Hexagram 25 of 64
无妄 wú wàng
Innocence · The Unexpected
乾 (qián, Heaven) above · 震 (zhèn, Thunder) below
The Judgment 卦辞
Act without contrivance — respond to what is real, not to what you wish. If your intentions are clean, even the strange event that arrives belongs to your path.
The Image 大象
Under heaven, thunder moves: innocence. Kings of old matched the seasons in their generosity, nurturing all things.
The six lines 爻辞
Each line of 无妄 has its own classical text. If a line in your cast is changing, its text is the heart of your reading.
Line 1 · 初九
Free of pretense — going forward brings good fortune.
「无妄，往吉」
Line 2 · 六二
Not plowing for the harvest, not clearing fields for gain. Act without scheming for the payoff.
「不耕获，不菑畲，则利有攸往」
Line 3 · 六三
Blameless misfortune: a tethered cow taken by a passerby — the village accused anyway. Bad luck finds the innocent; carry it lightly.
「无妄之灾，或系之牛，行人之得，邑人之灾」
Line 4 · 九四
You can hold to this. No blame in staying the course.
「可贞，无咎」
Line 5 · 九五
An illness that came from nowhere — take no medicine and it heals. Do not fix what is not broken.
「无妄之疾，勿药有喜」
Line 6 · 上九
Blameless action meeting the wall anyway. Even innocence has its limits.
「无妄之行，穷之灾也」
If you drew this in a reading
A pattern of tension and craft. This hexagram belongs to the large middle family of mixed patterns: it works, but only along its own grain. Read the Judgment closely — mixed hexagrams usually name the exact condition on which their promise depends.
In yes/no questions this hexagram reads as “not yet clear” — the answer hinges on timing and execution.
The trigrams give the flavor: 乾 (Heaven) above — creative force — initiative, clarity, persistence — over 震 (Thunder) below — arousing shock — movement, initiative, sudden change. Where those two energies meet, 无妄 is born.
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