恒 Duration
Upper trigram: Thunder (thunder) · Lower trigram: Wind (wind)
Constancy — what lasts is built on rhythm, not intensity.
Modern interpretation
What endures is built on constancy, not intensity. Commit to the long rhythm — in relationships, habits, and work. Perseverance in the right direction, day after day, is the whole secret.
The Judgment · 卦辞
亨。无咎。利贞。利有攸往。
“Hăng indicates successful progress and no error (in what it denotes). But the advantage will come from being firm and correct ; and movement in any direction whatever will be advantageous.” — 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.
浚恒，贞凶，无攸利。
“The first line, divided, shows its subject deeply (desirous) of long continuance. Even with firm correctness there will be evil ; there will be no advantage in any way.”
悔亡。
“The second line, undivided, shows all occasion for repentance disappearing.”
不恒其德，或承之羞，贞吝。
“The third line, undivided, shows one who does not continuously maintain his virtue. There are those who will impute this to him as a disgrace. However firm he may be, there will be ground for regret.”
田无禽。
“The fourth line, undivided, shows a field where there is no game.”
恒其德，贞，妇人吉，夫子凶。
“The fifth line, divided, shows its subject continuously maintaining the virtue indicated by it. In a wife this will be fortunate ; in a husband, evil.”
振恒，凶。
“The topmost line, divided, shows its subject exciting himself to long continuance. There will be evil.”
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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