PLATE XLII · FORTY-TWO OF SIXTY-FOURPLATE · XLII · Yì
Yì · Increase · 周易第四十二卦
UPPER TRIGRAM ☴ WIND · LOWER TRIGRAM ☳ THUNDER
卦辭
卦辭
THE JUDGMENT
“ Fitting to have a place to go.
Fitting to cross the great river. ”“ Fitting to have a place to go.
Fitting to cross the great river. ”
— Zhōu Yì, hexagram 42, judgment. c. 1000 BCE.
Two clearances, both large. Increase is one of the seasons in which the book opens its widest doors. What flows in is meant to flow through and out.
象辭
象辭
THE IMAGE
“ Wind and thunder:
the image of Increase. ”“ Wind and thunder:
the image of Increase. ”
— Zhōu Yì, hexagram 42, image.
The original image continues: the noble person, seeing good, moves toward it; having faults, corrects them. The image is of energies that augment each other rather than draining each other. The discipline of growth is to keep its current moving.
WHEN THIS HEXAGRAM APPEARSWHEN THIS HEXAGRAM APPEARS
If Yì has appeared in your reading, the book is naming a season of augmentation. Wind and thunder reinforce each other; their combined force is greater than either alone. The hexagram appears when resources — material, emotional, social, creative — are flowing toward the reader, and the configuration is favourable for putting them to use.
Classical commentary reads this hexagram as the direct counterpart to Sǔn (Decrease). Where Sǔn is the careful reduction that simplifies, Yì is the generous flow that augments. Both are part of the same circulation. The book treats wealth — in any of its forms — as something that becomes destructive when it stops moving and generative when it continues to.
What the book counsels is the immediate, generous use of what arrives. The two clearances — fit to have a place to go, fit to cross the great river — are unusually broad. Major moves are favoured. The image's instruction is psychological: see good and move toward it, see faults in oneself and correct them. The increase is meant to fuel both kinds of motion.
Yì's failure mode is the hoarding of the inflow. The book treats this as one of the gentle but reliable ways the season turns against the reader. Resources held in place stop being augmentation and start being weight. The hexagram appears when something good is coming in. The work is to let it pass through the hands while it is doing so, in directions that the next season will validate.
COMPANION HEXAGRAMSCOMPANION HEXAGRAMS
Hexagrams that speak to Yì.
HEXAGRAM 10 · THE INVERSION
Lǚ, Treading. Where Yì is the broad inflow of resources and the large permission to use them, Lǚ is the precise, careful conduct required when one walks in the presence of a power greater than one's own. The pair reads as the two postures of asymmetry — receiving generously from above, and approaching greater power with measured courtesy. Both are part of the etiquette of a hierarchical world.
Read 履 →HEXAGRAM 41 · TURNING-POINT KIN
Sǔn, Decrease. The hexagram directly before Yì, and its structural mirror. Sǔn is the deliberate reduction of what one has; Yì is the generous augmentation that follows once the reduction has cleared the channels. Related as the two ends of a single circulation — the book sets them as a pair so the reader sees that both decrease and increase are seasons of movement, never of static accumulation.
Read 損 →ASK YOUR OWN QUESTIONASK YOUR OWN QUESTION
Or it may not. The oracle reads the moment as it is —
not the hexagram you came looking for.
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