Mei Hua — the plum blossom craft.
Start hereLet the hour, two numbers, or Chinese characters open a question. Read the pattern with its sources. Your first reading is free; no sign-in needed.
About this method and saved conversations
No coins to shake: the hour, two numbers, or the words of your question can supply the figures. This free first reading needs no sign-in. You can describe the matter and ask follow-up questions about this casting. Signed-in conversations are saved to your account, with up to six answered exchanges per matter; after six, you may optionally ask by another method. The same matter is checked again before continuing.
Considering a specific matter? The three coins weigh it line by line — see how the two differ.
Leave blank for a first reading. A question written here carries into the conversation below.
Optional: compare the reading with a chapter on money or food. The chapter may not fit every question.
Optional: say whether you hope to make progress or are dealing with a current difficulty. This does not predict an outcome or safety.
The casting form
Any door in — what follows is the same old craft.
Confirm the country and place before the local clock is corrected to solar time.
Confirm your place to show its current local time.
Time is set automatically when you draw. On the same solar calendar date, casts within the same two-hour solar-time period usually produce the same figures, even for different questions.
Why can the same figures appear again?
This method uses calendar values and a traditional two-hour period, adjusted to true solar time at your place. The period is not counted from your click. Crossing a date or calendar boundary can change the inputs. A different question does not change the figures or Body and Use positions. The general source reading may be the same; discussion can address your situation within the rules and sources this method supports.
For a cast you made earlier
Use the clock date and time recorded at that place. We apply its time-zone history and solar correction.
Press, and the hour itself casts the figures. The confirmed place is used to correct the local clock to sundial time.
The first that arrives — do not polish it.
Any two will do; the craft divides by eight and by six.
Used only for seasonal strength; your numbers still fix the figures. Months follow the solar terms, not calendar months. On a solar-term change date, this date-only form uses the new month for the whole day.
Recorded with the casting. The numbers alone fix this pattern.
First number raises the upper figure, second the lower, their sum marks the moving line.
One character splits by its own strokes; several, by their counts; a sentence by its count of characters. The strokes come from a fixed dictionary — never by guesswork. It reads Chinese characters only — English words carry none; the clock or two numbers will carry it instead.
Used only for seasonal strength; your characters still fix the figures. Months follow the solar terms, not calendar months. On a solar-term change date, this date-only form uses the new month for the whole day.
Recorded with the casting. The words alone fix this pattern.
Character-counts raise the figures; the total marks the moving line — the rulebook takes them as written, with no hour added.
Your reading — prepared from the sources
What a drawn reading looks like — the craft's own famous case, the plum-blossom anecdote. Three figures and their relations: the base, nuclear and changed figures, read together with the question and its circumstances.
Gé, molting → Xián, mutual influence
Lake over Fire, changing at the first line. The master watched two sparrows fall from a plum branch and drew this — the anecdote the craft is named for.
1 · The situation now
Lake over Fire
You · Lake (Metal)
The matter · Fire — it holds the moving line
What stands as you ask.
2 · What's driving it
Heaven over Wind
Wind (Wood) under Heaven (Metal)
The hidden middle — forces already at work under the surface.
3 · Where it's heading
Lake over Mountain
The moving line tips: Fire gives way to Mountain (Earth)
The direction the first line points to.
A headwind. The matter is Fire; you are Metal — and fire gets the better of metal, the way a flame leaves metal changed. What you are asking about presses harder than you push. Of the five relations the books count this the hardest one.
The season note: Earth is in season for this cast. Metal and Fire fall outside both listed seasonal groups. These positions do not measure overall strength or establish the effect of support or pressure. The outcome remains unreviewed.
The matter feeds you — the use generates the body.
You feed the matter — the body generates the use.
The matter overpowers you — the use controls the body. ← this cast
You overpower the matter — the body controls the use.
Same phase — body and use share one element.
Three figures, not one: the primary (how the matter stands), the nuclear (what is working underneath it), and the changed (where the moving line tips it). A reading walks all three.
Then the weighing: the trigram holding the moving line stands for the use (yong — the thing); the other stands for the body (ti — you). Here the use is Fire, and the body is Lake, metal — fire overcoming metal. The push between the two phases, not a line's seat, is what this craft weighs.
How a reading is weighed
If you know horary, the front door looks familiar: the casting belongs to the moment you ask. The old rule here is bu dong bu zhan — if nothing stirs, nothing is cast. Your hour carries the numbers, or two numbers as they come, or the words of the question written out. Horary freezes the sky of the asking; this craft lets the moment hand the matter on as numbers. Two doors, one instinct: the asking itself is evidence.
The craft fixes body and use by where the moving line falls, then reads the five phases (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) pushing between them. These five relations describe the base pair; their meaning also depends on the subject of the question. The main reading uses the general framework. If you select a reference chapter before casting, a separate panel shows its statement about the base pair; application to your question remains unreviewed. Nuclear and changed influences, seasonal conditions and conflicting evidence remain separate; the base relation does not settle the outcome.
For visitors from Western astrology
You may know the Western four: fire, earth, air, water — the groups the twelve signs fall into, from the old Greek idea of what the world is made of, later paired with the four humors your great-grandmother's doctor still blamed for moods. The five here look like cousins, and the overlap is real: both take things everyone can see — burning, flowing, growing — and use them to sort people and moments into types.
The difference sits in the verb: the elements are an ingredients list, what the world is made of; the phases are what the world is doing. Wood feeds fire, fire ashes into earth, earth bears metal, metal gathers water, water feeds wood — and across the circle each one checks the next. Nothing in the Western four answers anything back; here every phase is always strengthening another and holding another in check — two movements on one wheel, and the readings lean on both. So read them as two vocabularies over one sky, not as rivals: one names the material, the other names the move. Neither is truer — and this craft only speaks its own. (If Ayurveda's three doshas are your home ground, the generating-and-controlling pair will feel like a cousin of those currents.)
What it is good at: matters still taking shape — a situation still forming, a turn to sense, a question you haven't found words for yet. It is the lightest door to open: the clock alone can cast it, which is why the street's daily casting comes from this craft.
Want a verdict on something fixed instead? The three coins weigh it line by line — or read how the two crafts differ before choosing.
The Daily Cast comes from this door
The street's shared hexagram is a time-casting — drawn at the zero meridian, the same for everyone, a new page each day.