Is there a good or bad hexagram in the I Ching?

Not in the way people usually mean. Some hexagrams describe easier situations than others, but the text almost never says a hexagram is simply lucky or unlucky. It judges how a person acts within a situation, which is why the brightest hexagrams contain warnings and the darkest contain lines of good fortune.

What the verdict words actually judge

The Zhouyi has a small vocabulary of verdicts: 吉 good fortune, 凶 misfortune, 悔 regret, 吝 humiliation or difficulty, 無咎 no blame. They attach to Judgments and, far more often, to individual lines. The Great Commentary (繫辭) explains what they measure:

• 吉凶者，言乎其失得也: "good fortune and misfortune speak of losing and gaining", that is, of getting it right or wrong.
• 悔吝者，言乎其小疵也: "regret and humiliation speak of small flaws."
• 無咎者，善補過也: "no blame means being good at repairing faults."

Read that again: the verdicts are about getting it right, not about the weather of fate. "No blame" is not a neutral shrug; it is praise for someone who corrects course. Our guide to the five verdict words goes through each in detail.

Many verdicts are also openly conditional. A line may say 貞吉, "persisting brings good fortune", or 貞凶, "persisting brings misfortune": the same situation, judged by whether you keep doing what you are doing. Others turn on timing, like Hexagram 6, Song (Conflict): 中吉，終凶, "halfway, good fortune; carried to the end, misfortune." The text is telling you where to stop.

Wang Bi: a hexagram is a time

The third-century commentator Wang Bi (王弼) put the principle in one sentence: 卦者，時也；爻者，適時之變者也, "a hexagram is a time; a line is the change that fits the time." A hexagram is a kind of season. A season is not good or bad in itself; there is only what suits it. Winter is a poor time to sow and a fine time to mend tools.

That is why the Image of each hexagram ends with the conduct of the junzi, the superior person: "the superior person, in accordance with this, …". Even in the hardest hexagrams there is something the superior person does.

"Good" hexagrams with dangerous lines

Look at the hexagrams everyone hopes to cast and you find warnings inside them:

• Hexagram 1, Qian, the Creative, is about as strong as the book gets. Yet its top line reads 亢龍有悔, "arrogant dragon will have cause to regret": strength pushed past its peak.
• Hexagram 11, Tai, Peace, describes harmony between above and below. Its top line shows the city wall tumbling back into the moat and ends 貞吝: holding on now brings humiliation. Peace, too, runs out.
• Hexagram 63, Ji Ji, After Completion, has a Judgment that says it outright: 初吉終亂, "good fortune at the start, disorder at the end". Finishing is exactly when care slips.

Even the "most auspicious" lists (see the most auspicious hexagrams) are really lists of situations where right conduct is easy to see, not guarantees.

"Bad" hexagrams with good lines

The reverse is just as striking:

• Hexagram 12, Pi, Standstill, is the mirror of Peace. But its fifth line begins 休否，大人吉, "standstill is ending; good fortune for the great person", and its top line reads 傾否，先否後喜: "the standstill topples; first standstill, then joy."
• Hexagram 23, Bo, Splitting Apart, shows a structure eroded from below. Its top line is 碩果不食: "a large fruit still uneaten", the seed from which things grow again, and "the superior person receives a carriage."
• Hexagram 47, Kun, Oppression or Exhaustion, opens its Judgment with 亨, "success", and adds that for the steadfast great person there is good fortune and no blame.
• Hexagram 29, Kan, the Abysmal, repeated danger, still says 有孚，維心亨: "if you are sincere, you have success in your heart."

The hard hexagrams are not condemnations. They are descriptions of hard times, with notes on how people of good character move through them. Our guide to difficult hexagrams looks at several more.

Is any hexagram purely good?

The usual candidate is [Hexagram 15, Qian](/iching/hexagrams/15-qian), Modesty. Its Judgment reads 亨，君子有終, "success; the superior person carries things through", and none of its six lines carries a verdict of misfortune, regret or humiliation; most say good fortune or that nothing fails to further. Traditional readers have long remarked on this. Notice what the exception teaches, though: the one hexagram without a dark line is the one about not claiming credit. Even here, the good fortune belongs to an attitude.

Why the tradition disagrees with itself a little

Not every reader treats the verdicts the same way. The "meaning and principle" school of Wang Bi and Cheng Yi (程頤) reads them almost entirely as moral counsel. Zhu Xi (朱熹) insisted the Zhouyi was first a book of divination and that its verdicts did once predict outcomes, but he still read them as conditional on the inquirer's conduct and correctness. Number-based schools such as Six Lines divination set the text aside and judge good or bad from the five phases of the lines. If you use the text itself, as most readers do, Zhu Xi and Cheng Yi agree on the practical point: ask what conduct the text is judging.

How to read your own cast

• Do not stop at the hexagram's name or reputation. Read the Judgment and, above all, any changing line.
• Find the verdict word and ask what it is conditional on: persisting, stopping, going, waiting, sincerity, timing.
• If you drew a "good" hexagram, look for the line that warns you about excess or complacency.
• If you drew a "bad" one, look for what the superior person does in it. That is your answer.
• If the result still feels wrong, our guide on when the answer seems wrong may help before you cast again.