比 Holding Together
Upper trigram: Water (water) · Lower trigram: Earth (the earth)
Alliance and belonging — find your people and commit.
Modern interpretation
Mutual support is the strategy now. Check who is truly with you, commit to them fully, and be worthy of their trust in return. The unity you build here is strength no individual effort can generate.
The Judgment · 卦辞
吉。原筮，元，永贞，无咎。不宁方来，后夫凶。
“Pî indicates that (under the conditions which it supposes) there is good fortune. But let (the principal party intended in it) re-examine himself, (as if) by divination, whether his virtue be great, unintermitting, and firm. If it be so, there will be no error. Those who have not rest will then come to him; and with those who are (too) late in coming it will be ill.” — 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.
有孚比之，无咎。有孚盈缶，终来有它，吉。
“he first line, divided, shows its subject seeking by his sincerity to win the attachment of his object. There will be no error. Let (the breast) be full of sincerity as an earthenware vessel is of its contents, and it will in the end bring other advantages.”
比之自内，贞吉。
“In the second line, divided, we see the movement towards union and attachment proceeding from the inward (mind). With firm correctness there will be good fortune.”
比之匪人。
“In the third line, divided, we see its subject seeking for union with such as ought not to be associated with.”
外比之，贞吉。
“In the fourth line, divided, we see its subject seeking for union with the one beyond himself. With firm correctness there will be good fortune.”
显比，王用三驱，失前禽，邑人不诫，吉。
“The fifth line, undivided, affords the most illustrious instance of seeking union and attachment. (We seem to see in it) the king urging his pursuit of the game (only) in three directions, and allowing the escape of all the animals before him, while the people of his towns do not warn one another (to prevent it). There will be good fortune.”
比之无首，凶。
“In the topmost line, divided, we see one seeking union and attachment without having taken the first step (to such an end). 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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