EN (English)
䷷
Hexagram 56 of 64
The Wanderer
旅 · Lǚ
Fire burning across a mountainside, moving on and not settling. The hexagram is about being a stranger: in transit, without standing, dependent on conduct rather than position.
travel
transience
strangers
modesty
- King Wen number
- 56 of 64
- Above
- ☲ Lí · Fire
- Below
- ☶ Gèn · Mountain
- Composition
- Fire over Mountain
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · broken · solid · solid · broken · solid
- Chinese
- 旅 · Lǚ
The Judgment
Success through smallness. Steadfastness brings the wanderer good fortune.
Small success, explicitly. In transit nothing large is available, and the classic does not pretend otherwise.
The Image
Fire on the mountain: the Wanderer. So the noble person is clear-minded and careful in imposing penalties, and lets no lawsuit drag on.
Fire on a hillside does not linger. The classic applies the same principle to judgement: decide, and do not let matters smoulder.
What it means
Lü is the stranger, and the classic's advice for that condition is remarkably specific. Fire moves across a mountainside, burning where it stands and then going on, and the hexagram takes its whole character from that: nothing here is permanent and nothing can be relied on but conduct.
The Judgment fixes the scale immediately. Success through smallness. A traveller has no standing, no network and no claim, so ambitious undertakings are simply unavailable and the classic wastes no time regretting it.
What is available is reputation. The second line has an inn, one's own belongings and the loyalty of a young servant, which is the book's picture of travelling well. The third line loses all three when the inn burns, and the commentaries have always read the loss as self-inflicted: a stranger who behaves badly in an unfamiliar place has nothing to fall back on.
The fifth line shows how standing is actually earned in transit. A pheasant is shot down with one arrow, in public, and praise and office follow. Not connections and not claims: one thing done visibly well.
In a reading
The Wanderer as an answer describes being outside your own territory: new job, new place, new group, or any position where you have no standing yet.
Its counsel is modesty and care. Keep your ambitions small, guard your reputation, avoid fussing over trivia, and hold on to whatever shelter and loyalty you have found. Standing comes from doing one thing visibly well, not from asserting a claim.
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 bird's nest burns. The wanderer laughs at first, then weeps and wails. Through carelessness the cow is lost. Misfortune.
Losing the last shelter, and the docile thing that sustained you, through inattention.
-
Six in the fifth place
He shoots a pheasant; it falls at the first arrow. In the end this brings praise and office.
One accurate act, witnessed. The way a stranger earns a place is by doing something well in public.
-
Nine in the fourth place
The wanderer finds a shelter, and their property and an axe. My heart is not glad.
Materially secure and unhappy. The first-person note is one of the few in the book.
-
Nine in the third place
The wanderer's inn burns down. They lose the loyalty of the young servant. Danger.
Everything the second line gained, lost. The commentaries attribute it to the wanderer's own manner.
-
Six in the second place
The wanderer comes to an inn, has their belongings with them, and gains the loyalty of a young servant.
Shelter, possessions and one reliable person. The classic's picture of travelling well.
-
Six at the beginning
If the wanderer fusses over trivial things, they draw misfortune down on themselves.
Pettiness in a stranger is more costly than pettiness at home. The line is blunt.
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