Six Lines: I-Ching & Almanac

Conclusions are cheap now. Everything arrives pre-ranked and pre-argued: a score, a verdict, a confident paragraph. Six Lines is an I-Ching for people who would rather sharpen their judgment than borrow another answer.

The I-Ching is an ancient instrument for this work. It gives you a situation in compressed form: positions, tensions, changes, warnings, openings. It rarely resolves into a single clean answer. You work out what matters, what conflicts, and what the situation asks of you. Learning to read it is slow. That slowness is part of the training.

Six Lines is built for it. Everything needed to work a reading is here and cross-referenced. The machine reasons across the structure and stops short of drawing your conclusion.

A READING YOU CAN AUDIT

State a question and cast, with three coins or 49 yarrow stalks. What comes back is not a verdict. First the structure, then the interpretation: what state you're in, which factors weigh most and why, what constrains action, and what would make you revise the reading.

Constraints and predictions say in advance what would prove them wrong. Major claims trace back to the lines and signals they rest on. You can open the reasoning chain and check it.

That is the discipline: don't ask only why you should believe something. Ask what would make you stop.

THE QUESTION BEFORE THE VERDICT

The structure is Liu Yao (六爻), formalised by Jing Fang. Six Lines computes it deterministically: branches, Six Relatives, element strengths, voids and clashes.

The chart carries no verdict. Which Useful Spirit matters depends on what you asked, so Six Lines reads the question first, then applies classical rules. A strong Wealth line helps if you asked about money and hurts if you asked about your father.

THE CLASSIC ITSELF

All 64 hexagrams in three layers: the original Chinese, a character-by-character gloss from the Bradford Hatcher matrix translations, and our own commentary on the judgment, the image and every line. It looks for what the text withholds: a favourable reading can carry a warning, and a hard one can hold the way through.

Each is also paired with a public-domain masterpiece, which gets an essay of its own.

The complete Yilin (Forest of Changes): a verse and an ink painting for all 4,096 transformations.

JOURNAL

Save the question and the reading. Come back weeks later and record what you decided, what you expected, and what happened. Over enough entries you are no longer only studying the I-Ching. You are calibrating your own judgment.

ALMANAC AND CALENDAR

Most almanac apps rate your day out of five stars, and two will disagree. The 1739 imperial Xieji Bianfang Shu objects: a blanket score collapses influences the real system weighs one activity at a time.

So you get what's auspicious and what to avoid per activity, with the conflicts to watch. Lucky directions, the Jianchu cycle, Bazi pillars, the lunar calendar and 24 solar terms, and a date finder. Never an overall score.

THE ARCHIVE (PREVIEW)

Browse 64 historical cases in judgment, timing and consequence, spanning Zhou to Jin and centred on the Warring States. Read the open samples and Record of the Day, each connected to an idiom and a hexagram transition.

DESIGNED FOR READING

Crimson Text on warm ivory, with generous whitespace and light and dark modes. English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese. No ads, no tracking, no notifications about how your day will go.

The core app is free. No account, no subscription. AI readings draw from a shared monthly pool. Optional one-time gifts can replenish that communal pool when available.

You'll know Six Lines worked when you close it, notice the story you were about to tell yourself, and don't cast at all.

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