Dà Xù · The Great Taming
Upper trigram: ☶ Mountain · lower trigram: ☰ Heaven
Hold back great forces in order to store them up; contained power ripens. Seek nourishment outside.
The primitive graph shows a great solid barrier holding back a powerful animal (a wild bull or a ram), joined to the idea of a pastoral enclosure meant to accumulate and domesticate the forces of nature. It symbolises great control, the capacity to store an immense quantity of energy or knowledge before releasing it constructively.
The accumulation of resources and the memory of the past
This hexagram describes a phase of major consolidation. The situation requires not scattering one's forces outward ("it is profitable not to eat at home"), but gathering and structuring them. It is the ideal moment to study, to train, to draw on the experience of the ancients or on one's own memory in preparation for an action of scale.
Feed on the lessons of the past to tame one's energy
The strategy rests on intellectual and spiritual discipline. The text counsels studying the "words and deeds of the past" to enrich one's conduct. You must show great firmness toward yourself, channel your Yang impulses and structure your gains stone by stone. It is through this voluntary restraint that one acquires the power needed to "cross the great rivers".
Structurally, the hexagram places Heaven (Qian, indomitable vigour) below, contained and framed by the Mountain (Gen, stabilisation) above. The Mountain accomplishes the feat of holding the power of Heaven beneath it, symbolising the triumph of structure over brute force. It is the image of ancient knowledge illuminating and channelling present action.
Each line is read only if it is changing in your cast. A changing line transforms the figure: the link under each text shows which hexagram it leads to.
Three-coin or yarrow-stalk cast, changing lines, outlook figure — computed on your device, no account.