The Book of Changes · Sun

Hexagram 41: Decrease

Mountain (the peak) over Lake (still water held in a hollow)

Deliberate reduction, and the tradition treats it as an exchange rather than a loss: something below is decreased so that something above is increased. Two small bowls are enough for the offering.

The image

The lake at the foot of the mountain. The reading is that a person controls their anger and restrains their appetites, which is the decrease that is actually within reach.

Mountain, above

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

Lake, below

Openness, pleasure, and what is said out loud.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Finishing your own business quickly and going to help. Think about how much to take from others while you do it.
2. Line 2Holding steady, and starting something new now is the mistake. Add to others without subtracting from yourself.
3. Line 3Three walking together lose one; one walking alone finds a companion. The number settles itself.
4. Line 4Reducing your own faults is what makes the other person hurry over. The fastest thing in the figure.
5. Line 5Enriched, and nobody can prevent it. Great good fortune arriving without your arrangement.
6. Line 6Increased without anyone being reduced for it. Nobody paid for this.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 41 is Gate 41, Contraction.