (the core oracle text) makes no mention at all of trigrams.

This would mean that the translations that insist on "lake" did not do their homework on the terminology, or opted to continue a misguided convention likely stemming from an oversight in Richard Wilhelm's 1924/1950 translation; previously in 1882, James Legge translated it as "[waters of a] marsh".

Furthermore, many translations replace the trigrams' actual names with their associated images, occluding the fact that the trigrams' names have their own separate meanings – e.g. Creative/Forceful/Masculine becomes Heaven, Shock/Arousing becomes Thunder, Clinging/Intertwining becomes Fire, and so on.

Just something that has recently bothered me in the I Ching translation scene.

I love Carol Anthony's interpretations and they seem the most true to me. In her latest book it seems like she stresses a lot the importance of letting go of the ego, and turning help over to "The Cosmic Helpers" which in a way sounds nice but I feel like that's the solution she recommends to basically everything, which seems like a bit much? Almost disempowering in a way? Thoughts?

I'm having difficulty interpreting my correct hexagram - mainly due to a changing line. For example, from bottom to top, my results are 8, 7, 8, 7, 6, 7. But because of the six, creating the -x- type line in position five, there are no corresponding hexagrams? (none of them contain changing lines)

I understand that I change the 6 into a straight line for my second 'changing' hexagram. It seems this would take me to hexagram number six - conflict.

But what would my original one be? Do I simply view the -x- line as a - - type, which would take me to no. 64? Would I read a -o- type line in the same way?

The metaphorical text is much easier for me to interpret than this! Any help appreciated!

I've noticed something interesting when using the I Ching.

The quality of the answer seems to depend heavily on the quality of the question.

When I ask vague questions like:

"What's going to happen?"

the reading often feels vague.

But when I ask:

"What attitude should I take toward this situation?"

or

"What am I not seeing clearly?"

the answers become much more useful.

For experienced practitioners here:

What has been the most effective way for you to phrase a question to the I Ching?

i've been into the i ching for a while and recently went down a rabbit hole on something a lot of people here might not know: 诸葛神数 (zhuge shen shu), usually called the zhuge oracle.

it's 384 short verses. the second i saw that number it clicked — 384 = 64 hexagrams × 6 lines. whoever built it took the whole structure of the i ching and compressed it into plain poems + a normal-language reading, so you don't cast or decode hexagrams. you hold a question, count strokes from three characters, land on a number 1–384, and read the verse.

it's almost certainly not actually zhuge liang (it references tang poetry and song-era reign names he couldn't have written; the standard text only goes back to a 1918 preface) — his name was borrowed for credibility. but whoever the anonymous author was understood the yijing deeply enough to make it usable by an ordinary person, which is harder than it sounds.

posting here because i'm curious — has anyone worked with it as an i-ching-adjacent system? does the compression hold up, or do you lose too much without the hexagram structure?