Ding · The Cauldron

The meaning

What the name means Ding is the great cauldron, and something new: cooking up what has not been before.

The picture Fire over wood, the wood burning, the food in the cauldron cooked.

The sense of the whole The whole hexagram is about the new order after a change. You have a place and weight and must live up to the trust. Put good ingredients in and let them cook slowly into something good.

In plain words: what this hexagram says

Turn the raw material into something that feeds people. A good time to shape scattered gains into steady results; set the position right.

The upper trigram is Fire and the lower is Wind: Fire above, Wind 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

元吉，亨。

The image

木上有火，鼎；君子以正位凝命。

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. 初六鼎顛趾，利出否，得妾以其子，無咎。
2. 九二鼎有實，我仇有疾，不我能即，吉。
3. 九三鼎耳革，其行塞，雉膏不食，方雨虧悔，終吉。
4. 九四鼎折足，覆公餗，其形渥，兇。
5. 六五鼎黃耳金鉉，利貞。
6. 上九鼎玉鉉，大吉，無不利。

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