I Ching Daily Trigram
Today's I Ching trigram, cast from the lunar date, and how it meets the trigram of your birth date.
Borrowing the date-casting method of Plum Blossom Numerology, left by the Song-dynasty scholar Shao Yong, this is a daily reading of the day's I Ching trigram and of how it meets the trigram you were born with. The day's trigram is common to all visitors, and comparing it against a birth-date trigram taken as the reference (體) is an adaptation this site adds. The eight trigrams are the eight shapes made by stacking three lines of yin or yang, standing for heaven, lake, fire, thunder, wind, water, mountain and earth. The Book of Changes pairs them to unfold sixty-four hexagrams, but since this reading looks at the grain of a single day it stops at the eight. Its scope is therefore different from divination worked with the full sixty-four.
How it works
Today's date on your device is turned into its lunar form, and the number of the year's branch (Zi 1 … Hai 12) is added to the lunar month and day; the remainder after dividing by eight (eight when it divides evenly) is matched to the Former Heaven numbers Qian 1, Dui 2, Li 3, Zhen 4, Xun 5, Kan 6, Gen 7, Kun 8 to cast today's trigram. Today's trigram is therefore the same for everyone on the same date, and it moves on to the next one at midnight, when your device's date changes. The same count applied to your birth date casts your birth trigram, and whether the two trigrams' elements generate or overcome each other places their relation among five kinds.
What you'll get
The one of the eight trigrams cast for today is shown as its natural image — heaven, lake, fire, thunder, wind, water, mountain, earth. With each lunar day it steps one place along the Former Heaven order, so setting it beside yesterday's lets you read the flow. Today's ties, work, money and health, what to watch for and one piece of advice read the same trigram from six angles, and a line on its relation to your birth trigram adds how that reading reaches you.
Read the trigram as a scene in nature
Calling the scene to mind reads far better than memorising what each trigram is defined to mean. Thunder is what sounds suddenly, mountain is what stands still, wind is what seeps in. If today trigram is mountain, take it as a day whose grain favours holding your place rather than stepping out, and you will have read it correctly without learning a single definition.
A trick for learning the eight
A trigram is three short lines, each either yin or yang, stacked up, which is why there are only eight. Fix the two ends first, all three yang is heaven and all three yin is earth, and the six that remain find their places in between without much effort. The symbol shown with your result draws those very lines, so once the shapes are familiar they come to mind faster than the names ever will.
How to lay the trigram over your day
One trigram cannot account for a whole day. Read the trigram and its single line of advice in the morning, and recall that line at the moment you have to decide something. If it said to step forward and the situation says otherwise, follow the situation. This reading is not trying to direct your day; it hands you one more angle to check before you judge, which is about as much as a single trigram can honestly offer.
Why the trigram steps one place a day
Because today's trigram is cast from the numbers of the lunar date, the count grows by one with each lunar day and the trigram steps one place along the Former Heaven order (Qian, Dui, Li, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Gen, Kun, then Qian again). So the same trigram never falls two days running, and it skips a few places only on the first day of a new lunar month, a leap month included. Knowing today's trigram therefore lets you guess tomorrow's, and you can read the next three days as one stream. The trigram only marks the grain of the day, so do not hang good or bad fortune on the order of the steps itself.
If you want to go further into the I Ching
What you see here goes as far as the eight trigrams; the Book of Changes stacks them in pairs to make sixty-four. Once the natural images of the eight sit comfortably, the sixty-four begin to read as their combinations, so learning the eight first is the easier order. Do note that this daily grain reading and a proper consultation with sixty-four hexagrams are used for quite different things, and treating them as the same will only confuse both.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the trigram change if I check several times a day?
No. The same date always yields the same number, so one trigram holds the whole day, and the next one takes over once your device's clock passes 00:00. Because the date follows your device's time zone, someone in another time zone can see the neighbouring day's trigram at the same moment.
Is this the same as the 64 hexagrams?
Here the day is read through the eight trigrams. Plum Blossom Numerology proper casts an upper and a lower trigram from the numbers of the same moment and reads them as one of the 64 hexagrams, but here the single upper trigram from year, month and day serves as today's trigram. It is a lighter daily reading with a different scope from a full 64-hexagram consultation.
If today's trigram is the same for everyone, why enter a birth date?
Today's trigram is cast from the date alone, so every visitor that day sees the same one. The same count applied to your birth date casts your birth trigram, and the body-and-function rule of Plum Blossom Numerology judges in one line whether today's trigram feeds it, matches it or presses on it. In the classical method the ti (體) is whichever of two trigrams cast at the same moment has no moving line, so seating your birth-date trigram there is this site's own adaptation.
My trigram came out unfavorable — what now?
Good and bad are not fixed in the eight trigrams. Each one simply says which way the day's energy leans, so a cautionary trigram is best read as telling you what to watch for. Even when your relation comes out as today pressing on your birth trigram, it is not telling you to avoid the day; it marks where to gather your effort.
Should I use the solar or the lunar date?
Use whichever is convenient. Your birth trigram is cast from the lunar date of your birthday: a solar birthday is converted to the lunar calendar and a lunar birthday is used as entered, so the same birthday entered in its own calendar gives exactly the same birth trigram. Only entering a lunar date with the solar option selected makes it a different day, so just match the calendar setting to your birthday.