Hexagram 25: Innocence
Wu Wang · 無妞
The Judgment
Success through what is genuine and unforced. If your motives aren't straight, you'll encounter obstacles. Nothing good comes from ulterior purposes. The natural state—uncalculated, unmanipulated—is the only foundation for lasting success. Deviate from this and the deviation becomes your problem.
The Image
Thunder rolls beneath heaven and all things receive their nature without falseness. The ancient kings nourished all beings by aligning with the seasons. You don't force growth; you create conditions for it. This applies equally to crops and character.
天下雷行，萬物得其本性。先王因此「茂對時育萬物」——按照時令養育萬物。不強求生長，只是創造條件。這是農夫的智慧，不是哲學家的。種子該發芽的時候，你攔不住；不該的時候，你推不動。
The Six Lines
When your impulse is genuine, act on it. The original movement of an honest heart leads toward what's right. No second-guessing needed here.
Work without calculating the harvest. Clear the ground without planning what you'll plant. When you act without scheming, everything you do furthers. Outcome-fixation is the enemy of good work.
Undeserved disaster strikes. The tethered ox becomes someone else's gain. This happens—external misfortune that has nothing to do with your character. Don't mistake bad luck for punishment.
Hold to what you are. What truly belongs to you cannot be lost even if you throw it away. Authenticity doesn't require protection; it requires expression. Stay with your own nature and ignore the noise.
When illness comes from outside and doesn't take root in your character, let it pass without intervention. Don't make it worse by fighting it. Some problems solve themselves if you stop interfering.
The wrong time for action, but you push anyway. When circumstances don't support progress, forcing movement leads nowhere good. Wait for the moment that matches your intention.
Artwork & Treatise
Young Hare
Albrecht Dürer, 1502
A young hare crouches in alert stillness, fur rendered in translucent washes of brown and gray, each whisker catching light. Albrecht Dürer painted this creature in 1502 as a nature study, working from direct observation to capture the animal's exact proportions and textures. The hare's watchful eye and tense readiness suggest not naivety but complete attunement to immediate reality—no calculation, no strategy, only responsive presence.
Zhou Dynasty diviners called this configuration Wu Wang (無妄), meaning "without falseness" or "the unexpected." The character suggests freedom from deception, particularly self-deception. Heaven (Qian) sits above Thunder (Zhen): creative force moves spontaneously downward into arousing action, unmediated by deliberation. The hare embodies this structure—heaven's natural order expressed through thunder's immediate response. Ancient practitioners saw this hexagram when circumstances demanded instinctive rather than calculated action, when overthinking would corrupt natural correctness.
{artwork_reasoning}
The Judgment text states directly: "If someone is not as he should be, he has misfortune, and it does not further him to undertake anything." Innocence here means alignment with one's genuine nature, like the hare being fully hare. Dürer's careful rendering paradoxically captures what cannot be staged—the creature's unselfconscious being. Zhou court records show this hexagram appearing when advisors counseled rulers to trust first impulses over clever schemes. The text warns that "innocence" means freedom from artifice, not ignorance; the hare's alertness demonstrates intelligence without guile.
The Image Text offers unexpected counsel: "The kings of old nourished all beings according to the seasons." Natural timing governs innocent action—the hare remains still when stillness serves, bolts when movement serves, never forcing against the moment. In the I-Ching's sequence, Wu Wang follows Return and precedes Great Accumulating Force. After restoration of the fundamental (24), one moves with natural correctness (25) before gathering strength (26). Dürer's hare, poised between rest and flight, inhabits that readiness without agenda—power available but not deployed, innocence as capacity rather than weakness.
Yilin Verse
夏臺羑里，湯文厄處。皋陶聽理，岐人悅喜。西望華夏，東歸無咎。
Jiao Yanshou's Forest of Changes (焦氏易林) — Unchanging verse for 無妄 (Wú Wàng)
Character-by-Character Breakdown
Classical Chinese text with pinyin and English meanings