PLATE XIV · FOURTEEN OF SIXTY-FOUR

Dà Yǒu · Possession in Great Measure · 周易第十四卦

UPPER TRIGRAM ☲ FIRE · LOWER TRIGRAM ☰ HEAVEN

卦辭

周易

THE JUDGMENT

“ Origin.
Flowing through. ”

— Zhōu Yì, hexagram 14, judgment. c. 1000 BCE.

Two words. Among the briefest judgments in the entire book. When abundance has truly come, the book does not pile on adjectives. The condition itself is enough.

象辭

THE IMAGE

“ Fire above heaven:
Possession in Great Measure. ”

— Zhōu Yì, hexagram 14, image.

The original image continues: the noble person suppresses evil and raises good, obeying heaven and resting in destiny. Bright fire above the sky illuminates everything below; what falls under such a light cannot be hidden. Abundance brings the duty of discernment.

WHEN THIS HEXAGRAM APPEARS

Wealth that asks more than gratitude.

If Dà Yǒu has appeared in your reading, the book is naming a condition of significant possession — material, social, creative, whatever the form. Five yang lines gathered around the single yin in the fifth place: many forces converging on a single point of receptive authority. The configuration is rare.

Classical commentary reads this hexagram as the test that comes with arrival. Possession in great measure is auspicious; the book signs the judgment with 元亨 — origin, passage — and then says nothing further. The brevity is its own teaching. When the condition is genuinely full, the question is no longer how to get more.

What the book counsels is the work of stewardship. 遏惡揚善 — suppress what is harmful, raise what is good. Bright fire above the sky lights up the field; under such light, both the worthy and the unworthy become visible. The discipline of abundance is the discrimination that decides what gets the resources and what does not.

Dà Yǒu's failure mode is the casual carelessness of those who have enough. The hexagram appears when the reader has, or is about to come into, more than they need — and the book is making the moment serious. The wealth is not the achievement; the use of it is. Squander it and the next hexagram in the sequence, Qiān (Modesty), will not arrive as the gift it would otherwise have been.

COMPANION HEXAGRAMS

Hexagrams that speak to Dà Yǒu.

HEXAGRAM 46 · THE INVERSION

Shēng · Pushing Upward

Shēng, Pushing Upward. Where Dà Yǒu is the condition of having arrived at significant possession, Shēng is the patient, rooted climb that gets one there — the tree pushing through earth, year over year. The pair reads as two phases of the same arc: the long quiet ascent, and the bright moment at the top. The book is careful about both, because both have characteristic dangers.

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HEXAGRAM 13 · TURNING-POINT KIN

同人Tóng Rén · Fellowship

Tóng Rén, Fellowship. The hexagram directly before Dà Yǒu. Tóng Rén is the gathering of people over a shared cause; Dà Yǒu is the abundance that often follows when such a gathering holds. Related as cause to consequence — the book is observing that real fellowship tends to produce real wealth, and warning that real wealth easily forgets where it came from.

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ASK YOUR OWN QUESTION

Dà Yǒu may appear in your reading.

Or it may not. The oracle reads the moment as it is —
not the hexagram you came looking for.

ask the book