Reading a hexagram

break in the Yi (Tinh dut gay)

By Vi Nhật Sơn · Updated 2026-09-20

Tính đứt gãy của Dịch

break in the Yi (Tinh dut gay) — what is it? The break in the Yi: each hexagram runs only from A to B, A being the moment of asking and B the moment the event occurs in the future, nothing more.

Where does the Yi begin? Only from the present; what went before, there is no knowing — from the moment of casting, there is only what comes after.

From A to B

The break in the Yi shows itself in this: from A to B, A being the moment of asking and B the moment the event occurs in the future, each hexagram of the Yi runs only from A to B, nothing more. A is fixed, but B is not necessarily as it was spoken: you say one thing, but your heart says another, and then B stands for the other. Understanding oneself is the most important thing in the Yi. If one does not understand oneself, no one else can understand for one, and the hexagram does not change for the sake of the reader. The hexagram is the querent's property, it has nothing to do with the reader; only the querent understands it best. Everyone needs to learn, not out of reluctance, but because no one understands another as well as oneself.

Model and reality

The correspondence between the model and reality is a lucky coincidence — lucky to the point that this model has an interpolation that produces a perfect model, which in plain terms means every hexagram has an outcome and no hexagram is meaningless. Every hexagram, from none moving line to six moving lines, will certainly have an outcome technically, let alone in fact — whether this correspondence leads to a right result or not, every hexagram will certainly have an outcome. After long statistics, there is clearly an absolute correspondence between reality and this model; it seems that in the old days the finding of it and the referring of it to the orbits of the Day and Month formed, without intention, something perfect. But whether by chance, by luck or for any reason at all, the Yi has been and still is usable, and this is a product of human beings, even if human beings found it by chance. And because it refers to the Day and Month, the answering is likewise limited to the geographical scope of this earth.

As for the principle, one supposes it like parallel slices, spoken of long ago; and of course, whether it is really so, one cannot say, since it certainly cannot be verified. One only knows it has worked until now — the value lies here.

Events not belonging here would come out much the same, and would presumably also refer to the Target line; of course, not as here, where the testing has passed through a thousand years of statistics. The new ones are all the same stretch of road, but believe it and it too comes about.

The Yi as the property of humankind

The Yi is the property of humankind. Because of the break, the past is not needed, and the discrepancy from place to place no longer matters: how an African takes the day of birth, by which calendar, or an American, or anyone at all, no longer matters. The referring, to this day, is to the cycles of the Moon and the Sun; keep it that way and use it, and if anything, it will develop further from these foundations. Because a coincidence like this does not easily happen twice.

The coincidence is like buying a lottery ticket where the digits you buy match every draw; a new model matching absolutely is far harder still. To make one would also take luck, luck attested by statistics — do not, for a little something, or for a living, take another person's life to experiment with.

Laying the Yi open

This is the last piece of writing of the first stage with the Yi: LAYING BOC DICH OPEN.

The work of laying it open is done, there is nothing more to say; whatever else is found will be reported in turn.

Using the Yi is like a point in a person's life. At a moment when one cannot decide for oneself, the Yi is the Point, a point of the future, and drawing from the present to that future is the road. Whether we choose that Point to stretch the line to, no one can decide for us.

The Yi is a gate to more distant things. In a life of Bach Lo Vo Phong, or close to it, personal experience and feeling will go far beyond the ordinary. Do not believe it and you will see: worrying is the thing that wastes the most time in a life, and it also buries the feeling one has for other things. So many fine things, but if one is worrying, when one faces them, what heart and strength is left for them?

Such is the Yi: the use of the Yi is not prediction but a tool, similar to AI; these two take turns, making an insurance together, and together making a life that is truly a life, where the bird may fly, yet the fish cannot leave the deep.

The Yi into life

Stage 2 of the Yi begins here: bringing the Yi into life, so that the Yi, as common property, lets people be whole with their lives — right or wrong is each person's own, but there can be a little more.

The Yi into life is like a subject of study. For a very long time the Yi has been a subject at the margin of society, and those who walked with it have been at the margin of society too. There are many reasons for this, but the Yi is the property of humankind. Knowing the Yi also creates certain psychological illusions, if one does not treat it as a Point and walk as a human being. One reads a hexagram, knows point B, sets out from A — but how to reach B, by flying, by running? The information can be known, but understand this: the flow of time is the continuity of all moments, whereas the Yi tells what certain points in that flow are, not all of them. This leaves certain gaps, most easily seen in the destiny hexagram: those points not reported are taken as unknown, or, along the road from A to B, a point not reported cannot be known. If one wants it clearer, go on casting until there is nothing left; but this carries a risk, the risk of knowing that it is small — but how small? Or of repeating the old hexagram, or of reporting something new, or of whether one is really still focused.

A life does not last; this writing is for the generations after, perhaps long after, perhaps never needing to be used, because we also do not rule it out, being the lonely ones in the universe.

The ground of the Yi

The ground of the Yi is the referring, between the figure obtained once the casting is complete, by whatever means, and the Day and Month. The Day depends on the turning of the Earth around the sun, and the Month is the circling of the Moon around the earth. To this day the model reaches absolute accuracy if the factors of the question and the casting are sound — that is, the influence of the turning of the Moon and the Sun still holds, or with a negligible error caused by certain physical laws that stretch the time of each of these turns so that it is not as it was at the beginning. A thousand years gone by is like an instant in the development since the Big Bang, negligible; or negligible too against the change of the orbits between Sun and Moon over time. Some billions of years hence, some orbit may not be as it is now and this model will shift a little, and then it may no longer hold, or further off still; but at least for a few blinks of an eye more, it will not change much, and it is still usable.