Hexagram 56: The Wanderer

旅 (Lǚ)

Travel, temporary situations, and maintaining dignity while displaced.

Overview

The name of this sign points straight at its idea. But knowing the name is not enough. You need to understand what fate is preparing for you and what meaning the name carries. Do not take it literally.

You need not give up your job, your home or your friends and set off on a journey, unless you really were getting ready to go somewhere.

In the past you achieved everything you wanted. But even a good state like this cannot last forever. A person should not stay shut inside the same small world forever, however comfortable it is. When you have had your fill, sooner or later you stop moving forward, and then you start going backwards. So give up what you have won, of your own free will, and take the road toward new victories. This does not mean forgetting what you achieved before. It only means that those limits have become too tight for you.

It is time to take the first steps on a road that can bring you to new decisions.

People around you

Do not change your relationships with the people around you sharply. In time you are likely to grow more selective about your friends and colleagues. Look carefully at what the people around you care about. Some of them may well share your views and your goals. With those people you can talk about your plans for the future and about where you can grow.

Work

Look for new ways of working that will show you new sides of your abilities and talents. Understand the logic of what is happening. You have reached the top in the work you chose, and there is no sense in going further in the same direction.

The moment has come to take a risk and throw yourself into work you have never done before. Only a complete change of work can bring you to new heights and open up abilities you did not know you had.

Your wish

Your wish depends on the new direction your work takes. If your wish and that new direction fit together, what you have in mind is well within reach.

Just remember that you may need help from friends or colleagues. Then you will reach the goal faster than you would alone.

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

Upper trigram (lines 4–6): Lí · Fire Clinging and bright
Lower trigram (lines 1–3): Gèn · Mountain Still and stopping
Upper nuclear (lines 3–5): Duì · Lake Joyous and open
Lower nuclear (lines 2–4): Xùn · Wind/Wood Gentle and penetrating