EN (English)
䷘
Hexagram 25 of 64
Innocence
無妄 · Wú Wàng
Thunder moving under heaven, the natural response of things to the season. The hexagram is about the unpremeditated: conduct with no calculation behind it, and the misfortune that comes uninvited.
spontaneity
integrity
the unplanned
acting without calculation
- King Wen number
- 25 of 64
- Above
- ☰ Qián · Heaven
- Below
- ☳ Zhèn · Thunder
- Composition
- Heaven over Thunder
- Lines, bottom to top
- Solid · broken · broken · solid · solid · solid
- Chinese
- 無妄 · Wú Wàng
The Judgment
The source. It gets through. It rewards holding to the course. Whoever is not upright meets trouble, and it does not help them to undertake anything.
The four great words, followed immediately by a condition. Innocence is only protective when it is real.
The Image
Thunder rolls under heaven and everything is given its natural state. So the ancient kings, abundant in character and in step with the season, nourished all beings.
Integrity is treated as something in step with time rather than achieved against it.
What it means
Wu Wang is usually rendered as innocence, and the two characters mean something closer to without falsehood, or without calculation. Thunder moves beneath heaven and things respond as they naturally do, without deciding to.
The hexagram is about acting from that condition, and the classic is careful in two directions at once. It grants the state its highest praise, then adds immediately that someone who is not actually upright gets no protection from claiming to be. And at the top it says that innocent action itself brings trouble when it comes at the wrong moment. Sincerity is not a licence.
Two lines carry most of the hexagram's practical weight. The second describes ploughing without counting the harvest, which is the classic's picture of work done for its own sake, and it treats this as an advantage rather than a virtue. The fifth counsels taking no medicine for an illness you did not bring on yourself, and by extension not intervening in a problem that is not of your making and will resolve on its own.
Between them sits the third line, one of the bleakest small texts in the book: a tethered cow, a passerby who gains, a townsman who loses. Misfortune with no cause and no meaning attached.
In a reading
Innocence as an answer favours acting straightforwardly, without strategy and without a calculated eye on the outcome.
Two cautions come with it. The first is honesty about your own motives, since the hexagram only shelters what is genuinely uncalculated. The second is restraint: if the trouble is not yours, the fifth line advises leaving it alone rather than treating it.
The six lines
Read a line's text only when the cast made it a moving line. They are listed from the top of the figure down, the way the hexagram is drawn.
-
Nine at the top
Innocent action brings trouble. Nothing furthers.
Even blameless behaviour is wrong at the wrong moment. The top line withdraws the hexagram's own protection.
-
Nine in the fifth place
An illness that came through no fault of yours. Use no medicine, and there will be joy.
Interference in a situation you did not cause. The line's counsel is to leave it alone and let it pass.
-
Nine in the fourth place
One who can hold to it stays without blame.
Keeping your own ground when there is no reward for it. Nothing more is promised than the absence of fault.
-
Six in the third place
Undeserved misfortune. Someone tethers a cow; the passerby gains it, and the townsman takes the loss.
Bad luck with no moral content. The classic states it flatly and offers no lesson, which is itself the lesson.
-
Six in the second place
If you do not count the harvest while you plough, nor the field's yield while you clear it, then it helps to undertake something.
Working without projecting the result. The classic makes doing the task for itself a practical advantage rather than a piety.
-
Nine at the beginning
Innocent conduct. To go brings good fortune.
Acting without an ulterior motive at the very start. The line needs no qualification.
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