These images above are the trigrams, made of three lines which are either broken or unbroken. The various combinations of two trigrams create the hexagrams, of which there are sixty-four. The I-Ching, an ancient Chinese book of divination, attributed a general description of a situation to each hexagram. They describe specific relations between people and/or forces in a situation, but are general enough to be applied to personal matters, familial relations, the workplace, or even armies and countries, as it was traditionally the ruling class who used the I-Ching.

The ancient Chinese had a method of casting (randomly selecting a hexagram) which involved counting bundles of thin sticks that were held between the fingers. This page replicates the logic behind that process when selecting a hexagram for you to view. Another name for the I-Ching is the Book of Changes. This is significant because each hexagram is viewed not as a permanent reality, but as a snapshot of an interplay of opposites that is ever changing. When selecting the lines for a hexagram, a line is not only broken or unbroken; it is also either changing or unchanging. A changing line will turn into its opposite during the hexagram's transformation to its next stage. So all changing lines turn from broken to unbroken or vice versa, and you get a new hexagram. If your hexagram had changing lines, the meanings of these changes and the new hexagram are included underneath the original hexagram.