The Book of Changes · Da Xu

Hexagram 26: The Taming Power of the Great

Mountain (the peak) over Heaven (the sky)

Great force held and stored rather than spent, which the tradition treats as the harder discipline. Held strength renews daily; spent strength does not.

The image

Heaven inside the mountain. The reading is that a person learns many sayings and deeds of the past, and by that strengthens what they are.

Mountain, above

Stillness, limit, and the place where a thing stops.

Heaven, below

Force, and the initiative that does not wait to be asked.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Danger, and it is present now. Stop rather than manage it.
2. Line 2The axle taken out of the wagon. Stopped on purpose, not broken.
3. Line 3A good horse keeping pace with others. Awareness of the risk, and practice every day.
4. Line 4A board fixed on the young bull, before the horns are grown. Prevention while prevention is cheap.
5. Line 5The tusk of a gelded boar. The force is all still there and the danger in it is not.
6. Line 6The road opens. What was held back becomes available, and it was held back for this.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 26 is Gate 26, The Egoist.