Picture this: Northern Song Dynasty, around 1050 AD. A scholar named Shao Yong is sitting in his garden. He watches a plum blossom fall, does some quick mental math, and — bam — predicts exactly what's about to happen. That's not legend. That's Mei Hua Yi Shu (梅花易数), and it's the most spontaneous divination system in Chinese history.
Shao Yong (邵雍, 1011–1077) wasn't your typical fortune-teller. He was a philosopher, a mathematician, and — by all accounts — a genius who saw patterns where everyone else saw randomness. He studied the I Ching obsessively and realized something crucial: the universe gives you hexagrams constantly. You just need to know how to read the signals.
The traditional coin method takes a few minutes and requires you to carry three coins. The yarrow stalk method takes twenty minutes. Shao Yong's method? Seconds. And it works with whatever's in front of you — the time on your clock, the page number you just opened to, the number of birds you just saw fly past.
That's the heart of Plum Blossom: the idea that the moment your question arises, the universe has already encoded the answer into whatever you happen to notice. Your job is just to decode it.
Every hexagram is built from two trigrams: an upper (上卦) and a lower (下卦). In Plum Blossom, you derive these from numbers. And those numbers can come from anywhere.
Here's the basic formula, straight from Bilibili practitioners who've been teaching this for years:
The Core Calculation:
1. Take a number → divide by 8 → the remainder gives you the trigram (1=☰ Qian, 2=☱ Dui, 3=☲ Li, 4=☳ Zhen, 5=☴ Xun, 6=☵ Kan, 7=☶ Gen, 0 or 8=☷ Kun)
2. First number → upper trigram. Second number → lower trigram. Combined → your 本卦 (original hexagram).
3. Third number → divide by 6 → the remainder tells you which line moves, creating the 变卦 (changed hexagram).
That's it. Three numbers, two divisions, one hexagram. The entire system fits on a napkin.
The most classical approach. Take the current date and time — lunar calendar preferred but not required. Convert year, month, day, and hour into numbers. Year's Earthly Branch number, month number, day number, hour's Branch number. Upper trigram: (year + month + day) ÷ 8. Lower trigram: (year + month + day + hour) ÷ 8. Moving line: (year + month + day + hour) ÷ 6.
This is what Shao Yong himself used most often, according to his surviving texts. Clean, objective, no interpretation needed at the number stage.
You see something — count it. Three clouds in the sky? Four people at a table? Nine fish in a pond? Those are your numbers. This is where Plum Blossom gets its name: "plum blossom" after Shao Yong's famous garden observation. You're reading the physical world as a number-stream.
Heard a dog bark twice, then a door slam once? 2 and 1. Heard three beats of a drum? 3, with the next sound you notice as the moving-line number. The key: use the first sounds that register after your question forms. Don't wait and cherry-pick.
Write down a word or phrase — count the strokes in the characters. For Chinese characters, stroke count is straightforward (one stroke per brush movement). For English, count the letters. A phrase like "will this work" gives you 4, 4, 4 — convert to trigrams: 4÷8=4 (Zhen) for both → hexagram 51, Shock (震).
Simplest of all. Think of three random digits. Your mind, in the moment of asking, will produce numbers connected to the answer. Bilibili teacher 傅师兄 calls this "the method that solves all your confusion" — and honestly, the results are surprisingly consistent once you stop second-guessing yourself.
Getting the hexagram is step one. Interpreting it is where Plum Blossom separates itself from standard I Ching reading. The system uses a concept called 体用 (Ti Yong) — Body and Function.
体 (Body): The trigram that contains NO moving line. This represents you — the subject, the questioner, the situation as it currently stands.
用 (Function): The trigram that DOES contain the moving line. This represents the external factor — the other person, the opportunity, the obstacle, the future state.
Then you apply Five Element relationships between the Body and Function trigrams:
Body-Function Relationships:
• 用生体 (Function generates Body) → Excellent. External forces support you.
• 体用比和 (Body and Function same element) → Good. Harmony, smooth progress.
• 体克用 (Body controls Function) → Medium. You can handle it, but it takes effort.
• 体生用 (Body generates Function) → Caution. You're draining yourself for external payoff.
• 用克体 (Function controls Body) → Warning. External forces are working against you.
This is beautifully efficient. You don't need to memorize 64 hexagram interpretations. You need to know: which trigram is which element, and what happens when those elements interact. The rest flows from that.
Don't get me wrong — the traditional three-coin method is solid. It's been around for two thousand years for a reason. But Plum Blossom has three advantages that make it uniquely useful in modern life:
Speed. You can cast a full reading in under ten seconds. Someone asks you a question at dinner, you glance at the time, and you've got an answer before the next course arrives.
No props. You don't need coins, sticks, cards, or apps. Just your mind and whatever's around you. This makes it the ultimate portable divination system.
Integration with daily life. The coin method feels like a ritual — which is great for serious questions. Plum Blossom feels like a reflex. After enough practice, you stop consciously "casting" and just... notice the numbers. It becomes second nature.
The Bilibili masters put it well: "梅花易数 for daily decisions, coin method for life decisions." Different tools, different strengths.
Think of a question. Something simple — not "what's the meaning of life" but "should I take that meeting tomorrow?" or "is this the right time to message them?"
Now check the time. Let's say it's 3:47 PM. Year 2026. Convert to numbers: year 2026 → 2+0+2+6 = 10 → 10÷8=1 rem 2 (Dui ☱). Month June = 6 → 6÷8=0 rem 6 (Kan ☵). Day 25 → 25÷8=3 rem 1 (Qian ☰). Hour 15 (3 PM) → 15÷8=1 rem 7 (Gen ☶).
Upper trigram: (year + month + day) = (2+6+1) = 9 → 9÷8=1 rem 1 → Qian ☰ (Heaven)
Lower trigram: (year + month + day + hour) = (2+6+1+7) = 16 → 16÷8=2 rem 0 → Kun ☷ (Earth)
Combined: Hexagram 12 — 天地否 (Pi / Stagnation). Moving line: 16÷6=2 rem 4 → line 4 moves.
Body is Kun (Earth, lower, no moving line). Function is Qian (Heaven, upper, contains moving line). Earth generates Metal (Qian is Metal) — so 体生用, Body generates Function. You're putting energy into something, draining yourself. The hexagram is Stagnation (blockage, waiting). Together: this situation isn't ready to move yet. Conserve your energy. Wait.
That's a real reading, from the numbers on this page, right now. Did it take a minute? Less.
Want to try more I Ching methods? The traditional coin approach gives you a different kind of depth.
Explore I Ching for Beginners →References: Bilibili column articles on 梅花易数 by 云野卦馆, 易本正经傅师兄, 山里的三礼; Shao Yong's 《梅花易数》 classical text; Northern Song Dynasty I Ching scholarship.