The Book of Changes · Wu Wang

Hexagram 25: Innocence

Heaven (the sky) over Thunder (the storm arriving)

The unexpected, and acting without a second motive. The tradition warns that if a person is not upright here they will meet misfortune, and that the misfortune will look like bad luck rather than consequence.

The image

Thunder under heaven, everything moving in its own way. The reading is that the old kings, rich in virtue, nourished all beings in time with the season.

Heaven, above

Force, and the initiative that does not wait to be asked.

Thunder, below

Shock, beginning, and movement that starts below.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Acting on the unforced impulse, because nothing was calculated into it.
2. Line 2Not counting the harvest while you are still ploughing. Then it is worth undertaking.
3. Line 3Undeserved trouble: the cow is tied up and a passer-by takes it. Someone else gains and you carry it.
4. Line 4What can honestly be held to, hold to. No fault in the holding.
5. Line 5Illness with no cause you can find. Do not medicate it. It passes.
6. Line 6Acting innocently and getting it wrong. Nothing to gain here. Not the season for it.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 25 is Gate 25, The Spirit of the Self.