Can Liu Yao Divination Work with Machine-Generated Hexagrams?

Many people who study Liu Yao find shaking coins inconvenient, or simply don't have coins on hand, so they turn to mobile apps, web-based random number generators, or even dice to produce a hexagram. This debate has run through fortune-telling forums for years without a clear resolution. My own position is this: machine-generated hexagrams are usable at the operational level, but you need to understand exactly where the logical gaps lie.

The Underlying Logic of Traditional Casting Is "Resonance"

Traditional Liu Yao casting relies on the coin method — three coins shaken six times, with each combination of heads and tails determining the yin-yang nature and movement of one line. This practice descends from the Jing Shi Yi Zhuan (Jing Shi's Commentary on the Yi) lineage, and its core assumption is that sincerity brings efficacy. As the querent shakes the coins, carrying the question in mind and fully present in the moment, both the physical motion and the inner state jointly participate in generating the hexagram.

Traditional diviners call this logic Tian Ren Gan Ying (Heaven-Human Resonance). No one can offer a mechanistic explanation of exactly how the resonance works, nor is there any need to force one. What the framework means is this: the act of casting is not pure physical randomness — it is the product of the querent's intention (nian) and the present moment (shi) working together. That is why casting the same question at different moments produces different hexagrams, and that is considered entirely appropriate — because the moment has shifted.

This premise means that within the traditional Liu Yao system, the human being is an indispensable part of the casting process.

Where Machine Randomness Falls Short

Pure machine randomness — whether a pseudo-random number generator or a physical noise source — essentially means the human has stepped out of the casting process.

When you shake coins by hand, the force, rhythm, and condition of your hands are all variables. When something is on your mind, your hands move differently. This is not mysticism; it is the ordinary psychosomatic relationship between mental state and bodily motion. But when you open an app and tap a "cast hexagram" button, a fixed algorithm runs behind that button with no connection whatsoever to your mental state.

Some will say: the moment I tap the button is also "this intention at this moment" — that is resonance too. I find this argument unconvincing, for a simple reason: the algorithm's random seed follows a fixed logic, and the precise timestamp of your tap is merely a parameter, not your intention actually participating in the generation. The two are fundamentally different.

That said, one case deserves separate mention: a hexagram produced by physically throwing real dice — not virtual ones — is somewhat better than app-generated randomness. After all, your hand is still involved in the throw, and the body still participates. Historically there are records of practitioners using substitutes beyond yarrow stalks; folk divination using grains of rice, coins, even toothpicks is well documented. The core principle in all these cases is the same: the hand must be involved.

How Much Does This Actually Matter in Practice?

Honestly, the core skill in Liu Yao lies in reading the hexagram, not in casting it. The analytical framework — Liu Qin (Six Relatives), Shi Ying (Subject-Object lines), Fei Shen (Flying Gods), Fu Shen (Hidden Gods), Dong Bian (movement and transformation), Kong Po (void and clash), and the day and month indicators — works the same way regardless of how the hexagram was generated. Once you have a hexagram in hand, the interpretive logic is identical.

So if you are learning Liu Yao in order to practice reading hexagrams, using a machine-generated hexagram to analyze is perfectly fine. What you are training is how to reason from a given hexagram onward, not the casting act itself.

But if you are consulting for a real matter — asking about something specific and hoping for a useful answer — I personally would not recommend relying on machine-generated hexagrams. Not because they are guaranteed to be wrong, but because the resonance step is missing. You have no way to confirm whether the hexagram is actually responding to your question or is simply noise.

There is a folk verification method worth trying: for the same question at the same moment, cast one hexagram by hand with coins and generate another with an app, then compare. Do this a number of times and you will form your own judgment. Some people who have run this experiment find the overlap rate surprisingly high; others find large discrepancies. Results vary by person and by moment, and there is no universal conclusion.

How the Tradition Itself Handles This Question

Historically, Liu Yao casting methods were never uniform. Zeng Shan Bu Yi (Augmented and Revised Divination with Yi) uses coin casting but also records other approaches. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, practitioners developed Shi Jian Qi Gua Fa (time-based casting) — deriving a hexagram from the numerological values of year, month, day, and hour, with no coins needed at all. This method is still in use today, and its rationale is that time itself is the carrier of resonance.

This shows that within the tradition, the idea that the body must physically participate in casting was never a unanimous consensus. The existence of time-based casting suggests that at least part of the tradition held that resonance can be transmitted through a moment in time, not necessarily through manual action.

If you accept the logic of time-based casting, then a machine-generated hexagram — provided you trigger it at the precise moment of asking — could theoretically be understood as the product of "this intention at this moment" and might, by some stretch, be brought within the resonance framework. But I want to be clear: this is my own extension of the logic. There is no explicit support for this position in the traditional texts.

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To sum up my position: using machine-generated hexagrams for learning and practicing hexagram interpretation is perfectly fine; using them for genuine consultation involves a theoretical gap, though that does not make them categorically invalid; hexagrams produced by physically throwing real dice are more defensible than a single tap on an app; and time-based casting is the tradition's own alternative, with a more grounded logical basis than pure machine randomness. Which path you follow depends on how you understand resonance — and that question has never had an objective answer.