Domino Divination

[getojack]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this board and probably not as well versed in the I Ching as most of you, but I wanted to let anyone who's interested know about a method of I Ching divination using dominoes that I came up with (at least, I haven't seen it anywhere else.)

1) Get a set of double-9 or double-12 dominoes.

2) Remove all the dominoes with 8 dots and higher, (you won't need them) leaving the 36 dominoes from double-blank to double-7.

3) Put the 36 dominoes in a bag and shake it up.

4) Pick one domino from the bag and look at it. This is your hexagram.

Now, I know what you're thinking... there are 64 hexagrams, moron, not 36! Well, the beauty of this system is that you can get all 64 hexagrams using 36 dominoes. It's all in whether you hold the domino upright or inverted.

Here's how you convert the numbers to trigrams...

Blank=Earth, 1=Mountain, 2=Water, 3=Wind, 4=Thunder, 5=Fire, 6=Marsh, 7=Heaven

This system only gives unchanging hexagrams, but if you want a changing line, just throw a die and count the lines up from the bottom of the hexagram to get one.

-GetoJack

[getojack]

By the way, the number to trigram conversion is based on the Shao Yong/binary system where yin lines are binary 0 and yang lines are binary 1. For example, Fire = yang-yin-yang = 101 (binary) = 5 (decimal).

-GetoJack

[getojack]

Sorry everyone... To clarify this, the 8 double-dot dominoes represent the 8 hexagrams which are the same right-side up as upside-down (inverse-symmetrical). Therefore, the number to trigram conversion isn't as simple as stated above.

For the upper trigrams, read the conversion as above, but the lower trigrams should change to their inverted form.

Hope this helps.