Different Casting Methods Address Different "Levels" of Questions
Many people learning Plum Blossom Numerology (Meihua Yishu) are too casual about the casting step. They glance at their phone, add up the seconds and minutes to get a number, cast a hexagram, and start interpreting. For short-horizon questions like "Will this deal go smoothly today?" that approach is barely acceptable. But if you want to ask "What does my overall fortune look like over the next few years?" or "Which direction should my life take?", I personally think this method falls short.
The reason is straightforward: the core principle of Plum Blossom Numerology (Meihua Yishu) is "感而遂通" — Gan Er Sui Tong (resonance and spontaneous connection). What matters is the timing and quality of that resonant moment when the question is asked. Short-term events usually have a clear trigger point, so the resonance is relatively sharp. But "long-term life fortune" is a vague topic with a wide time span. If you cast on a whim, it is genuinely doubtful whether the querent has truly entered that state of sincere resonance.
Shao Kangjie of the Song dynasty left behind numerous documented cases of casting triggered by observing something in the moment: two birds fighting over a branch, a passerby stumbling on the road, or an unusual dream. These were all naturally triggered casting opportunities, not "I feel like checking my destiny today" followed by crunching numbers. Long-term fortune readings demand a higher quality of resonance — they cannot be done just any time.
Key Differences Among the Main Casting Methods
Time-based casting is the most popular method: year, month, day, and hour are converted into numbers to derive the upper trigram, lower trigram, and moving line. It is easy to use and has an objective reference point. The problem is that two people who ask on the same day at the same hour get identical hexagrams, even though their situations are completely different. This clearly shows that the time number is only a supplementary reference — it cannot fully carry personalized destiny information. For reading long-term fortune I think extra caution is needed. The hexagram itself holds enough information, but it represents "the image of that time period," not necessarily "the image of you as an individual."
Number-based casting, where the querent spontaneously reports or thinks of a number, theoretically captures the "thought of this moment" more directly. If the querent is truly in a focused and sincere state when asking, this method can actually align more closely with the original intent of Plum Blossom Numerology (Meihua Yishu) than the time method. For long-term fortune readings using this approach, I recommend spending a quiet moment beforehand to genuinely center yourself on the question rather than blurting out two numbers off the top of your head.
Character-count casting converts the number of characters in a question or a person's name into numbers. Certain schools have used stroke counts of names or syllable counts of a question, but reliability varies widely. I would not recommend it for long-term fortune readings — the stroke count system is itself contested between traditional and simplified forms, and different schools calculate it differently, which undermines the foundation of the hexagram before you even begin interpreting.
Observational casting — Shao Kangjie's approach of casting from whatever you happen to see or hear: birds outside, a sound, even a randomly opened page. Traditional literature records this most extensively, and in theory the resonance is the most organic. But very few people can genuinely use it well. You first have to be certain that the image in front of you is the resonance responding to your question — and that judgment itself requires considerable skill. Ordinary learners easily fall into the trap of reading everyday random events as omens and end up over-interpreting everything.
Dream-based casting takes the scenes, numbers, or directions appearing in a dream as the basis for casting. Historically there were entire schools studying this. For long-term fortune it has a theoretical basis — dreams may carry deeper subconscious resonance. But dreams are fuzzy, details fade fast, and the method is operationally difficult. Treat it as an advanced technique.
A Few Things to Settle Before Reading Long-Term Fortune
Plum Blossom Numerology (Meihua Yishu) is fundamentally a method of "reading the present moment." It excels at judging the dynamics of right now and tends to be most accurate on specific events and short-to-medium-term trajectories. Asking it about "the fate of my entire life" may stretch beyond what this tool does best. Traditionally, mapping out a person's life arc relies more on BaZi (Four Pillars of Destiny) or Zi Wei Dou Shu, both rooted in birth data. Plum Blossom Numerology (Meihua Yishu) is better understood as a tool for "asking about this matter at this moment."
That does not mean you cannot use it for big life questions, but frame those questions more concretely:
- Break "my life fortune" down into "what does my career trajectory look like over the next three years?"
- Or "between these two paths I am facing, which suits me better?"
- A specific phase, a specific type of question.
The more specific the question, the cleaner the resonance, the more focused the hexagram's information, and the more grounded the interpretation.
Also, re-casting is an especially common mistake when asking about long-term fortune. If the result is unsatisfying, people cast again, sometimes switching methods and casting yet again. Traditional practice explicitly discourages this: one matter, one hexagram — what you get is what you get. The logic is not superstition: if you distrust the first hexagram, it means you were not truly in that state of sincere resonance when you cast, and casting again is just as pointless.
If You Have to Choose One Method
For an ordinary learner asking about long-term life direction, number-based casting is the relatively suitable choice — provided you first spend a few minutes quieting your mind, state the question clearly in your head, and confirm you are in a focused state rather than just going through the motions. Time-based casting works as a supplementary cross-check, but do not treat it as the sole basis.
If the conditions are right, finding an external image that genuinely moves you and using it as the casting trigger is the most authentic approach within the spirit of Plum Blossom Numerology (Meihua Yishu) — but that requires real discernment, and it also requires that image to appear within the window when you are actually sitting with your question. You cannot force it.
The deeper you go in Plum Blossom Numerology (Meihua Yishu), the more you realize the casting method is just the entry point. The real core is interpretive skill. The same hexagram read by two different people can yield vastly different conclusions. Rather than agonizing over which method to use for casting, time is better spent genuinely internalizing the imagery and Ti (substance) / Yong (function) relationships of all sixty-four hexagrams.
Articles in this column are for cultural and educational purposes only and do not constitute life advice.