Rice Grain Casting Exercise for Plum Blossom

This lesson adapts one modern three-tally rice-grain protocol documented by Benebell Wen. It is a practice exercise, not a claim that every Plum Blossom lineage uses the same rice procedure.

Prerequisite: complete the direct-number lesson. Your output is a three-tally count record with the untouched counts, arithmetic, primary hexagram, moving line, and changed hexagram.

Rice earns its place here because the physical count makes steering and recounting visible. Other count-based procedures require their own named source or belong in the observed-event lesson.

A Clean Training Version

1. Write the question.
2. Place a small bowl of rice grains in front of you.
3. Take one small pinch without trying to control the amount, count it, and record tally 1 for the lower trigram.
4. Take a fresh pinch, count it, and record tally 2 for the upper trigram.
5. Take a third fresh pinch, count it, and record tally 3 for the changing line.

Formula:

Part	Calculation
Lower trigram	tally 1 divided by 8
Upper trigram	tally 2 divided by 8
Moving line	tally 3 divided by 6

Remainder 0 means 8 for trigrams and 6 for lines.

Claim source: Wen, I Ching, The Oracle, ch. 7, “Rice Grain Method,” and the companion workbook practicum “An I Ching Reading by the Rice Grains Method.” This course adapts that named modern protocol and labels it accordingly.

Worked Example

Example type: invented, self-owned calculation exercise. No decision or outcome depends on it.

Practice prompt: “What quality is most visible in my study session?”

Count:

• Tally 1: 18 grains.
• Tally 2: 29 grains.
• Tally 3: 47 grains.

Step	Math	Result
Lower trigram	18 divided by 8 leaves 2	Dui, Lake
Upper trigram	29 divided by 8 leaves 5	Xun, Wind
Moving line	47 divided by 6 leaves 5	line 5

Primary hexagram: Wind over Lake, Hexagram 61, Inner Truth.

Line 5 changes the upper trigram from Xun to Gen, producing Mountain over Lake, Hexagram 41, Decrease. That transformation is checkable. An interpretation must consult the received Hexagram 61 line 5 and Hexagram 41 texts and remain separate from the arithmetic.

What This Exercise Trains

It gives students a body-level feel for the method.

You produce three counts, handle the remainders, name trigrams, and build a hexagram from concrete actions.

That makes it useful as a classroom exercise:

• Everyone can produce a hexagram.
• Everyone can check the math.
• Different students can compare their arithmetic and Ti/Yong assignment.
• The group can separate identical mechanics from context-dependent interpretations.

Caution

Do not present this rice-grain procedure as the only traditional procedure. This lesson gives one sourced modern training protocol.

Take all three counts first, then calculate. Do not adjust a pinch, combine tallies, or recount after seeing the numbers. If a tally is disturbed before its count is recorded, mark the exercise invalid and stop; do not reconstruct a preferred count from memory.

Next, handle the intuitive edge of the practice without losing discipline. Continue to The Intuitive Method.