履 Treading
Upper trigram: Heaven (the sky) · Lower trigram: Lake (the lake)
Careful conduct — walking with the tiger.
Modern interpretation
You are walking among power, so be courteous, precise, and aware of hierarchy. Good conduct now earns protection and respect from those above you. Watch every step, literal and social — caution here is not fear, it is wisdom.
The Judgment · 卦辞
履虎尾，不咥人。亨。
“(Lî suggests the idea of) one treading on the tail of a tiger, which does not bite him. There will be progress and success.” — James Legge, The Yî King (1882)
The six lines · 爻辞
Read from the bottom line upward. Each line pairs the received Chinese text with Legge's English translation.
素履往，无咎。
“The first line, undivided, shows its subject treading his accustomed path. If he go forward, there will be no error.”
履道坦坦，幽人贞吉。
“The second line, undivided, shows its subject treading the path that is level and easy ; a quiet and solitary man, to whom, if he be firm and correct, there will be good fortune.”
眇能视，跛能履，履虎尾，咥人，凶。武人为于大君。
“The third line, divided, shows a one-eyed man (who thinks he) can see ; a lame man (who thinks he) can walk well ; one who treads on the tail of a tiger and is bitten. (All this indicates) ill fortune. We have a (mere) bravo acting the part of a great ruler.”
履虎尾，愬愬，终吉。
“The fourth line, undivided, shows its subject treading on the tail of a tiger. He becomes full of apprehensive caution, and in the end there will be good fortune.”
夬履，贞厉。
“The fifth line, undivided, shows the resolute tread of its subject. Though he be firm and correct, there will be peril.”
视履考祥，其旋元吉。
“The sixth line, undivided, tells us to look at (the whole course) that is trodden, and examine the presage which that gives. If it be complete and without failure, there will be great good fortune.”
About changing lines
In a real I Ching reading, hexagrams are built by casting coins or yarrow stalks six times, bottom line first. Some lines come out “old” (unstable) — an old yin or old yang flips into its opposite, producing a second hexagram that shows where the situation is heading. The changing lines are the moving parts of your answer: read their individual line statements above, and they point to the direction of change.
Ask a question and cast the coins — free, with a plain-English interpretation grounded in the classical text.
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