Hexagram 25: Innocence
無妄Wú Wàng
Honest, without an angle.
The passages below are historical language. Their references to fortune, danger, and the exemplary person belong to the text’s world. Our modern explanation is an invitation to reflect on your situation.
The Judgment
Classical Chinese
無妄。 元亨利貞。其匪正有眚，不利有攸往。
Our English rendering
Innocence. Great success. Steadfast uprightness is favorable. If one's conduct is not right, there is calamity, and it is unfavorable to have somewhere to go.
The Image
Classical Chinese
象曰：天下雷行，物與無妄。先王以茂對時，育萬物。
Our English rendering
Thunder travels beneath heaven; all things share in Innocence. The early kings responded fully to the seasons and nurtured the myriad things.
Translation note: The title can also suggest freedom from falsehood or unwarranted intention. The phrase about all things sharing in it is compressed; this rendering keeps the connection between natural activity and uncontrived conduct without making it a claim about moral innocence in nature.
A modern reading
Thunder moves under heaven, and living things respond within the conditions of their own season. Innocence suggests action that begins from what is present, with fewer invented motives or forced results. The kings in the Image nurture what is growing by attending to its time. For a current situation, that can mean checking whether the conditions support your intention, and whether your effort helps something develop at its own pace.
The Judgment pairs openness with a demand for right conduct. An honest impulse still needs attention to its effects, especially when enthusiasm makes a plan feel self-evidently good. A useful reading asks what you know firsthand, where you are guessing, and whether another person has room to respond freely. The ancient warning of calamity gives wrongdoing a severe consequence in the text; sincerity offers no guarantee that a present-day outcome will be easy.
A question to sit with
What action fits the facts and timing you can verify, without depending on an outcome you have imagined?
Source and method
The Judgment and Image are classical passages from the Book of Changes. The English rendering and modern explanation are Meow Ching’s editorial work. This page covers these two passages; it does not translate the six individual line texts.
Read the classical text on Wikisource · Our sources and method