Can you ask the I Ching about another person's feelings or actions?

You can ask the I Ching about another person, and people always have. But the book speaks most clearly about your situation and your conduct, so a question like "What does she feel about me?" is usually better reframed as "How should I approach my relationship with her?" That reframing is both more useful and fairer to the other person, who is not there to speak for themselves.

Why the answer tends to be about you

The Zhouyi's texts describe situations from the inside: positions, relationships, timing, and how the person in that position should act. Its Great Images almost always end with what "the superior person" (君子) does. When you ask about someone else, the hexagram you receive therefore describes the shape of the relationship and your place in it far more naturally than it describes another mind.

That is also how many readers make sense of it. If you ask "Is he going to call?" and receive a hexagram about waiting or restraint, the useful reading is not a forecast of his behaviour but advice on how to hold yourself while you wait. Trying to extract the other person's private thoughts from a line text usually means projecting your hopes or fears onto it.

What the tradition says

The classics do not forbid questions about others. Many recorded divinations concern alliances, marriages and rulers' intentions. But two threads in the tradition bear on the ethics.

• Divination for straight purposes. In the Zuo Zhuan, an adviser objects to a would-be rebel's favourable cast with the remark 「易不可以占險」: the Changes cannot be consulted for a crooked or dangerous undertaking. A question designed to manipulate, outmanoeuvre or surveil another person sits uneasily with that principle.
• Sincerity in the asker. The Judgment of Hexagram 61, Zhong Fu, Inner Truth, says sincerity reaches even "pigs and fishes" (豚魚吉), and its second line pictures a crane calling in the shade and its young answering: 「鳴鶴在陰，其子和之」. The book prizes connection that comes from genuine feeling, not from secret knowledge of the other's mind.

In Six Lines (六爻) divination, a separate tradition that reads stems and branches rather than the text, there is a whole technical system for questions about others: the line standing for a parent, a partner, a child or a rival is chosen by its "relative" (see the six relatives and the use spirit). That method is still read from the asker's point of view: the other person appears as a line in your chart.

The ethics, briefly

• They have not consented. A reading about someone is a story you will carry about them. Hold it lightly and never present it to them, or to others, as fact.
• It cannot replace a conversation. If you need to know what someone feels or intends, the reliable route is to ask them. A cast can help you work out how to ask.
• Some questions are not yours to ask. Whether a colleague will be fired, what a friend is hiding, how an ex is spending their evenings: questions like these tend to feed anxiety rather than understanding. Matters of another person's health, legal position or finances belong with them and with qualified people.
• *Casting for someone is different.* If a friend asks you to read for them, they are the asker and they frame the question. That has its own guidelines: see casting the I Ching for someone else.

How to reframe the question

The aim is to keep the other person in the picture while putting your own role at the centre.

• "Does he love me?" becomes "What should I understand about where this relationship stands, and how can I act well in it?"
• "Will she forgive me?" becomes "How can I make amends sincerely?"
• "Is my business partner going to betray me?" becomes "What attitude should I take in this partnership right now?"
• "Will my son pass his exam?" becomes "How can I best support my son through this period?"
• "What is my boss thinking?" becomes "How should I conduct myself in my working relationship with my boss?"

These questions still let the reading describe the other person's part, but they ask for something you can act on. How to ask the I Ching a question has more examples.

Reading the answer

Some hexagrams speak directly of relationships, and they are worth knowing when the question involves another person.

• [Hexagram 31, Xian](/iching/hexagrams/31-xian), Influence or Mutual Attraction: lake above mountain. Its Great Image reads 「山上有澤，咸；君子以虛受人」: the superior person receives others with openness. Attraction works through receptivity, not pursuit.
• [Hexagram 8, Bi](/iching/hexagrams/8-bi), Holding Together: its Judgment advises examining the matter again (原筮) and warns 「後夫凶」, the one who comes too late meets misfortune. Union depends on sincere, timely commitment.
• [Hexagram 38, Kui](/iching/hexagrams/38-kui), Opposition: fire above lake, moving apart. Its Image, 「君子以同而異」, says the superior person remains themselves while sharing common ground. Difference need not mean rupture.
• [Hexagram 13, Tong Ren](/iching/hexagrams/13-tong-ren), Fellowship: openness among people, "in the open country".

Parts of a cast may still seem to describe the other person: corresponding lines (1 and 4, 2 and 5, 3 and 6) are often read as the two sides answering each other, and the upper trigram as the other party or outer circumstances. These help you see the structure of the relationship, but they describe the position the other person occupies, not their private words. Ask: "If they really are in that position, how should I act?" See line correspondence.

In every case, read the line texts as describing a position in a relationship, and ask which position is yours. For relationship questions in particular, the love reading guide and the love pages, such as Xian in love, go further.

A short example

Someone asks, "Is my friend angry with me?" and receives Hexagram 61, Zhong Fu with no moving lines. Read as a verdict on the friend's mood, it says nothing definite. Read as a description of the situation, it is clear: this is a matter of inner truth, sincerity that can reach even the hardest-to-reach. The Image speaks of deliberating over judgments and delaying punishment (議獄緩死): patient, fair consideration rather than verdicts. The advice is to approach the friend sincerely and without accusation, and to listen. That is something the asker can do today.

How to apply this when you cast

Before casting, notice whether your question is really about someone else's inner life. If it is, rewrite it around your own role: how to act, what to understand, what attitude to take. Cast once. Read the hexagram as the shape of the relationship, find your own position in the lines, and take the Image as advice for you. Then, if you need to know what the other person thinks, ask them. When you are ready, cast a reading.