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I Ching Birthday Hexagram Calculator

Your birthday hexagram is the I Ching hexagram that rules your birthday by the Han calendar. This calendar (Gua Qi) divides the solar year from the winter solstice into 60 sections of 6° of the Sun's course, each with a hexagram; the calculator finds yours from the Sun's position at your birth, as the UmbraLux app does.

Date of birth

As exact as you can, ideally from your birth certificate.

Your place is missing? Take the nearest town; a few kilometres hardly change the result.

The calculation runs in your browser. Your birth data is neither sent nor stored; only this device remembers your last entry. · Place data: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)

How the birthday hexagram is calculated

Three steps:

  1. 1

    The Sun's position

    The Sun's longitude at your birth moment, counted from the winter solstice (270°).

  2. 2

    The section

    Every 6° of the Sun's course make a section, 60 a year, each 5.9 to 6.3 days long. Like the BaZi months, the sections follow the Sun's true course.

  3. 3

    The hexagram

    The Han scholars Meng Xi and Jing Fang gave each section a hexagram, beginning with 61 at the winter solstice; 40 begins at the spring equinox, 31 at the summer solstice, 22 at the autumn equinox.

Example: 15 May 1990, 14:30, Berlin

The Sun stood at 24°24′ Taurus, 144.4° after the winter solstice: in section 25 of 60. The Han calendar gives it hexagram 8, Holding Together; it ruled from 15 May at 04:08 to 21 May at 09:37 (Berlin time).

Before it came 7, The Army; after it follows 9, The Taming Power of the Small.

What the birthday hexagram means

The tradition used the table as a calendar: it gave every time of the year its hexagram, not every person. The UmbraLux app calls the hexagram of your birthday your birthday hexagram, an image from the I Ching for the time of the year you were born into.

The calculation is astronomical; what the hexagram means is the teaching of the I Ching.

In the library

Questions about the birthday hexagram

Is the birthday hexagram an oracle?

No. An oracle casts coins or yarrow stalks for a question in the moment; the birthday hexagram follows the calendar and is fixed for every birthday.

Why do hexagrams 29, 30, 51 and 58 never appear?

In the Han calendar Kan, Li, Zhen and Dui are the four cardinal hexagrams: with their 24 lines they rule the 24 solar terms of the year, not single days. So only 60 of the 64 hexagrams can be a birthday hexagram.

Do I need my birth time?

Mostly not: on more than five days in six one hexagram holds all day. Where it changes on your birthday, the calculator names the time.

Is this the same as Human Design or the Gene Keys?

No, both order the 64 hexagrams differently: as 64 gates of 5.625° each around the zodiac. Your Sun gate there follows another order.

Is my data stored?

No. The calculation runs in your browser; your date, time and place are neither sent nor stored. Only your device remembers your last entry, and you can delete it below the form.

Sources

  • New Book of Tang (Xin Tangshu), treatise on the calendar: the Dayan calendar: The table of the hexagrams (Gua Qi)
  • Richard Wilhelm: I Ging. Das Buch der Wandlungen, Eugen Diederichs 1924: The hexagrams, their judgement and image (in UmbraLux's English translation)
  • Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes (transl.): The I Ching or Book of Changes, Princeton University Press: The English names of the hexagrams
  • Astronomy Engine (Don Cross) : The Sun's position
  • Wikipedia: I Ching
  • Wikipedia: King Wen sequence : The numbers of the hexagrams

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