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䷊
Hexagram 11 of 64
Peace
泰 · Tài
Heaven below and earth above, so the two rise and sink toward each other instead of apart. The classic's picture of a flourishing time, and of how such times end.
harmony
flourishing
exchange
good times
- King Wen number
- 11 of 64
- Above
- ☷ Kūn · Earth
- Below
- ☰ Qián · Heaven
- Composition
- Earth over Heaven
- Lines, bottom to top
- Solid · solid · solid · broken · broken · broken
- Chinese
- 泰 · Tài
The Judgment
The small departs, the great arrives. Good fortune. Success.
The pettiness is on its way out and substance is on its way in. As unambiguously good as the Judgments get.
The Image
Heaven and earth meet: Peace. So the ruler shapes and completes their course, assists what is fitting in them, and by this helps the people.
Even in the best conditions the work is administrative. Good times are managed, not merely enjoyed.
What it means
Tai looks upside down and is not. Earth sits above and heaven below, so the heavy trigram is descending and the light one rising, and the two meet in the middle. Union produces the flourishing the hexagram is named for.
The classic uses the good time to give advice about generosity rather than accumulation. The second line, the heart of the hexagram, lists four things: put up with rough material, be willing to wade across, do not forget the people far from the centre, and let go of your own faction. All four cost something and all four are what keeps prosperity circulating.
The third line contains the book's clearest statement of its central conviction. There is no flat ground that does not eventually slope, and nothing goes out without coming back. Having said so, the text tells you not to be miserable about it and to enjoy your dinner.
The top line arrives where the third said it would. The wall falls back into the moat, the army is not to be used, and the instruction shrinks to your own town. Hexagram 12 is this figure inverted, and it follows immediately.
In a reading
Peace as an answer describes conditions that are genuinely favourable: obstacles clearing, people cooperating, the right things arriving.
Its counsel is to use the window rather than admire it, and to be generous inside it, since that is what makes the good period last as long as it can. The one caution is the third line's: this is a phase. Build something during it that will survive the turn.
The six lines
Read a line's text only when the cast made it a moving line. They are listed from the top of the figure down, the way the hexagram is drawn.
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Six at the top
The wall falls back into the moat. Do not use the army. Announce your orders in your own town. Steadfastness brings regret.
Peace over. The city wall collapses into the ditch it was dug from, and the counsel is to withdraw to what you can actually hold.
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Six in the fifth place
The sovereign gives his daughter in marriage. Blessing, and supreme good fortune.
A high alliance made by giving rather than taking. The ruling line.
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Six in the fourth place
Fluttering down, not parading wealth, together with the neighbours, unguarded and trusting.
Descending to meet people rather than summoning them. The lack of caution is deliberate.
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Nine in the third place
No plain without a slope, no going out without a return. Steadfast through hardship, no blame. Do not grieve over the truth of it; there is blessing in your food.
The turn is stated as a law and then immediately defused. Knowing the good time will end is no reason to stop eating well in it.
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Nine in the second place
Bearing with the uncultivated, crossing the river on foot, not neglecting what is distant, letting go of your faction: this earns esteem by walking the middle way.
Four instructions for prosperity, and all four are about generosity: tolerate, dare, remember the far-off, drop the clique.
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Nine at the beginning
Pull up the couch grass and its roots come up in a clump. To set out brings good fortune.
One person moving brings others with them. Good conditions make effort collective almost automatically.
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