How the Daily Hexagram Works
Today’s hexagram isn’t random. It follows the 卦氣 (guà qì, “hexagram energy”) calendar — a two-thousand-year-old system that maps the 64 hexagrams onto the solar year. Here’s how today’s reading is reached.
Six days, seven parts (六日七分)
Sixty hexagrams divide the solar year, each governing about six and a fraction days — the classical “six days and seven parts.” The cycle is anchored at the winter solstice and advances continuously through the year. On any given day, one hexagram is reigning.
One moving line per day
Within a hexagram’s roughly six-day reign, each day activates the next line in turn, from the bottom upward. This moving line is the day’s living edge — the place where the situation is changing.
Today’s hexagram (之卦)
When a line moves, it transforms the reigning hexagram into a new one — the 之卦 (zhī guà), or resulting hexagram. That transformed hexagram is what we feature as today’s reading. So while the underlying reigning hexagram stays the same for about six days, the moving line carries you to a different hexagram each day.
We lead with the resulting hexagram because it’s the freshest, most specific reading for the day. The small caption on the home page shows where it came from — the reigning hexagram and the line that moved.