Using Playing Cards to Consult the I Ching

Use a regular 52-card deck of playing cards.  Shuffle, then lay down 6 cards, face down, in a column from bottom to top.

Turn each card over.  Black cards (spades, clubs) are yin lines; red (hearts, diamonds) are yang.  Face cards (jack, queen, king) are moving lines.  The cards to the right generate the first of the two hexagrams illustrated above.

The approximate probabilities are in line with the yarrow stalk and coin methods:

The probabilities are more accurate if you select each card from the entire deck, returning it to the deck and shuffling before selecting the next.  I doubt that this is significant.

If you remove two red and two black pip cards (non-face cards) from the deck, the probabilities match those of the traditional coin method.  To match the yarrow stalks is more complicated:  remove four black face cards, 6 black pip cards, and 10 red pip cards.

For a method that dynamically changes the probabilities, see the Dynamic Energies Playing Cards page.

[Note added 10/17/09—I thought I was the first person to think of using cards to consult the I Ching, until I read a similar method described in The Laws of Change by Jack M. Balkin.  Oh, well.  I think my way is simpler.]

Use this method at your own discretion.  When I first used it to ask about this method itself, I got 776878, which does not sound too promising.

This may have to do with what I associate playing cards with in my own mind.  The inverted and reversed hexagrams all have to do with danger and safety, such as hexagram 59:4 which ends with:

I have since had better luck with a “friendlier” Grateful Dead deck which does not distract me so much with mental images of a casino.

What about using a Tarot card deck?  The principle is the same, but since there are 78 cards in the deck, and four court cards per suit, let court cards and aces count as moving lines.  Cups and coins are yin, swords and rods are yang.  Even-numbered trump cards are yin, odd are yang.  The probabilities:

Another way to do it, which would work with any deck with numbered cards such as an I Ching oracle deck, is to let even-numbered cards count as 2 and odd-numbered cards count as 3, and deal three cards per line as if you were casting coins.

I used Tarot cards to ask the I Ching about it, and got 55 changing to 32, which includes, among other things:

A simple method for generating one moving line:  lay down 6 cards for the lines; black is yin, red is yang.  Then cut the remaining deck and count it off by 6 until 1 to 6 cards are left; that number is the moving line.

Of course, one could also use 50 cards to mimic the use of yarrow stalks.  Cut the deck, set one card aside, then count through each pile by fours and set aside the remainders in the usual way . . . .

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.