Hexagram 39: Obstruction

蹇 (Jiǎn)

Obstacles and difficulties that require careful navigation.

Overview

This sign is about obstacles and how to get past them. Not long ago your active life stopped for a while and everything came to a standstill. That is where the obstacles come from.

There is a gap between your plans and your ability to carry them out. Concentrate on what now stands in your way. So what should you do?

First, remember one rule: in this situation, activity is exactly what you must avoid. Trying to force something through tends to be fruitless at best.

The best thing you can do is turn inward, go over what you have lived through, and think through new plans for the future. Right now that is the only way to live.

You were going to look closely at events and mistakes anyway. Do it seriously. This is the time when such work brings results.

People around you

This sign reads your relationships as one-sided for a while. This does not mean you stop talking to people. You may accept an invitation to spend an evening together, but you will not be the one who suggests it. You take events as they come. Do not worry, this is temporary. Later you can bring back the old closeness with friends and colleagues. For now, use your free time to think about your own life. That matters most right now.

Work and rest

Stay away from noisy, crowded gatherings. Plan your time so that you can handle current matters and still think about what lies ahead.

Do not treat this period as time thrown away. Fate has given you a good chance to step out of the circle of daily worries and look at your situation from outside. Do not sink into unpleasant thoughts. There is no need for that.

Your wish

There is no need to hurry your wish along. By its nature it can do a lot of harm if it comes true sooner than it should. What you want is not a passing whim. The result can change your life completely.

Think it over once more, and take your time before you act.

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 39 is Water over Mountain. Its two inner, or nuclear, trigrams are Fire over Water. What the eight trigrams mean.

Upper trigram (lines 4–6): Kǎn · Water Deep and dangerous
Lower trigram (lines 1–3): Gèn · Mountain Still and stopping
Upper nuclear (lines 3–5): Lí · Fire Clinging and bright
Lower nuclear (lines 2–4): Kǎn · Water Deep and dangerous

Hexagrams this one is connected to by its structure rather than by its number.

Opposite:: 38. Opposition — Every one of the six lines flipped.
Reversed:: 40. Deliverance — The same figure turned upside down.
Nuclear:: 64. Before Completion — The figure formed by the four inner lines.