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Hexagram 30 of 64
The Clinging
離 · Lí
Fire above fire, brightness rising twice. The hexagram is about clarity, consciousness and beauty, and about the dependence that comes with all three.
clarity
dependence
brilliance
attachment
- King Wen number
- 30 of 64
- Above
- ☲ Lí · Fire
- Below
- ☲ Lí · Fire
- Composition
- Fire over Fire
- Lines, bottom to top
- Solid · broken · solid · solid · broken · solid
- Chinese
- 離 · Lí
The Judgment
It rewards holding to the course, and it gets through. Care of the cow brings good fortune.
The most domestic instruction in the book. Clarity is maintained by tending the docile thing that feeds you, not by admiring the flame.
The Image
Brightness rises twice: Fire. So the great person, by carrying the light forward, illuminates the four quarters.
Light is passed along rather than possessed. What matters is the continuation, not the source.
What it means
Li doubled is the hexagram of light, and the character behind it carries two senses at once: to cling, and to separate. Fire clings to what it burns and cannot exist apart from it, and it separates the lit from the unlit.
So the classic's treatment of clarity is unusually sober. Brilliance is not self-sustaining. It attaches to something, and the Judgment's advice is to look after the cow: keep the docile, unglamorous source of your fuel in good condition. The fourth line shows the alternative, in four abrupt verbs. It comes, it flares, it dies, it is discarded.
The best line is the second, yellow light, the colour of the centre and of moderation. Not the brightest possible fire, the balanced one.
Two lines deal with endings. The third has the sun going down and offers a choice between singing over the pot and complaining about age, and the classic assigns misfortune to the complaint. The fifth has floods of tears, open lamentation, and good fortune, because grief with nothing hidden in it is itself a form of seeing clearly.
In a reading
The Clinging as an answer says clarity is available and it is not free-standing. Something has to keep supplying it: a discipline, a relationship, a body, a routine.
Its counsel is to tend that support rather than perform the brilliance. If the matter concerns an ending, the third and fifth lines are the ones to read: meet it openly, and do not let the sense of loss curdle into complaint.
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.
-
Nine at the top
The king uses him on campaign. Best to strike the leaders and spare the followers. No blame.
Discrimination applied to force. Clarity's final job is knowing exactly who the problem is.
-
Six in the fifth place
Tears in floods, sighing and lamenting. Good fortune.
Grief without pretence, and the verdict is good fortune. Clarity here includes seeing what has been lost.
-
Nine in the fourth place
Its coming is abrupt. It flares, dies out, is thrown away.
Brilliance with nothing under it. Four verbs and it is over.
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Nine in the third place
The light of the setting sun. Either beat the pot and sing, or lament growing old. Misfortune.
The end of a phase, and two ways to meet it. The classic marks misfortune for the lamenting.
-
Six in the second place
Yellow light. Supreme good fortune.
Yellow is the colour of the centre. Balanced, moderate brilliance, and the best line in the hexagram.
-
Nine at the beginning
Footprints crossing each other. Take it seriously and there is no blame.
The start of the day, tracks going in every direction. Attention is what sorts them.
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