易about 3 and 2

The method of three coins derives from the original method of divination with fifty stalks: by tradition these have been identified as yarrow stalks, 'milfoil', Achillea sibirica .

The required manipulations—removing stalks, random division, counting-off and totting-up—are cosmologically-aligned: one for the Tao... for yin and yang, two... heaven earth and man... the seasons... five to synchronise the circuits of the sun and moon... until, ultimately, one arrives at a value of either 9 or 5; which values reduce with a numerological doubleshuffle by fours, thus:

    5 minus one-put-aside equals 4:
    four is a complete unit—give it a value of 3.
    9 minus one-put-aside equals 8:
    eight is two fours, two units: give it a value of 2.
    Repeat, with a diminished pile, twice, and you will have
    made the first line.

    The coins short-change this process:
    heads count as 3, tails as 2— or vice versa if you prefer.

the odds

With the stalks, the odds are:
    7 out of 16 in favour of an eight,
    5 out of 16 in favour of a seven,
    3 in 16 for a six
    and 1 in 16 for a nine.

With the coins:
    for either 7 or 8, the odds are three in eight,
    and for 6 or 9, the odds are one in eight.

the odds: Hilary Barrett @ Clarity history

The locus classicus for the milfoil procedure is Part One, Chapter Nine of the Great Treatise (aka 'Dazhuan' and 'Xici'), dating from the Eastern Zhou period, some time after 770 BCE: see Wilhelm/Baynes and .

Da Liu tells us, in I Ching Coin Prediction, that coins are first used in the Warring States period, by the Taoist philosopher and strategist Kuei Kuo Tse... that six coins are used during the Han... and ten during the Ming... .

In the the Song dynasty, Zhu Xi (1130-1200) revivifies the milfoil procedure, in the third chapter of his Introduction to the study of the classic of change (I-hsüeh ch'i-meng) .

Wei Tat's leisurely exposition, written in Hong Kong in 1977, recalls the ritual reinvented by Zhu Xi: it has a flavour not found in most western translations : John Blofeld comes close .

Five hundred years after Zhu Xi, his ritual has fallen into disuse and the fortune-tellers' shtick, the three coins, is in favour with the literati— embellished with new appellations, "Fire Pearls" and "the method of King Wen" .
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