Plum Blossom
I Ching readings, divination, and the patterns underneath.
First Reading
The Plum Blossom method of I Ching divination uses the moment itself as the oracle. No coins, no yarrow stalks — just the time, the circumstances, and the question.
You take the hour, the day, the month, the year. You divide. The numbers become trigrams. The trigrams become a hexagram. The hexagram speaks.
Hexagram 11, Tai, is Earth above Heaven. The creative force rises while the receptive descends to meet it. Everything flows. This is the hexagram of spring.
What drew me to Plum Blossom over other I Ching methods is the directness. There’s no randomness to hide behind. The reading comes from this exact moment — the assumption being that the moment you ask is itself the answer.
An auspicious beginning.
The Hundred Days
A hundred days. That’s the commitment. Daily guided meditation following Benebell Wen’s Mandala of Heaven, paired with an I Ching reading each morning.
Why a hundred days? In Taoist tradition, it’s the minimum period for genuine internal transformation. Not because the number is magic — because it’s long enough that you can’t fake it. You either show up every day or you don’t. The practice doesn’t care about your intentions. It cares about your consistency.
The structure is simple:
- Morning meditation (guided, from the workbook)
- I Ching reading using Plum Blossom method
- Journal the reading
- Move on with the day
What I expect: resistance. Boredom. Days where it feels pointless. Days where something shifts and I can’t explain what. The usual arc of any sustained practice.
What I don’t expect: enlightenment. This isn’t about transcendence. It’s about paying attention — to the body, to the moment, to the patterns that emerge when you stop moving long enough to notice them.
Day one.
Time as Oracle
Most divination systems introduce randomness. Coin flips. Card shuffles. Yarrow stalk counting. The assumption is that the universe speaks through chance.
Plum Blossom takes a different approach. The universe speaks through time. The specific moment you ask your question — the hour, minute, day, month, year — contains the answer. You just need to know how to extract it.
The math is straightforward. Convert the time components to numbers. Divide by 8 for the trigrams. Divide by 6 for the changing line. What you get is a hexagram that is not random at all — it’s deterministic. Ask the same question at the same moment and you’ll always get the same answer.
This bothers people who want their divination to feel mystical. But I find it more compelling, not less. The claim isn’t that randomness reveals truth. The claim is that the structure of this moment already contains the pattern you’re asking about.
Hexagram 29, Kan, appeared on a day I was struggling with a decision. Water over Water. The Abysmal. Not a comfortable hexagram. Its counsel: when you’re in deep water, the only way out is through. Don’t fight the current. Flow with it, and stay true to your inner compass.
I didn’t love hearing it. But I respected it.