Settle the question in your mind, then cast. It takes the moment you press the button.
Plum Blossom needs no coins and no form. It takes the moment something prompted you, turns four numbers into a hexagram, and reads only which trigram generates or controls the other — and what each one stands for.
Plum Blossom uses no coins and asks you to fill in nothing. It takes the moment something prompted you and turns four numbers — year, month, day, hour — into a hexagram. Attributed to Shao Yong of the Northern Song, it favours image over technique: once the hexagram is up you don't chase stems and branches, you look at which of the two trigrams generates or controls the other, and what each one stands for. Good for a quick answer.
The upper trigram is the remainder of year plus month plus day divided by eight; the lower adds the hour and divides by eight again; the moving line is that same sum divided by six — taking eight, or six, when it divides evenly. Year and hour use branch ordinals, month and day the lunar calendar. Every addend, sum and remainder is printed so you can check it.
Of the two trigrams, the one containing the moving line is the Object — the matter asked about. The other is the Subject — you. How their elements generate or control each other is how the matter stands with you. The source text gives one verdict for each of the five possible relations, and we quote it verbatim rather than paraphrase.
Beyond Subject and Object there is image. Qian is heaven, the ruler, the father; Kun is earth, the mother, the multitude; Dui is the lake, the mouth and tongue, breaking and snapping. These associations come from the Shuo Gua Zhuan, the canonical commentary, and they are the root of Plum Blossom reading. We use only what the text lists — no modern embroidery like “Qian also signifies leadership.”
Every step of the arithmetic, the primary and changed hexagrams, the Subject and Object trigrams with their elemental relation, and an AI reading. The reading quotes the source verdict, ties the Shuo Gua images to what you asked, then reads the changed hexagram for where things end up. You can keep asking follow-ups.
Plum Blossom has few rules and few gaps, but there are some the text simply never settles — which number a leap month takes, for instance, or which day the year starts on. We pick one convention and say on the chart which one, so you can convert if you follow another.
It depends how much weight you want. Liu Yao takes six coin tosses and builds the full apparatus — stems, relatives, self and other, spirits — and suits “will this specific thing come off, and where is it stuck.” Plum Blossom takes no input at all, casts in one tap, and reads only Subject against Object plus the images; it suits “roughly where is this heading.” Same family, one heavy and one light.
It belongs to the moment you pressed the button. The premise of Plum Blossom is the prompt — something is already on your mind, and the time itself is part of the answer. So settle the question in your head before you cast, and ideally type it into the field, so the reading can speak to the actual matter.
Whichever trigram holds the moving line is the Object. That reading has the source text plus two independent sources behind it. But in fairness: some practitioners hold that Subject/Object as a philosophical pair is a different thing from the Subject and Object trigrams, and regard the still-versus-moving rule as an entry-level device. We mark that disagreement on the chart rather than settle it for you.