How to Cast: Coins and Yarrow Stalks

A reading begins with a cast — six lines, built from the bottom up, each generated by your own act. Two traditional methods have carried the practice for centuries: three coins, and fifty yarrow stalks. They differ in feel and in their exact probabilities, and both are honest because the entropy is always *yours*.

However you cast, each of the six lines comes out as one of four values: | Value | Line | State | Meaning | |---|---|---|---| | 6 | broken, moving (⚋ → ⚊) | old yin | yin at its turning point — changes into yang | | 7 | solid, stable (⚊) | young yang | yang at rest — does not change | | 8 | broken, stable (⚋) | young yin | yin at rest — does not change | | 9 | solid, moving (⚊ → ⚋) | old yang | yang at its turning point — changes into yin | The "old" values (6 and 9) are the moving lines that drive the transformation into the resulting hexagram. You build the figure one line at a time, from line one (bottom) to line six (top).

Toss three coins. Assign each coin heads = 3 and tails = 2 (or the reverse — be consistent), and sum the three. The total is your line value: a sum of 6, 7, 8, or 9. The coin method is symmetric at the turning points: - 6 (old yin): 1/8 · 7 (young yang): 3/8 · 8 (young yin): 3/8 · 9 (old yang): 1/8 It is quick, tactile, and the most common method today.

The older method uses fifty stalks (one set aside; forty-nine divided and counted through three rounds per line). It is slower and meditative, and it yields a famously asymmetric distribution: - 6 (old yin): 1/16 · 7 (young yang): 5/16 · 8 (young yin): 7/16 · 9 (old yang): 3/16 Notice that yarrow makes a *moving yang* (9) three times as likely as a *moving yin* (6), and stable yin (8) the most common line of all. The distributions are genuinely different — and Aurathea preserves the difference because it is *real*, never as a paid upgrade. The sacred act is uniform; you never pay for a "more authentic" cast.

Aurathea does not roll the dice for you. You perform the cast — coins, stalks, or your own synchronistic gesture — and enter the six lines you produced. Our line-selector makes that entry simple: for each line you tap the state you cast, and the figure builds live, bottom to top. We then read the hexagram and resolve its changing lines. The generative moment stays where the tradition and Jung both place it: with you. A word the tradition itself insists on: cast with a settled, open question about your own stance, and sit with the answer you receive. Re-casting the same question chasing a different reply is, in the tradition's own counsel, to stop listening.