From where you are to where it's going
When you cast, you get a hexagram of six lines. That's your primary hexagram: a picture of your situation as it stands right now. But if any line came up as a moving line, the reading doesn't stop there. Those lines are about to turn into their opposites, and when you turn them, a second hexagram appears. This is the relating hexagram, in Chinese 之卦, "the hexagram it goes to."
The idea is simple. The first hexagram tells you where you stand. The second shows where things tend to go if the forces already in motion keep going. It's a direction, not a fixed fate.
How to find it
Every line in your cast has a value of 6, 7, 8 or 9 (see line values, and How to Toss the Coins for the step-by-step). To build the relating hexagram:
- 6 (old yin): the broken line becomes solid, yang.
- 9 (old yang): the solid line becomes broken, yin.
- 7 and 8 (young yang and young yin): they stay as they are. Copy them over.
Always work from the bottom up, the same way you cast: line 1 is at the bottom, line 6 at the top.
If you got no 6s and no 9s, there's no relating hexagram. Your answer is a single, settled hexagram, and you read it as a whole.
A worked example
Say your values, from the bottom up, were 7, 7, 9, 8, 8, 8.
- The bottom three lines are yang (7, 7, 9) and the top three are yin (8, 8, 8). Heaven sits below and Earth above: that's hexagram 11, Well-Being.
- There's one moving line, the third, a 9. That yang line turns yin.
- Now, from the bottom up, you have yang, yang, yin, yin, yin, yin. Lake is below and Earth is still above: that's hexagram 19, Fleeting Success.
Read this way, the well-being of 11 carries a change inside its third line, and that change points toward a success that won't last forever. The text of that third line is the bridge between the two hexagrams.
If the top line had also been a 6 (7, 7, 9, 8, 8, 6), it would change too, this time from yin to yang, and you'd arrive at hexagram 41, Decrease. Every moving line you add shifts where the road leads.
Reading the two together
A practical way to read an answer with change in it:
- Read the primary hexagram in full: its title, judgment and image. It's the heart of the answer.
- Read the moving lines of the primary. They're the most personal part of your cast, the exact point where the tension is. Moving Lines covers what to do when there are several.
- Read the relating hexagram as context, not as a second oracle. Usually you read only its judgment and image, not its lines, because none of its lines are moving.
Think of the relating hexagram as the landscape the road is heading into. It helps you see the trend, the weather on its way, or the lesson the situation is asking you to learn.
One special case: if all six lines move in 1 or 2, those two hexagrams have an extra text for that moment, read alongside the relating hexagram.
What it isn't
The relating hexagram isn't a verdict. Tradition reads it as the tendency of the moment, and a tendency can be followed, used or corrected. Many people take it as "what happens if I keep going like this." If you don't like where it points, the primary hexagram and its lines often tell you which attitude changes the course.
Not every school gives it the same weight, either. Some readers treat it as almost as important as the primary; others use it only as a shade of meaning. Zhu Xi, the great Song dynasty commentator, set out rules based on how many lines move, and in his scheme the relating hexagram takes over more of the reading as more lines move. There's no single right way. What matters is that you stay consistent and that the reading helps you think.
In Cambios
In Cambios, when your cast has moving lines, the reading shows you both the primary and the relating hexagram, so you can follow the path from one to the other. If you want to go deeper, the nuclear hexagram offers another layer, hidden inside the primary.