The Book of Changes · Kui

Hexagram 38: Opposition

Fire (flame and the sun) over Lake (still water held in a hollow)

Two things that will not combine: fire rising, water sinking. The tradition does not resolve the opposition, it says small things can be done inside it, and that difference is not the same as enmity.

The image

Fire above, the lake below. The reading is that a person keeps their own individuality even where the general run of things agrees.

Fire, above

Clarity, attachment, and what depends on its fuel.

Lake, below

Openness, pleasure, and what is said out loud.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1If the horse is lost, do not chase it. It comes back on its own.
2. Line 2Meeting the person you needed in a back street. Not the arranged meeting, and it counts.
3. Line 3A bad start: dragged back, halted, humiliated. There is an end to it.
4. Line 4Isolated by the opposition, then meeting someone who sees it the same way. Good faith on both sides.
5. Line 5The companion bites through the wrapping and gets to it. The regret lifts.
6. Line 6Seeing a mud-covered pig and a cart full of devils. It is not a raider: it is someone coming to ask.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 38 is Gate 38, The Fighter.