Hexagram 26 · Da Chu · Great Taming

Reserves

Great strength, held in check.

The situation

You've accumulated real capacity. Restraint now isn't timidity — it's what makes the eventual move heavy enough to matter.

What it asks of you

Keep building and stay engaged with the wider world. Large undertakings are supportable.

Read this against your own situation →

Where it leads

How it looks from the other side
Integrity
Acting without an angle.
The opposite reading
Convergence
Many gathering into one.
What sits underneath it
Misalignment
Entering from the wrong position.

The six lines

  1. initial Danger here. Better to stop. 有厲,利已
  2. second The axle straps come off the wagon. 輿說輹
  3. third Good horses giving chase. Keep to the hard road; practise the driving and the guard drill daily. Then go. 良馬逐,利艱貞。曰閑輿衛,利有攸往
  4. fourth A board fixed to the young bull's horns before they grow. As good as it gets. 童牛之牿,元吉
  5. fifth The tusks of a gelded boar. Still tusks, no longer dangerous. 豶豕之牙,吉
  6. top Carrying heaven's own crossroads on your shoulders. It opens. 何天之衢,亨

The line texts are the oldest layer of the book. They are pictures, not instructions, and they are meant to be held against your own situation rather than decoded.

How this one is built

Written out as six lines, bottom to top, this pattern is 100111 — a solid line is 1, a broken line is 0. Every relationship above is arithmetic on those six digits, not interpretation: reverse the order and you get the other side, flip every digit and you get the opposite reading, take the middle four and you get what sits underneath. Anyone can check the result, which is what separates a structure from a fortune.

The sequence is built the same way. The sixty-four are arranged in thirty-two pairs, and turned upside down it becomes Integrity. The rule holds for all thirty-two pairs without exception — twenty-eight joined by reversal, four by inversion.

In the received order it sits between Integrity and Sustenance. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.