Najia (Six Lines) Divination vs. Reading the I Ching Text
The term "six lines"
A hexagram has six lines, and originally "six lines" (六爻, liuyao) meant no more than that. But when people in China today talk about "studying liuyao" or "shaking the six lines", they mostly mean one particular way of reading a hexagram: the najia method (纳甲, "attaching the stems"), also called the Huozhulin ("Fire Pearl Forest") method. It and the method used on this site cast the hexagram in the same way and read it in completely different ways. First see which school the book or software in your hands belongs to, so that you do not read the two vocabularies mixed together.
The casting is the same
Both schools use three coins, thrown six times, building the hexagram from the bottom up. Both get four kinds of line, 6, 7, 8 and 9, with old yang and old yin as the lines that change (the najia method calls them moving lines). Both have a primary hexagram and the resulting hexagram it changes into. From the same throws, the two schools get exactly the same hexagrams. For the steps, see How to cast with three coins.
The difference comes after the hexagram is formed: what you do with it.
The reading is different
The najia method is traditionally traced back to Jing Fang of the Western Han. In later ages its representative work is the Huozhulin, and Qing-dynasty books such as the Zengshan Buyi ("Divination by the Changes, Expanded and Pruned") and the Bushi Zhengzong ("The Orthodox Tradition of Divination") worked it out in fine detail. Most of these attributions are received tradition, and the dates and authors of the books cannot all be firmly established. Roughly, it works like this:
- Sort the sixty-four hexagrams into eight palaces, each palace having one of the Five Phases (wuxing: wood, fire, earth, metal, water) as its attribute. Determine the self line (shi) and the response line (ying): the self line is you, and the response line is the other party or the matter asked about.
- Attach one of the twelve earthly branches to each of the six lines (najia strictly means attaching the heavenly stems, but in practice it is mostly the branches that are used). Each branch has its own phase.
- Compare the phase of each line with the phase of its palace and, from the relations of generating and overcoming, assign the six relations: Parents, Siblings, Offspring, Wife and Wealth, Officer and Ghost.
- According to the heavenly stem of the day of the cast, assign the six spirits to the six lines: Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, Hooked Array (Gouchen), Flying Serpent (Tengshe), White Tiger, Dark Warrior (Xuanwu).
- Choose the significator line (yongshen) according to the matter asked about (Wife and Wealth for money, Officer and Ghost for an official post, Parents for documents and elders), then see whether the significator is strong or weak under the month branch and the day branch, and whether the moving lines generate it or overcome it.
The whole process can be carried out without a glance at the judgments and line statements. In the najia method, Kun (Exhaustion) is "a first-generation hexagram of the Dui palace"; what its judgment says hardly matters.
| Reading the text (this site) | Najia (six lines) | |
|---|---|---|
| Casting | Three coins, six throws | The same |
| Text relied on | The judgments and line statements of the Zhouyi, with the Tuan and Image commentaries for reference | Essentially does not read the text |
| What else is needed | Only the hexagram | The stems and branches of the month and day of the cast |
| How it is read | Choose the text by the number of changing lines; read the images and the verdict words in it | Attach the branches, six relations and six spirits; see how the significator is generated or overcome, and whether it is strong or weak |
| What it gives | A description of the situation and a reminder about how to act | An inference about success or failure, and about when the outcome will come |
What each one answers, and why this site reads the text
The najia method sets out to answer questions of the kind "Will it succeed?" and "When?" It is a self-contained system of calculation, with its own lineage and a large body of recorded cases. Whether it is accurate, this site does not judge.
Reading the text answers a different kind of question: what is the situation right now, and what attitude should I take? It gives no dates, and no pronouncements of success or failure.
This site chooses to read the text for three reasons. First, the judgments and line statements are the Zhouyi's own words; the najia method borrows the figures of the sixty-four hexagrams, yet it can read a hexagram without ever opening the Zhouyi. Second, this site does not predict specific events (see Is the I Ching accurate?), whereas the whole point of the najia method is prediction, and the two cannot be brought together. Third, every step of reading the text can be checked: which text to read follows Zhu Xi's seven rules, the original text rests on stated editions, and the plain readings have a stated basis (see Sources and method), so the reader can go back to the original and judge for themselves.
Do not mix the two schools. Whichever you use, settle on it before you cast; do not pick one after you have seen the result.