Plum Blossom numerology, 梅花易數, is a way of consulting the I Ching without coins or stalks. The hexagram comes from numbers: those of the date and hour when you ask or, in other versions, numbers taken from something you see or hear at that moment.
Shao Yong and the plum tree
Tradition credits the method to Shao Yong (1011 to 1077), a Song dynasty thinker who devoted much of his work to numbers and the order of the cosmos. The book that sets it out, as we have it today, seems to have been put together well after his death, so the attribution is more tradition than established fact.
The name comes from a much-told story. It's said that Shao Yong watched two sparrows fighting in the branches of a blossoming plum tree until one fell to the ground. He took it as a sign, worked out a hexagram from the date and hour, and predicted that the next day a girl would come to pick blossoms, fall from the tree and hurt herself. The story says that's what happened.
Story aside, the underlying idea is interesting: any moment can serve for a consultation, because the instant a question arises is part of the situation.
The trigram numbers
The method uses the Earlier Heaven order, in which each trigram has a number:
Casting from the date and hour
The best-known version uses the date in the Chinese lunar calendar:
- The year is counted by its earthly branch, from 1 to 12: Rat = 1, Ox = 2, Tiger = 3, and so on up to Pig = 12.
- The month and day are those of the lunar month.
- The hour is counted by the twelve Chinese double hours: 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. is 1, 1 to 3 a.m. is 2, and so on up to 9 to 11 p.m., which is 12.
Then:
- Upper trigram: add year, month and day, and divide by 8. The remainder is the trigram's number. If the remainder is 0, use 8.
- Lower trigram: add year, month, day and hour, and divide by 8. Again, the remainder gives the trigram.
- Moving line: take that same total, hour included, and divide by 6. The remainder tells you which line changes, counting from the bottom. If it's 0, the sixth line changes.
Unlike coins, this always gives exactly one moving line.
An example
Say you ask in a Dragon year (5), on the 15th day of the third lunar month, around noon, which falls in the Horse hour, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. (7).
- Upper: 5 + 3 + 15 = 23. Divided by 8, that leaves 7: mountain.
- Lower: 23 + 7 = 30. Divided by 8, that leaves 6: water.
- Moving line: 30 divided by 6 leaves 0, so the sixth line changes.
Water below and mountain above: that's Immaturity. When the sixth line changes, the mountain becomes earth, and The Army appears as the second hexagram.
Going further: body and use
People who practice this method don't stop at the hexagram's text. They tell two trigrams apart: the one holding the moving line is the "use" (what acts, the matter at hand) and the other is the "body" (the person asking). Then they look at how the two relate through the five phases (wood, fire, earth, metal and water): whether one feeds the other, holds it in check, or sits in harmony with it. They add the nuclear hexagram and the hexagram the change leads to. It's a rich system with many schools, and this is only an overview.
Other ways to get the numbers
Casting from the date is the best-known way, but not the only one. In the Plum Blossom tradition, the numbers can come from almost anything: how many objects you see, the beats of a sound, the letters or strokes in a word, or a number someone says without thinking.
Which method to choose
Plum Blossom is nimble and needs nothing in your hands, but it depends on lunar calendar arithmetic and is usually read by its own rules. If you're just starting out, the coins are simpler. For the classical method, see The Yarrow Stalk Method. To get to know the trigrams this system relies on, go on to The Eight Trigrams.