The I Ching, or Book of Changes, took shape in China’s Zhou dynasty, roughly three millennia ago — one of the oldest classics still read today, a system of symbols for describing situations and how they change. It is built from just two kinds of lines, broken and unbroken, stacked six at a time to form sixty-four hexagrams — a structure that can be written in binary.

Sixty-Four is an independent I Ching online reading site. It is free, bilingual, and grounded in the classical text. It began with a designer’s appreciation for the traditional study of the Changes and the sixty-four hexagrams: six lines stacked, eight trigrams doubled, five elements generating and restraining one another. We wanted to give these abstract structures a more concrete form through readings and symbols, and perhaps help someone find a little clarity.

We don’t start from the idea that a hexagram tells you what will happen. We read it as a picture of the situation you’re already in — and to decide which part of the text to look at, we use a method that has been widely followed since the twelfth century: the rules of Zhu Xi. Depending on how many lines move, those rules tell you which text to read, and which one leads. Every text comes with a plain modern reading. The diagrams and Five Elements notes help you see the situation; they don’t decide for you.

We don’t predict outcomes. The hexagram shows the broader current — the situation you’re already in and where it’s leaning; where you go from here is up to you.