Many many centuries ago the people in China did what we also do when when we are looking for a good place for a house. Like what everyone on this planet does when he/she has the chance. We want a sunny place but not one where you get too hot or too cold. A safe valley out of severe storms would be nice, or water close by. In the city a park, or simply a little bit of a nice view. Shops or school or hospital or job not too far away.

  The Chinese back then did this too, but also for their ancestors. They wanted their deceased family to enjoy their spot just as well. It was very important, because the spirit of a happy grandparent would help you, a sad or angry one was dangerous.

  They turned this search for a good place into a science: Feng Shui. It got 8 images for the kinds of places: Water, Fire, Thunder, Wind/Wood, Mountain, Lake/Marsh, Heaven and Earth. But a place never has just one of those, and each combination has its own good and bad features. Thunder and Lake together might cause good rain for the crops or bad big waves or whirlwinds, Fire and Heaven scorching heat or a pleasant autumn, Earth and Thunder a healthy crop. In Feng Shui it is possible to combine all 8.

  In this trigram oracle it is much simpler. We look at two trigrams, not all 8 at once, but since they are drawn with three lines, each line apart also changes the initial trigram into another one. A one-line-change is reasonably easy, a 2 or 3-line change gets more complicated. And what about the not-changing lines - even they have a meaning. A changing season makes a difference, but what about a season which will not change when it is supposed to? An endless cold spring which looks more like winter. Or maybe an Indian summer: a lingering summer.

  So in every answer you get the 'big' trigram change, but also 3 line-changes which add their own images to the answer. Each line has its own meaning, exactly like in a landscape. There is heaven, where the rotating sun and stars tell us when the seasons are due. It is where all laws come from which give everything a structure. Laws for everything concrete: trees grow like trees, a lizard grows like a lizard, a diamond grows like a diamond. Laws for time: days, nights, seasons and years follow each other. Good and bad: laws of living creatures which are embedded in all of them. Even a crocodile has its own sense of good and bad, or smart and stupid.
  And there is the Earth which gives all those possiblities of Heaven's laws a concrete existence. She feeds the tree and the diamond, gives them a space to exist with many challenges to conquer in order to stay healthy.

  The line in between is 'man'. Us, people, animals, plants, even 'things', all creatures doing their own thing to create something with the intangible tools from Heaven and the tangible reality of Earth. In the trigram oracle this line tells us specifically about the outcome of a question: what is changing on account of this person or animal or plant or diamond. Even a tree can change a lot: it can grow big and uproot your house, or get fruit and nourish many creatures around it. Don't forget the impact of a sea or climate which changes.

  Heaven and Earth can also change, but they rather continue what they always do. The disturbing changes in both are often what we do to them, so it comes again back to the middle line, the creatures which fill the space between them. Exceptions might be meteors, not sure.

  In a trigram change the first trigram is 'now', the situation as it is. The second trigram is the 'outcome'. It is why the changed lines are marked in the second trigram: they have changed. In the first trigram it is not yet visible what will change.
  The second trigram shows most of all what YOU did to make this change. Decisions, wishes or fears, habits, mental make-up, all these things have a huge influence. A change is not just caused by what you do, but for a very large part by who you are. Your mind and heart, and probably the latter more than the first. Your dreams and ideals steer a big part of your life. If you can give them power and a direction, the changes will really be your own changes.

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought" (Buddha)

Extremely interesting is what Dean Radin says in "Supernatural", final chapter.
One sentence I especially like: "Perhaps the fabric of reality is woven from the woof of matter/energy and the warp of mind. And when those threads are examined very closely, we find that they don't consist of ordinary stuff. They are made out of pure information."

There is mind and matter (Heaven and Earth) and consciousness, (the middle line) which might be the most important of the three, and maybe the creative factor of the universe. Warp is mind, the structure, woof is matter, the colorful result, life or consciousness is the weaver.

  I wish you profitable trigram oracle castings!