小畜 Small Restraint
Upper trigram: Wind (wind) · Lower trigram: Heaven (the sky)
Small accumulations — gentle restraint before the breakthrough.
Modern interpretation
Progress now comes in small accumulations. Restrain the urge for one big breakthrough — tend the details, conserve resources, refine your craft. The wind gathers quietly long before it becomes a storm.
The Judgment · 卦辞
亨。密云不雨。自我西郊。
“Hsiâo Khû indicates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and success. (We see) dense clouds, but no rain coming from our borders in the west.” — 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.
”复自道，何其咎？吉。
“The first line, undivided, shows its subject returning and pursuing his own course. What mistake should he fall into ? There will be good fortune.”
牵复，吉。
“The second line, undivided, shows its subject, by the attraction (of the former line), returning (to the proper course). There will be good fortune.”
舆说辐。夫妻反目。
“The third line, undivided, suggests the idea of a carriage, the strap beneath which has been removed, or of a husband and wife looking on each other with averted eyes.”
有孚，血去，惕出无咎。
“The fourth line, divided, shows its subject possessed of sincerity. The danger of bloodshed is thereby averted, and his (ground for) apprehension dismissed. There will be no mistake.”
有孚挛如，富以其邻。
“The fifth line, undivided, shows its subject possessed of sincerity, and drawing others to unite with him. Rich in resources, he employ his neighbours (in the same cause with himself).”
既雨既处，尚德载。妇贞厉。月几望，君子征凶。
“The topmost line, undivided, shows how the rain has fallen, and the (onward progress) is stayed ; (so) must we value the full accumulation of the virtue (represented by the upper trigram). But a wife (exercising restraint), however firm and correct she may be, is in a position of peril, (and like) the moon approaching to the full. If the superior man prosecute his measures (in such circumstances), 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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