The language of change.

A practice of attention

YAO brings Chinese symbolic traditions into an accessible space for reflection. BaZi offers a way to look at the calendar pattern of a birth. The I Ching offers a way to sit with a question and consider change.

These traditions are cultural and interpretive systems. They are not scientifically established ways to predict events or determine personality. A useful reading opens a question; it does not settle your future.

What you can do here

Explore a Birth Pattern Beta, cast a real six-line I Ching reading, browse all 64 hexagrams, and keep a personal journal. The tools are free to use without an account.

How the readings work

The I Ching uses the three-coin method: tails counts as 2, heads as 3. Six casts build six lines from bottom to top. Totals of 6 and 9 change into their opposite; 7 and 8 stay as they are.

Hexagram numbers follow the King Wen sequence. Each hexagram has original, modern English commentary written for YAO. Changing-line prompts consider the position of a line; they are reflection prompts, not translations of the ancient line texts. A relating hexagram is another perspective on the change, not a promised outcome.

Birth Pattern Beta uses lunar-javascript 1.7.7 for calendar calculations and Temporal 0.5.1 for time zones. Solar-term comparisons use an absolute moment expressed in UTC+08; day and hour pillars use your recorded local civil time, with a midnight day boundary. The birthplace is a label, and the selected time zone controls the calculation. Longitude and apparent solar-time corrections are not included.

Dates from 1901 onward are supported. Unknown hours are omitted. Pillars affected by an uncertain birth time or a solar-term boundary are marked Uncertain. The five-element display counts each visible stem and branch once; it is not a professional assessment of elemental strength, hidden stems or favorable elements.

Your information stays here

Your birth information stays in this browser. Calculations run on your device. YAO does not send your birth details, questions or journal entries to a server or an AI service. There is no required registration, analytics tracker or advertising pixel.

An unsaved result uses this tab's temporary browser storage so it survives refresh. You choose whether to save it to the journal in localStorage. Your browser may restore temporary data when restoring a tab; saved entries remain until you delete them or clear the browser's site data. Export a copy if you want to keep it elsewhere. This is not cloud sync, and another person using your browser profile could open your journal.

The hosting provider receives ordinary website requests, including your IP address. Your personal reading is never put into a URL. Clearing the journal removes saved entries; use “Forget current reading” on a result page to remove its temporary copy.

Made with care

Mountain photograph by Swanson Chan on Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License. YAO's geometric identity is an original interpretation of the repeated crossing structure of the ancient character, not a traced historical seal.

Open-source acknowledgments: software licenses. Learn more about the calendar library and three-coin tradition.

YAO V0.1.1 · Reflection, not a substitute for informed professional advice.