The four words
元亨利貞, yuán hēng lì zhēn, is the whole judgment of Activity, and it also appears in Initial Obstacles (3), Adapting (17), Fleeting Success (19) and Innocence (25); in Passivity, with the mare.
The traditional reading
The Wenyan reads them as four qualities of heaven, and of whoever follows its lead:
- 元, origin: what comes first, the source of all good.
- 亨, success: what gets through and gathers what is fine.
- 利, benefit: what helps because it's right.
- 貞, constancy: what's firm and holds things up.
Later they were linked to the four seasons and to the Confucian virtues. That's how the book was read for centuries, and many still read it so.
The scholarly reading
Many modern scholars think the original text holds two phrases, not four separate words: something like "a great offering; it is favorable to divine," in the language of court ritual and divination. In the poetic layer of Cambios we follow that two-phrase reading, with our usual formulas: "Great success. Constancy is favorable."
The two readings don't cancel each other out: the older one shows where the text comes from; the traditional one, what the book came to mean.
In a reading
If these four words come up, the moment has the strength of a beginning: a good time to start something right and keep it going.