The Book of Changes · Kan

Hexagram 29: The Abysmal

Water (the gorge and the deep) over Water (the gorge and the deep)

Danger doubled, and the only hexagram whose advice is to go through rather than around. Water fills the hole and continues; it does not lose its nature in the gorge.

The image

Water flowing on without stopping. The reading is that a person acts with consistent virtue and practises the work of teaching, because what carries a person through repetition is habit.

Water, above

Danger, depth, and what has to be gone through.

Water, below

Danger, depth, and what has to be gone through.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Danger repeating, and a pit inside the pit. The second one is the one that gets you.
2. Line 2Go for small gains only. Nothing here rewards ambition.
3. Line 3Forward and back, and a pit either way. Stop, rather than choose badly.
4. Line 4Wine in a jar, rice in a bowl, passed in at the window. Plain help, plainly given, and it is enough.
5. Line 5It fills to the rim and no further. Danger with a limit on it.
6. Line 6Tied up and shut behind thorns. Three years lost, and the loss is the whole line.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 29 is Gate 29, Saying Yes.