鼎 The Cauldron
Upper trigram: Fire (fire) · Lower trigram: Wind (wind)
Transformation — a new vessel for a new order; build it with care.
Modern interpretation
A new order is cooking. Establish the new structure deliberately, with something like ritual care: nourish what is valuable, scrape out what is burnt. What you build now will hold the future — build it to last.
The Judgment · 卦辞
元吉，亨。
“Ting gives the intimation of great 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.
鼎颠趾，利出否。得妾以其子，无咎。
“The first line, divided, shows the caldron overthrown and its feet turned up. (But) there will be advantage in its getting rid of what was bad in it. (Or it shows us) the concubine (whose position is improved) by means of her son. There will be no error.”
鼎有实，我仇有疾，不我能即，吉。
“The second line, undivided, shows the caldron with the things (to be cooked) in it. (If its subject can say), ‘My enemy dislikes me, but he cannot approach me,’ there will be good fortune.”
鼎耳革，其行塞，雉膏不食，方雨，亏悔，终吉。
“The third line, undivided, shows the caldron with (the places of) its ears changed. The progress (of its subject) is (thus) stopped. The fat flesh of the pheasant (which is in the caldron) will not be eaten. But the (genial) rain will come, and the grounds for repentance will disappear. There will be good fortune in the end.”
鼎折足，覆公餗，其形渥，凶。
“The fourth line, undivided, shows the caldron with its feet broken ; and its contents, designed for the ruler's use, overturned and spilt. Its subject will be made to blush for shame. There will be evil.”
鼎黄耳金铉，利贞。
“The fifth line, divided, shows the caldron with yellow ears and rings of metal in them. There will be advantage through being firm and correct.”
鼎玉铉，大吉，无不利。
“The sixth line, undivided, shows the caldron with rings of jade. There will be great good for- tune, and all action taken will be in every way advantageous.”
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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