蒙 Youthful Folly
Upper trigram: Mountain (the mountain) · Lower trigram: Water (water)
The learner's hexagram — admit what you don't know and seek guidance.
Modern interpretation
You do not know what you do not know, and that is fine. Seek a teacher or mentor rather than guessing, and ask sincere questions. The right guidance appears when the student is genuinely ready to receive it.
The Judgment · 卦辞
亨。匪我求童蒙，童蒙求我。初筮告，再三渎，渎则不告。利贞。
“Măng (indicates that in the case which it presupposes) there will be progress and success. I do not (go and) seek the youthful and inexperienced, but he comes and seeks me. When he shows (the sincerity that marks) the first recourse to divination, I instruct him. If he apply a second and third time, that is troublesome; and I do not instruct the troublesome. There will be advantage in being 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.
发蒙，利用刑人，用说桎梏，以往吝。
“The first line, divided, (has respect to) the dispelling of ignorance. It will be advantageous to use punishment (for that purpose), and to remove the shackles (from the mind). But going on in that way (of punishment) will give occasion for regret.”
包蒙，吉。纳妇，吉。子克家。
“The second line, undivided, (shows its subject) exercising forbearance with the ignorant, in which there will be good fortune; and admitting (even the goodness of women, which will also be fortunate. (He may be described also as) a son able to (sustain the burden of) his family.”
勿用取女，见金夫，不有躬。无攸利。
“The third line, divided, (seems to say) that one should not marry a woman whose emblem it might be, for that, when she sees a man of wealth, she will not keep her person from him, and in no wise will advantage come from her.”
困蒙，吝。
“The fourth line, divided, (shows its subject as if) bound in chains of ignorance. There will be occasion for regret.”
童蒙，吉。
“The fifth line, divided, shows its subject as a simple lad without experience. There will be good fortune.”
击蒙，不利为寇，利御寇。
“In the topmost line, undivided, we see one smiting the ignorant (youth). But no advantage will come from doing him an injury. Advantage would come from warding off injury from him.”
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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