Hexagram 26: Great Taming

大畜 (Dà Xù)

Great accumulation of power and resources through restraint.

Overview

In the recent past you had to wait for the right moment before taking up your plans with new strength. How well this period goes depends on how much you drew from the knowledge and experience of that time.

You are like someone who has trained for a long time to climb a high mountain. Now, standing before the climb, do you feel the inspiration and the confidence without which there is no victory?

If your successes so far have been solid, you can be calm about what comes next. You will be able to set yourself a goal worth having.

That is what this sign is about: raising something great.

Your goal does not have to serve only you. If you have real experience and knowledge, the goal you choose must match them. That is why what you went through earlier matters so much.

People around you

Shutting yourself away in proud solitude is a bad idea. It can do lasting harm to your relationships with the people around you. Try to keep talking with them. Do good for your friends and family, and ask them for help.

Make plans that let you work together with others. Go beyond your usual relationships and actively make new contacts that could lead somewhere.

Work and rest

During the recent time of forced inactivity you probably thought about activities that interest you and hold promise. Fate now opens the road for them. Start on them at once. Your main qualities now are energy and determination.

Plan your rest around the same idea of working together. You can go to places where interesting people gather.

Your wish

How much of your wish comes true depends on how well you adapt to the new turn of events. Some time ago you wisely decided to give up certain ideas, and now you can give all your energy to what truly matters. Do not lose heart, and do not let anything pull you away from your goal. Your wish looks very likely to come true soon.

This Overview is one traditional reading of the figure, offered as a prompt for reflection and perspective rather than a prediction of a fixed future. Where this material comes from.

New to the sequence? See how lines, trigrams and changing lines work, or cast your own reading with the three-coin method.

Structure

Read from the bottom upward, hexagram 26 is Mountain over Heaven. Its two inner, or nuclear, trigrams are Thunder over Lake. What the eight trigrams mean.

Upper trigram (lines 4–6): Gèn · Mountain Still and stopping
Lower trigram (lines 1–3): Qián · Heaven Creative and strong
Upper nuclear (lines 3–5): Zhèn · Thunder Arousing and moving
Lower nuclear (lines 2–4): Duì · Lake Joyous and open