1. What is Plum Blossom I-Ching?
Plum Blossom I-Ching (Méihuā Yìshù / 梅花易數) is a divination method created by Shao Yong (邵雍, 1011–1077) of the Song dynasty. Unlike traditional yarrow-stalk methods, it uses numbers (date-time, character counts, arbitrary digits) to cast hexagrams — fast, accessible, well-suited to daily life.
The name comes from the legend: Shao Yong watched two birds fight over a broken plum branch and immediately divined the hexagram Lake-over-Fire Revolution.
2. Five casting methods
- Date-Time (年月日時起卦): lunar year branch + lunar month + day + earthly-branch hour. Canonical.
- Character count (字數起卦): count characters of your question, split in half.
- Phone number: first 3 digits → upper, rest → lower.
- Two numbers: any two integers, modulo 8.
- Random: cryptographically-secure RNG.
3. The Subject-Object method (體用)
This is the defining feature distinguishing Plum Blossom from generic I-Ching reading:
- If the moving line is in the lower trigram (1-3) → lower is Object, upper is Subject
- If the moving line is in the upper trigram (4-6) → upper is Object, lower is Subject
Auspicious/inauspicious judgment derives from Five-Element relations between Subject and Object:
- Object generates Subject → very auspicious (external support)
- Subject controls Object → mildly auspicious (active mastery)
- Same element → balanced
- Subject generates Object → mildly unfavorable (draining)
- Object controls Subject → unfavorable (strong resistance)
4. Nuclear and Changed hexagrams
Each cast produces 3 hexagrams simultaneously:
- Primary (本卦) — current situation
- Nuclear (互卦) — hidden middle dynamics. Made from lines 2,3,4 + 3,4,5.
- Changed (變卦) — final outcome. Flip the moving line.
Full reading compares Subject against Object + Nuclear-upper + Nuclear-lower + Changed — Maivika computes all 4 relations automatically.
5. Seasonal strength (旺相休囚死)
Five-Element strength varies by season:
- Spring (lunar 1-2): Wood flourishing
- Summer (lunar 4-5): Fire flourishing
- Autumn (lunar 7-8): Metal flourishing
- Winter (lunar 10-11): Water flourishing
- Earth months (lunar 3, 6, 9, 12): Earth flourishing
Subject in season (Flourishing) + Object generates Subject → great fortune. Subject dying + Object controls → very inauspicious.