How this tool works
About YaoCast: Method, Sources & Privacy
YaoCast is a small I Ching tool for casting a reading, exploring its images, and returning to your notes later. Its Chinese name, 爻问, pairs yao, a hexagram line, with wen, to ask. The English name, YaoCast, brings together yao and casting a reading.
A traditional structure, original reflections
The tool uses the three-coin method, the 64 hexagrams in King Wen order, and the normal yin/yang changes for totals of 6 and 9. The 3D version uses randomized physical throws and reads each upper face after the coins settle. The 2D version generates three independent coin results with the browser’s cryptographic random-number API. Quick reading completes six throws in sequence automatically.
The multilingual reflections, questions and small actions are written for this product. Twelve selectable situations add focused prompts. Eighteen tailored combinations cover hexagrams 1–6 across job changes, project work and relationship conversations; other combinations use the original reflection plus situation prompts. They are not a translation of an ancient text, a claim of scholarly authority, or an AI analysis of your private question. A question is echoed back to you; it does not alter the random result.
I Ching and Liu Yao
I Ching reading is a broad label. Liu Yao, or six-line divination, includes a more technical tradition of assigning stems, branches, elements and relationships to the six lines. Our optional advanced chart shows those assignments, the host and guest positions, six spirits, the day cycle and void branches.
The chart uses the selected time zone and changes the day at local midnight. Some traditions change the day at 11 p.m. instead. We state our convention. The current version does not provide a verified solar-term calendar for the month branch, a full strength assessment, or a complete traditional divination judgment.
What stays on your device
Your typed questions, notes, and journal entries stay in this browser’s local storage. The application has no account system, cloud journal, or external AI request. Advertising is currently disabled: no Google advertising script or advertising request loads. A publisher verification meta tag and ads.txt identify the publisher without loading an advertising service. Local ad previews are disabled. If ads are enabled in a future release, this notice and the required consent controls will be updated before ads run. The hosting service still handles normal web requests and may keep its own operational logs.
When configured on the production website, PostHog records anonymous page views, counts of completed casts and successful journal saves, and choices in the optional detailed-reading interest survey. The survey adds only an interest option; contact details never enter analytics. No analytics cookies, persistent visitor IDs, session recordings or personal profiles are used. Only the public page path, referring website hostname, site name and interface language accompany these events. URL queries, fragments, questions, coin results, reading dates, journal text and files are excluded. PostHog estimates daily visitors with a rotating server-side hash; these estimates are not precise identities across days or websites. Do Not Track, Global Privacy Control and the site’s analytics opt-out are respected. Local, preview and QA visits are excluded. Analytics stays disabled until a public project token and the server-side cookieless setting are configured.
If you choose Feedback, a Tally form loads with the project name and public page address. Tally handles the feedback you submit; contact details are optional. Interested survey participants can separately open a request form, which also includes a fixed detailed-reading interest label. You choose what request details to submit and whether to leave an email. Leaving an email in this request form means you agree to follow-up about this request. The service is not available yet; its format, including whether AI or a human is involved, has not been decided. Your question, reading and journal are not attached automatically.
A downloaded card or exported backup is a file on your device. You choose whether to share it. Clearing site data, using a different browser, or browsing privately may remove or separate your journal. Back up anything you want to keep.
The site may use hosting-provider sign-in while access is private. The “no account” description refers to the reading tool itself, not to the hosting provider’s access controls.
Sources you can check
- The Book of Changes, Chinese Text Project: the classical hexagram sequence and text.
- Discussion of the Trigrams: the traditional natural images.
- Zeng Shan Bu Yi (Chinese primary text): eight palaces, Na Jia and related chart conventions.
- Hong Kong Observatory Almanac 2026: a checked sexagenary-day reference.
English hexagram names vary by translation. The number, Chinese name, pinyin and six-line figure identify the pattern even when wording differs.
Classical text reference: The Book of Changes, Chinese Text Project. The three-coin method is documented in later divination manuals, including Bu Shi Zheng Zong (Chinese primary text). See our method and sources for implementation choices and limitations.
Try an I Ching reading ↗