Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly

蒙 (Méng)

Inexperience and the need for guidance, learning, and wisdom.

Overview

This sign is like a small stream that meets a mountain and does not know how to go on. The stream is your own path, your movement toward your goals. The road is unlikely to be as smooth and level as you would like. The serious difficulty you may meet is your own lack of knowledge. Being unready means you have not grown into the task yet, and cannot get results here and now. You may be a well educated person who knows a great deal, and still lack the particular knowledge and experience that this problem needs.

So the conclusion is this. Rather than walking into obstacles that come from your own unreadiness, stop for a while. Give yourself the chance to put that right and to gather the knowledge you need. When your skill is greater than the difficulty, it makes sense to set out toward the goal you care about.

People around you

If you want to learn what you need faster, ask a knowledgeable person for help. Dealing with people will take tact and care. Depending on how you manage that, you will either gain a mentor or be left on your own, and being alone will slow you down badly.

Work and rest

Think broadly and keep an open mind. Look for the right person at work and during your rest. Fate seems to have arranged that you learn through a mentor, so the chance of meeting one is good. But make the first move: the person you need is unlikely to come to your door.

Your wish

If you came to this sign because you are waiting for a wish to come true, the answer depends on how long your plans need. Anything you have set within two or three weeks can happen quickly. Plans for big changes will probably have to wait, and real difficulties can hold them back for a time.

One more piece of advice. If you do not like what this sign tells you, and you decide to ask again, you will only tangle your future and end up confused by your own advice and your own intentions.

This Overview is one traditional reading of the figure, offered as a prompt for reflection and perspective rather than a prediction of a fixed future. Where this material comes from.

New to the sequence? See how lines, trigrams and changing lines work, or cast your own reading with the three-coin method.

Structure

Read from the bottom upward, hexagram 4 is Mountain over Water. Its two inner, or nuclear, trigrams are Earth over Thunder. What the eight trigrams mean.

Upper trigram (lines 4–6): Gèn · Mountain Still and stopping
Lower trigram (lines 1–3): Kǎn · Water Deep and dangerous
Upper nuclear (lines 3–5): Kūn · Earth Receptive and devoted
Lower nuclear (lines 2–4): Zhèn · Thunder Arousing and moving