同人 Fellowship
Upper trigram: Heaven (the sky) · Lower trigram: Fire (fire)
Community of shared purpose — organize openly.
Modern interpretation
Big goals need fellowship, not lone heroics. Find allies who share your values and organize in the open — transparency is what attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones. State your cause plainly.
The Judgment · 卦辞
同人于野，亨。利涉大川。利君子贞。
“Thung Zăn (or ‘Union of men’) appears here (as we find it) in the (remote districts of the) country, indicating progress and success. It will be advantageous to cross the great stream. It will be advantageous to maintain the firm correctness of the superior man.” — 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.
同人于门，无咎。
“The first line, undivided, (shows the representative of) the union of men just issuing from his gate. There will be no error.”
同人于宗，吝。
“The second line, divided, (shows the representative of) the union of men in relation with his kindred. There will be occasion for regret.”
伏戎于莽，升其高陵，三岁不兴。
“The third line, undivided, (shows its subject) with his arms hidden in the thick grass, and at the top of a high mound. (But) for three years he makes no demonstration.”
乘其墉，弗克攻，吉
“The fourth line, undivided, (shows its subject) mounted on the city wall ; but he does not proceed to make the attack (he contemplates). There will be good fortune.”
同人先号咷而后笑，大师克，相遇。
“In the fifth line, undivided, (the representative of) the union of men first wails and cries out, and then laughs. His great host conquers, and he (and the subject of the second line) meet together.”
同人于郊，无悔。
“The topmost line, undivided, (shows the representative of) the union of men in the suburbs. There will be no occasion for repentance,”
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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