家人 Family
Upper trigram: Wind (wind) · Lower trigram: Fire (fire)
Order begins at home — tend your closest circle first.
Modern interpretation
Everything starts at home. Clarify roles, speak with warmth, and keep order in your closest circle. Outer success built on inner harmony lasts; outer success built on domestic neglect eventually bills you for it.
The Judgment · 卦辞
利女贞。
“For (the realisation of what is taught in) Kiâ Zăn, (or for the regulation of the family), what is most advantageous is that the wife be firm and correct.” — 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.
闲有家，悔亡。
“The first line, undivided, shows its subject establishing restrictive regulations in his household. Occasion for repentance will disappear.”
无攸遂，在中馈，贞吉。
“The second line, divided, shows its subject taking nothing on herself, but in her central place attending to the preparation of the food. Through her firm correctness there will be good fortune.”
家人嗃々，悔厉吉；妇子嘻嘻，终吝。
“The third line, undivided, shows its subject (treating) the members of the household with stern severity. There will be occasion for repentance, there will be peril, (but) there will (also) be good fortune. If the wife and children were to be smirking and chattering, in the end there would be occasion for regret.”
富家，大吉。
“The fourth line, divided, shows its subject enriching the family. There will be great good fortune.”
王假有家，勿恤，吉。
“The fifth line, undivided, shows the influence of the king extending to his family. There need be no anxiety ; there will be good fortune.”
有孚威如，终吉。
“The topmost line, undivided, shows its subject possessed of sincerity and arrayed in majesty. In the end there will be 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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