Hexagram 47: Oppression

困 (Kùn)

Exhaustion and oppression that tests one's inner strength.

Overview

You worked hard at carrying out your plans, and your effort together with the support of fate brought very good results. But you know yourself that no rise lasts forever.

Even the largest store of energy and strength runs out sooner or later, and then a person goes through a time of decline and tiredness. This sign speaks about exactly that kind of loss of strength.

Still, exhaustion is not what this sign is really about. The decline works like a step you can stand on, one that keeps your life from sliding further down. Put all your attention on leaving this hard period with as little loss as possible. That is your main task for the near future.

How you act now depends on the knowledge and skills you gathered earlier. Trust your intuition. You will then fall easily into the right flow of things, and it will carry you out of several difficult situations.

People around you

Be very careful in your relations with the people around you. Gossip and whispering behind your back are quite possible, because you are too different from the rest.

It is hard for you to win approval and friendship from all your acquaintances. You may not need that from all of them, though. It matters far more that you hold to your decision and stay consistent in what you do.

Work

How well the work goes depends entirely on you. Your choices are sometimes narrow, but inside the path you have chosen there is nothing to fear. The one thing that can upset you is how far away the final results still are.

Your wish

Your wish should reach you, and in the shape you pictured it. The result may even be larger than you planned. Even so, you will have to wait for fate to give its final answer. Be patient and forgiving, because fate has other matters to deal with.

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 47 is Lake over Water. Its two inner, or nuclear, trigrams are Wind/Wood over Fire. What the eight trigrams mean.

Upper trigram (lines 4–6): Duì · Lake Joyous and open
Lower trigram (lines 1–3): Kǎn · Water Deep and dangerous
Upper nuclear (lines 3–5): Xùn · Wind/Wood Gentle and penetrating
Lower nuclear (lines 2–4): Lí · Fire Clinging and bright