Hexagram 4 · 山水蒙

Youthful Folly

Earth · Li palace

Inexperience asking: the value of honest instruction.

Meaning

A spring below a mountain: water beginning to flow, unaided and unsure. This hexagram concerns what happens when you do not yet know what you are doing.

Decision Framework

Ask, learn, and stop repeating questions.

Decision Guidance

Youthful Folly is the reading of inexperience. It appears when the honest obstacle is not opposition but ignorance, and it treats that as normal rather than shameful. Everyone starts somewhere.

The instruction is specific. Seek a teacher and genuinely accept correction, but do not ask the same question repeatedly hoping for a different answer. The hexagram's warning is against the student who wants confirmation rather than instruction, which is a reliable way to waste both your time and the guidance offered.

Judgment — Classical Text

亨。匪我求童蒙，童蒙求我。初筮告，再三渎，渎则不告。

EN Success. I do not seek the young fool; the young fool seeks me. The first divination answers; repeated importunity is disrespect and receives no answer.

The Six Lines — Classical Text

1. 初六：发蒙，利用刑人。

   EN Initial six: to awaken the foolish, discipline is useful.

2. 九二：包蒙吉，纳妇吉，子克家。

   EN Nine in the second: bearing with the foolish brings good fortune; taking a wife brings good fortune; the son is able to hold the house.

3. 六三：勿用取女。

   EN Six in the third: do not take this woman.

4. 六四：困蒙，吝。

   EN Six in the fourth: entangled in ignorance — regret.

5. 六五：童蒙，吉。

   EN Six in the fifth: the childlike fool — good fortune.

6. 上九：击蒙，不利为寇，利御寇。

   EN Topmost nine: striking the fool — do not act the robber; better to guard against robbers.

Keywords

I Ching hexagram 4, Youthful Folly hexagram, Meng hexagram meaning, hexagram for learning