After casting, the first task is to become clearly acquainted with the hexagram itself: its number or name, and its structure as two trigrams, inner and outer. The lower trigram can be regarded as the inner condition, while the upper reflects the outer situation, and their combination forms a simple image that already hints at the pattern at work. From there, one turns to a reliable translation or commentary and reads the Judgment, which presents the fundamental quality and tendency of the situation, and the Image, which shows how a noble or superior person would respond within such a pattern. Together, these passages offer both an overview of the situation and an indication of appropriate attitude and conduct.

If there are changing lines, these deserve special attention, since they show where movement, tension, or transition is actually occurring. Only the lines that are changing are read, and each line’s text is taken as a specific comment on some aspect of the matter at hand, often revealing where in the process things now stand. When several lines change, they can be read as different facets of the same situation, or as a kind of progression, while keeping in mind the central lines as especially significant. Changing these lines to their opposites produces a second, or relating, hexagram, which portrays the emerging condition or likely development if one follows the guidance of the first.

The work of interpretation is to bring all of this back to the original concern, without forcing a literal match. The Judgment and Image describe the overall pattern and the stance that accords with it; the changing lines show the live edges of change; the resulting hexagram suggests the direction in which things are tending. Reading in this way, the text becomes less a fixed prediction and more a mirror of tendencies, offering moral and practical guidance: how to act, how to refrain from acting, and how to align conduct with the natural order. Finally, a brief synthesis in plain language—what the present condition is, what attitude is advised, what risks are indicated, and where the situation is tending—allows the oracle’s symbolic language to crystallize into a clear, usable insight.