Meaning
A spring rising at the foot of a hill does not yet know which way it will run. That is the picture the two trigrams make, water below and mountain above, and the character 蒙 adds its own sense: covered, dim, not yet clear. The tradition reads the hexagram as inexperience, the state before learning, and it is careful not to make that an insult. It is a stage, and the text is about how to pass through it.
The Judgment speaks in the first person, as the teacher or the oracle itself: I do not go looking for the inexperienced; they come to me. When they ask with the sincerity of a first consultation, they are taught; if they ask a second and a third time, that is troublesome, and "I do not instruct the troublesome". It is one of the few places where the book describes its own use, and diviners have quoted it ever since as the reason not to cast the same question twice. The Image draws from the spring a different lesson: act decisively and keep feeding one's character, as the water keeps feeding the stream.
The lines
The lines show teaching from both sides. The first speaks of loosening the shackles from the mind, and warns that discipline pushed further brings regret; the second is the patient teacher who bears with the ignorant, and the line ends with a son who can run the household. The fourth is a mind bound by its own ignorance, the fifth "a simple lad without experience", in Legge's English, to whom the text gives good fortune. The top line strikes at ignorance, and Legge's text adds that advantage lies in warding off injury rather than doing it.
Within 蒙 lies 復, hexagram 24, the return; its pair is 屯, hexagram 3, of which it is the inverse.
In the birth cast
The time cast arrives at 蒙 when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, which puts 艮 mountain above, and the same total with the hour added leaves 6, which puts 坎 water below. Which line moves depends on what the whole total leaves on six, and each line turns the figure into a different hexagram:
- Line 1 (初六) moving: becomes 41 損 Sǔn, Decrease
- Line 2 (九二) moving: becomes 23 剝 Bō, Stripping Away
- Line 3 (六三) moving: becomes 18 蠱 Gǔ, Repairing Decay
- Line 4 (六四) moving: becomes 64 未濟 Wèi Jì, Not Yet Across
- Line 5 (六五) moving: becomes 59 渙 Huàn, Scattering
- Line 6 (上九) moving: becomes 7 師 Shī, The Army
Lines 2 to 5 give the hexagram within, 24 復 Fù, Return. Everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour has the same cast, so the figure describes a moment, not a person.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Trigram virtues (Shuogua, chapter 7)
- 坎 sinking, perilous below; 艮 stopping, at rest above, in our English sourced
- Trigram family places (Shuogua)
- middle son below, youngest son above sourced
- Trigram body and animal images (Shuogua)
- ears and pig below; hands and dog above sourced
- Trigram phases (a classical correspondence: the Plum Blossom text's table)
- Water below, Earth above. The Han assignment of 梅花易數, book 1, also used by Jing Fang; not stated as such in the Zhouyi sourced
- Inverse and opposite
- Upside down: 3 屯 Zhūn, First Shoots; every line flipped: 49 革 Gé, Changing the Hide sourced
- Human Design gate
- Gate 4, from 138.875° to 144.5° of the tropical zodiac on Ra Uru Hu's wheel (1987): a modern placing, not the I Ching's sourced
- Our English title
- The Untaught Mind: EsoTerrier's own, from the sense of 蒙 our construction
How the schools read it
- The Zhouyi, in Legge's translation (1882)
- “I do not (go and) seek the youthful and inexperienced, but he comes and seeks me.”
- The Image (大象), one of the Wings, in our paraphrase
- A spring issuing at the foot of a mountain; the superior man acts resolutely and nourishes his virtue.
- The Plum Blossom method (Ming)
- A figure reached by numbers: 艮 above when the year, month and day leave 7 on eight, 坎 below when the same total with the hour leaves 6.
- Human Design (Ra Uru Hu, 1987)
- Takes the number for its gate 4 and puts it on the zodiac; its own reading, which we do not quote.
- EsoTerrier
- A mind not yet taught, and the chance to learn; asked once in earnest the oracle answers, asked again and again it falls silent.
Claims about it
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Gate 4 of Human Design, at 138.875° to 144.5° of the zodiac, is where the I Ching itself places hexagram 4.
falseWhat the record shows: The wheel is Shao Yong's circle rotated by Ra Uru Hu in 1987 to 1989 so that hexagram 41 starts at 2° Aquarius. No Chinese source we found puts the hexagrams on degrees of the zodiac.
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Being born under 蒙 Méng fixes a person's character.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A modern reading with no source in the tradition. The Zhouyi has no birth hexagram; the cast reads a figure, not a person, and everyone born in the same lunar day and double hour shares it.
