Reading I Ching for fortune-telling

Metaphors are very useful for reading hexagrams. Generally, they allude to images of nature, in their motion and tendencies. In the same way, a hexagram starts somehow and goes somewhere, ends somehow and arrives at somewhere, it moves and seemingly stops. All of these characteristics can be perceived in the different judgments. It happens the same when the answer doesn't include mutations. Going through all the composing lines of an answer, the whole panorama of an ideogram can be perceived, and the meanings are better understood.

Reading I Ching as an oracle is precisely an experience for feeling tendential movements. The experience will remain as a memory, a corporal one, and the same sensation will be immediately evoked when getting the same hexagram again.

By studying I Ching's descriptions of moves and tendencies, it is appreciated that the hexagrams are related to each other. In the same way, a sensation will take to other sensations, being the relations between the 64 ideograms the key to foretell and forecast with the oracle. The reading (and understanding) will begin to flow from a single answer or evoked sensation.

The order followed to draw the lines, the sets of trigrams, and judgments are all metaphors about nature and the Man. As symbols, they allow a single hexagram to allude to diverse flows, relationships and characteristics of beings and things, thus broadly reaching different dimensions and areas in the experience.

Chien's progress is observed in different dimensions. It symbolizes not only the conjugal experience but also the way a war action is developed. The third line indicates a dissolved or unhappy marriage, or a husband who doesn't want his wife, or a mother who doesn't want her son. The absence of the husband indicates his death or captivity by the enemy ("bandits"). Not feeding the son indicates the tactic of razing the fields, which consists of devastating the own lands and cities to avoid the enemy benefit from them. [Reference: I Ching, by Mirko Lauer].

As oracular symbols, the hexagrams are understood through emotional-corporal sensations, and they are not necessarily rational. In these type of readings, the inquired matter should not be of interest at all to the performer. This is an inner disposition that makes it easier to open the perception to receive sensations and tendencies. The energetic understanding of an answer is the basis for an accurate and right forecast, since it's the one freeing from the limits of "the expectable" in the inquired situation or experience.

The more oracular readings, the more it's appreciated the deep knowledge I Ching reflects about order, disorder and all the intermediate states, whether be about personal matters or more social or common areas. For appreciating it, it's necessary to invest time in studying, observing and, mainly, feeling it, while living in the movements it translates... Yes, it's a worldview and a way to live experiences, from where good forecasts come out: the prediction is not an image, a structure or a judgment but a move and a characteristic, according to the very I Ching.

This article has been modified to be distributed in the delivery of Tres Mancias' Newsletter in January - February 2026. It belongs to Fortune-telling & Esotericism series, a set of publications gathering I Ching, Tarot and Astrology related to these subjects. Visit this link to read the list of included articles and ask to receive them by email. The distribution is free of charge.