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Hexagram 4 of 64 · 山水蒙 · Mountain over Water

Hexagram 4: 蒙 Meng — Youthful Folly

䷃ 蒙 Meng (Youthful Folly) is number 4 in the King Wen sequence and number 35 in the binary/Fu Xi sequence. Its outer (upper) trigram is 艮 Gen (Mountain); its inner (lower) trigram is 坎 Kan (Water). Jing Fang's eight palaces place it in the Li palace (Fire), as the Fourth generation, seated on line 4 with the responding line at 1. Its na jia lines are Wu Yin, Wu Chen, Wu Wu, Bing Xu, Bing Zi, Bing Yin; the six relations follow from the palace element and each branch element. Cuo, zong, hu and the other seven hexagrams of the palace are all derived from the two trigrams.

Structural facts (computed)

This page is generated by engine vv0.14.0 — not hand-written. Every field can be re-derived from the two trigrams and checked against the methodology page.

King Wen number4 of 64
GlyphU+4DC3
Name Meng
Traditional full name山水蒙
Common English nameYouthful Folly
Unicode nameYOUTHFUL FOLLY
Binary (Fu Xi) number35 of 64
Upper (outer) trigram Gen · Mountain · Earth · Youngest Son · Northeast
Lower (inner) trigram Kan · Water · Water · Middle Son · North
Six lines (bottom up)1 yin · 2 yang · 3 yin · 4 yin · 5 yin · 6 yang
PalaceLi palace · Fire · Fourth generation
Shi / ying lineshi on line 4 · ying on line 1
Self-reversingNo

Na jia lines and the six relations

Na jia pins each line to one stem-branch: Qian and Kun use different stems inside and outside (Qian takes 甲 then 壬, Kun takes 乙 then 癸), the other six trigrams keep one stem throughout; yang trigrams (Qian, Zhen, Kan, Gen) step forward through the branches and yin trigrams (Kun, Xun, Li, Dui) step backward. The six relations are then read off by comparing each branch element with the palace element: same = sibling, what I generate = offspring, what generates me = parent, what controls me = officer, what I control = wealth.

LinePolarityNa jia stem-branchSix relation (vs palace element)Inner / outer
1 (base)yin (6)戊寅 Wu Yin 木 Wood父母 Parentinner
2yang (9)戊辰 Wu Chen 土 Earth子孙 Offspringinner
3yin (6)戊午 Wu Wu 火 Fire兄弟 Siblinginner
4yin (6)丙戌 Bing Xu 土 Earth子孙 Offspringouter
5yin (6)丙子 Bing Zi 水 Water官鬼 Officerouter
6 (top)yang (9)丙寅 Bing Yin 木 Wood父母 Parentouter

Six-relation count for this hexagram: Parent 2 · Sibling 1 · Offspring 2 · Wealth 0 · Officer 1

The six spirits (Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, Gouchen, Flying Serpent, White Tiger, Black Tortoise) are deliberately not listed here: they are assigned from the day stem of the day you consult, so they are a variable of that day, not a property of the hexagram. This site gives the rule, not the day.

Cuo, zong and hu

All three are pure derivation: the cuo (opposite) hexagram flips all six lines, the zong (reversed) hexagram turns the figure upside down, and the hu (nuclear) hexagram takes lines 2-3-4 as its lower trigram and 3-4-5 as its upper. None of it touches na jia or the palaces, so each can be checked on its own.

Cuo (all six lines flipped) Ge — every line the opposite of this one
Zong (turned upside down) Zhun — read this figure from the top down
Hu (nuclear) Fu — lines 2-3-4 below, 3-4-5 above

The Li palace

Jing Fang's eight palaces organise the 64 hexagrams as eight family trees of change: starting from the pure hexagram of the palace, flipping line 1, then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5 gives the first through fifth generations; flipping line 4 back from the fifth gives the wandering (you hun) hexagram, and flipping the inner three lines back gives the returning (gui hun) one. Each palace holds exactly eight, and the eight palaces tile all 64 with no overlap. This hexagram's place in that tree is marked.

四世 Fourth Mengshi 4 / ying 1
游魂 Wandering Songshi 4 / ying 1
归魂 Returning同人 Tong Renshi 3 / ying 6
六世 Pure Lishi 6 / ying 3
二世 Second Dingshi 2 / ying 5
一世 First Lvshi 1 / ying 4
五世 Fifth Huanshi 5 / ying 2
三世 Third䷿ 未济 Wei Jishi 3 / ying 6

Hexagrams that share a trigram

Eight hexagrams share this upper trigram and eight share this lower one (this one is in both lists). Both groups are pure combinatorics — a quick way to see the same trigram in other settings.

Where these na jia branches appear

Every na jia branch links back to this site's branch page, and every line's stem-branch links to its day-pillar page. That is the joint between this family and the ba zi layer: na jia runs on the same stem-branch system.

A note on what this page deliberately does not do: the popular versions of this material assign a fixed personality to each term — one character per branch, one destiny per stage. This site rejects that framing. What is published here is a structural position: which element sits where, on what kind of ground, with which tenants inside. The same term reads differently under a different month command, and no meaningful judgement exists without the other characters of the chart. Where the tradition offers a reading it is labelled as the tradition's; this site's own contribution is that every number and term on this page is computed, versioned and checkable against the methodology page.

Questions

What is hexagram 4?
蒙 Meng (Youthful Folly) is number 4 in the King Wen sequence and number 35 in the binary/Fu Xi sequence. Upper trigram 艮 (Mountain), lower trigram 坎 (Water); the six lines read yin-yang-yin-yin-yin-yang from the bottom up. Jing Fang assigns it to the Li palace as the Fourth generation.
What are the na jia values of hexagram 4?
From line 1 up: Wu Yin, Wu Chen, Wu Wu, Bing Xu, Bing Zi, Bing Yin. The inner three lines take the stem of 坎 and the outer three the stem of 艮. The six relations follow from each branch element against the palace element (Fire): 寅 Parent, 辰 Offspring, 午 Sibling, 戌 Offspring, 子 Officer, 寅 Parent.
What are its cuo, zong and hu hexagrams?
Cuo (every line flipped): 革 Ge. Zong (turned upside down): 屯 Zhun. Hu (nuclear): 复 Fu. All three are computed from line positions and can be checked line by line.
Does hexagram 4 predict anything?
No. What is published here is the structure of the system: the polarity of each line, its na jia stem-branch, the palace and generation, the six relations, and the cuo/zong/hu relations — all computed, versioned and checkable. The classical line texts belong to the tradition, and this page does not speak for them; reading a single hexagram as a verdict on a life claims more than the notation itself does.

Neighbouring hexagrams

Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning ←  ·  → Hexagram 5: Waiting

Reference index

Every enumerable component of ba zi has its own page here. Each page is computed by the same engine and can be checked item by item — none of it is a personality table.