中孚 Inner Truth
Upper trigram: Wind (wind) · Lower trigram: Lake (the lake)
Sincerity connects — inner truth moves even hard hearts.
Modern interpretation
Be utterly sincere — with others and with yourself — and trust will follow without being chased. What is genuine needs no force and no performance. This is the hexagram of winning by refusing to pretend.
The Judgment · 卦辞
豚鱼，吉。利涉大川，利贞。
“Kung Fû (moves even) pigs and fish, and leads to good fortune. There will be advantage in crossing the great stream. 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.
虞吉，有它不燕。
“The first line, undivided, shows its subject resting (in himself). There will be good fortune. If he sought to any other, he would not find rest.”
鸣鹤在阴，其子和之。我有好爵，吾与尔靡之。
“The second line, undivided, shows its subject (like) the crane crying out in her hidden retirement, and her young ones responding to her. (It is as if it were said), ‘I have a cup of good spirits,’ (and the response were), ‘I will partake of it with you.’”
得敌，或鼓或罢，或泣或歌。
“The third line, divided, shows its subject having met with his mate. Now he beats his drum, and now he leaves off. Now he weeps, and now he sings.”
月几望，马匹亡，无咎。
“The fourth line, divided, shows its subject (like) the moon nearly full, and (like) a horse (in a chariot) whose fellow disappears. There will be no error.”
有孚挛如，无咎。
“The fifth line, undivided, shows its subject perfectly sincere, and linking (others) to him in closest union. There will be no error.”
翰音登于天，贞凶。
“The topmost line, undivided, shows its subject in chanticleer (trying to) mount to heaven. Even with firm correctness 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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