EN (English)
䷭
Hexagram 46 of 64
Pushing Upward
升 · Shēng
Wood growing up through the ground. The hexagram is about ascent achieved gradually, without obstruction, by the accumulation of small things.
ascent
effort
accumulation
steady growth
- King Wen number
- 46 of 64
- Above
- ☷ Kūn · Earth
- Below
- ☴ Xùn · Wind
- Composition
- Earth over Wind
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · solid · solid · broken · broken · broken
- Chinese
- 升 · Shēng
The Judgment
The source. It gets through. One must see the great person. Do not fear. Setting out to the south brings good fortune.
South is the bright direction. The hexagram removes fear explicitly, which it rarely bothers to do.
The Image
Wood grows up within the earth: Pushing Upward. So the noble person, devoted in character, heaps up small things to reach something high and great.
The clearest statement of incrementalism in the book. Height is built out of quantity, not out of leaps.
What it means
Sheng is a tree growing inside the earth, and the classic uses it for ascent of the least dramatic kind. Nothing is in the way. The obstacles that fill the rest of the book are simply absent, and the hexagram's whole subject is how to use conditions that do not resist you.
The Image supplies the method: heap up small things in order to reach something high and great. This is the book's plainest endorsement of incremental effort, and the fifth line makes it concrete by describing a staircase rather than a leap.
The third line is the hexagram's puzzle. One rises into an empty city, and the text says nothing else. Two thousand years of commentary have divided between reading it as effortless success and reading it as a warning that nothing worth having is up there. The classic leaves it open, which is probably deliberate.
The top line adds the quality of persistence the hexagram needs. Rising in the dark, with no light to steer by, and the advice is unremitting steadiness. Not everything that grows can see where it is going.
In a reading
Pushing Upward as an answer is favourable and gradual. The way is open and progress comes from accumulation rather than from any single move.
Its counsel is to keep going in small steps, to make the effort daily, and not to wait for a decisive moment. The Judgment removes fear explicitly, and the fifth line sets the pace: one step, then the next.
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.
-
Six at the top
Rising in the dark. It helps to be unremittingly steadfast.
Continuing to climb with no light and no landmarks. The line permits it and asks for constancy rather than speed.
-
Six in the fifth place
Steadfastness brings good fortune. One rises by the steps.
The ruling line. Not a leap: a staircase, taken one tread at a time.
-
Six in the fourth place
The king makes his offering on Mount Qi. Good fortune, no blame.
The ancestral mountain of the Zhou. Ascent that arrives at something sanctioned and rooted.
-
Nine in the third place
One rises into an empty city.
No resistance at all. The commentaries have argued for centuries about whether that is a gift or a warning.
-
Nine in the second place
If you are sincere, even a small offering serves. No blame.
The same formula as hexagram 45. Modest means are sufficient when the intent is genuine.
-
Six at the beginning
Rising and meeting with trust. Great good fortune.
The ascent is welcomed from the very first step. Nothing has to be forced.
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