Meng · Youthful Folly

The meaning

What the name means Meng is the young and the not-yet-clear, like a shoot just out of the ground in a haze.

The picture A spring coming out at the foot of a mountain: the water is new, its course unclear, and the mountain is in its way.

The sense of the whole The whole hexagram is about learning and asking. Not seeing clearly is a starting point, not a flaw. Asking sincerely and practising again and again is the fastest road; what spoils it is pretending to know, or asking and not listening.

In plain words: what this hexagram says

There is still a lot you do not see clearly, and that is no shame. Asking and learning with a sincere heart is faster than pretending to know.

The upper trigram is Mountain and the lower is Water: Mountain above, Water below. When you read it, first picture the two together as a scene, then set it against the original below. The plain words speak only of stance and do not foretell.

The judgement

亨。匪我求童蒙，童蒙求我。初筮告，再三瀆，瀆則不告。利貞。

The image

山下出泉，蒙；君子以果行育德。

The six lines

From the bottom up, the first line is the lowest. When you cast this hexagram and a line is changing, read the matching one. The original is classical Chinese.

1. 初六發矇，利用刑人，用說桎梏，以往吝。
2. 九二包蒙吉；納婦吉；子克家。
3. 六三勿用取女，見金夫，不有躬，無攸利。
4. 六四困蒙，吝。
5. 六五童蒙，吉。
6. 上九擊蒙，不利為寇，利禦寇。

To learn how to read a hexagram, see "How to read a hexagram"; for changing lines, see "Changing lines and the resulting hexagram".