Hexagram 4
Youthful Folly
Mountain over Water
The judgment
亨。匪我求童蒙，童蒙求我。初筮告，再三渎，渎则不告。利贞The teacher waits to be asked. One question earns a straight answer; a third try turns it into noise.
The image
A spring rises under the mountain. The water is clean because it has not committed to a channel.
The six lines
Read from the bottom up. A line that moves is read here, and read again in the hexagram it becomes.
- 初六Line 1
发蒙，利用刑人，用说桎梏，以往吝
At the outset, setting rules means putting the restraints on and overawing the person first; then the shackles come off and they walk on their own. Yet the road narrows as it goes: the earlier the rules are set, the harder they push back.
Marked in the textnarrow going
- 九二Line 2
包蒙吉，纳妇吉，子克家
Gather the unlearned close without resenting their slowness; the room here is that bearing another's dullness holds the whole situation up.
Marked in the textauspicious
- 六三Line 3
勿用取女，见金夫，不有躬，无攸利
Dazzled by another's shine, one loses footing; alluring as it looks, this step costs the very sense of one's own measure.
Marked in the textnothing is served
- 六四Line 4
困蒙，吝
Stuck among people who won't be reached, close to the center yet unable to act; the cost is that force only bounces back.
Marked in the textnarrow going
- 六五Line 5
童蒙，吉
Owning that one is still learning and asking someone who knows, holding the center without pretending, leaves the widest room.
Marked in the textauspicious
- 上九Line 6
击蒙，不利为寇，利御寇
Cracking the hard shell of folly is enough. Strike further and it turns into bullying by sheer force; the same strength spent holding off an intruder is something else entirely.
Where each changing line leads
Flip one line and it is a different hexagram. These are the six it becomes.
This page is for reference. To get a hexagram from six throws, cast your own.
The classical text is the Zhouyi, public domain, checked against a Wikisource transcript. The readings are ours. Daily hexagram