Once you know the I Ching is an old wisdom that reads the flow of the world through sixty-four hexagrams, you naturally want to cast one yourself. In ancient times people used the intricate method of dividing fifty yarrow stalks, but today the most widely used is the three-coin method, for which three coins suffice. The tools are so simple that anyone with a quiet mind can begin.
First settle your mind and hold clearly the one question you most wish to ask. Then set a rule for the three coins: commonly heads is taken as yang and counted as 3, tails as yin and counted as 2. Gather the three coins in your hands, shake them gently, and toss them together; the sum of the three numbers will be one of 6, 7, 8, or 9. The odd 7 and 9 become a yang line (⚊); the even 6 and 8 become a yin line (⚋). Among these, 6 (old yin) and 9 (old yang) are seen as "moving lines" — lines poised to move and turn into their opposite.
One toss sets one line. Toss six times in all, placing the first line you draw at the very bottom (the first line) and stacking each new one a layer above. When the sixth line rests at the top, six lines stand complete from bottom to top, raising one of the sixty-four hexagrams. This is the primary hexagram that mirrors your question now.
Here the beauty of the I Ching appears. If even one 6 or 9 — a moving line — has come up, you flip that line to its opposite to form a second hexagram. This is called the changed hexagram. If the primary hexagram is your present situation, the changed one tells the direction that situation is flowing toward. When reading, if there are moving lines, dwell on the line-texts attached to those changing lines; if there are none, read the judgment that gathers the whole primary hexagram. There are various conventions for which line to weigh when several move, so at first it is enough to savour the moving-line texts together with the broad meaning of the two hexagrams.
To approach an I Ching reading wisely, it helps to keep one thing in mind: a hexagram is not an answer sheet that nails down a fixed fate, but a mirror that reflects you now and lets you reckon your own path. The elders of old made it a courtesy not to ask the same question twice over. They held that if a wavering heart keeps asking again, the answer grows clouded too. So hold one earnest question with care, and reflect the symbol of the hexagram you drew against your own life. In the end, what decides the path is not the hexagram but you yourself, who read it and choose today. FortuneLeaf’s I Ching content, too, borrows this old wisdom to stand beside you as you calmly settle your heart before a crossroads.