Ask once, slowly.

Hold the question in plain words before you begin. The oracle answers what was actually asked.

1. 01Fifty stalks. One is set aside and takes no further part — the observer. Forty-nine remain.
2. 02They are divided roughly into two piles — heaven and earth — and then counted away four at a time until four or fewer are left.
3. 03What remains gives a number: six, seven, eight or nine. Six and eight are yin, broken; seven and nine are yang, solid.
4. 04The count repeats six times. The lines build from the ground up, and the sixes and nines are the moving ones — the places where the reading is already becoming something else.

The count is not decoration. It takes as long as it takes, and the waiting is the part that does the work.