Liu Yao: The Chinese Divination That Answers 'When'
Liu yao (六爻) casts the same hexagrams as the Book of Changes and then does something the Changes does not: it attaches calendar and kinship information to each line and reads the result as a working model of a situation. It is the Chinese divination system that will give you a date, and it is the one professional practitioners in China use most.
Casting and loading
The casting is familiar: three coins, six times, from the bottom line up, with old yin and old yang lines changing into their opposites to produce a second hexagram. What follows is what makes liu yao a different system. The hexagram is located in one of the eight palaces, which fixes its governing element. Each line is assigned an earthly branch from a standard table, and therefore a five-element value. Each line is then given one of the six relative roles by comparing its element to the palace element. The result is a diagram carrying a great deal more information than the hexagram alone.
The six relatives
The relatives (六亲) are the interpretive core. Parents (父母) cover documents, housing, elders, vehicles, protection. Siblings (兄弟) cover peers, competitors, obstruction, expenditure. Offspring (子孙) cover children, solutions, subordinates, and the dissolving of trouble. Wealth (妻财) covers money, property and, in a man's chart, the wife. Officials (官鬼) cover employment, authority, litigation, illness and, in a woman's chart, the husband. Reading begins by identifying which relative governs the question, calling it the use-line, and examining its condition.
World and response
Every hexagram has a fixed world line and response line determined by its palace position. The world line stands for the querent; the response line stands for the other party, the counterparty, or the external situation. Their relationship — which is stronger, whether one generates or controls the other, whether either is void or in motion — carries a great deal of the reading. This is why liu yao is heavily used for questions with two sides: negotiations, lawsuits, purchases, whether the other person will agree.
Why it answers 'when'
Because every line carries an earthly branch, every line has a position in the calendar, and the reading can therefore say when something activates. A line that is void is dormant until its branch comes round; a line that is weak strengthens in the month or season that supports its element; a moving line acts when its branch arrives. Practitioners give dates from this. Whether the dates are any good is a question the system cannot settle about itself, but the mechanism is why liu yao displaced simpler methods in professional practice — clients ask when, and this is the system built to answer.
Fiction · Tales of the Hidden Path
The Shell
The shell came from his teacher. Palm-sized, the pattern on the back worn glossy, a small piece chipped off one edge.
Two rules: do not let anyone else shake it, and do not set it down upside down.
He kept the first for thirty years. The second he broke once — he put it down face-down after a casting and went to answer the phone, and only remembered when he came back.
From that day the shaking made one more sound.
It had been three, and then the fall. Now it was four.
He tipped it out and counted. Nothing extra. He turned the shell over and held it to the light. Empty.
He shook it again. Still four.
He held it to his ear, shut his eyes and shook it for half an hour, counting.
The fourth is lighter than the other three and duller, and it comes earlier — in the instant before his wrist has started to move.
He found a fine-toothed saw and cut round the rim.
The shell is double. The middle layer was added later, and he knows the join; it is his teacher's work.
Set into the cavity is a thin piece of bone, ground flat, the size of a fingernail. Six horizontal marks are cut into it, three solid and three broken, reading from the bottom up.
He looked it up. It is Gu.
An original short story written for our folklore film series. It is fiction — invented, not a recorded case, not a claim about how any of the customs above actually work. The belief it is built on is real; everything that happens in it is not. See our honesty policy。
The seven-step procedure in detail, and how it differs from an ordinary hexagram consultation.
The Full Liu Yao Walkthrough →FAQ
How is liu yao different from consulting the I Ching?
It uses the same hexagrams but loads each line with an earthly branch, an element and a kinship role, producing a working model with calendar information. That is what lets it answer questions about timing.
What are the six relatives?
Parents (documents, housing, elders), siblings (peers, competitors, expenditure), offspring (children, solutions, dissolving trouble), wealth (money, property), officials (employment, authority, litigation, illness).
What are the world and response lines?
Fixed positions determined by the hexagram's palace. The world line stands for the querent, the response line for the other party or external situation. Their relation carries much of the reading.
Can it really give a date?
The mechanism exists — each line carries a calendar branch, and activation is read when the branch comes round. Whether the dates are accurate is not something the system can establish about itself.
Related: Chinese Palm Reading: The Three Main Lines · Ce Zi: Divination by Taking a Character Apart · Free BaZi Calculator · Free I Ching Reading