The Book of Changes · Jing

Hexagram 48: The Well

Water (the gorge and the deep) over Wind (wind, and wood growing)

The town moves and the well does not. The tradition uses it for what a community draws on and does not own: the source is unchanged by who is using it, and it can be neglected until it silts up.

The image

Water over wood. The reading is that a person encourages people at their work and exhorts them to help one another, because a well serves by being shared.

Water, above

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

Wind, below

Penetration, patience, and what works by not stopping.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Mud in the well, and nobody drinks. An old well, and not even the animals come.
2. Line 2The water goes to the fish and the jug leaks. Everything reaching everywhere except where it was meant to.
3. Line 3The well is cleared and nobody drinks from it. The sorrow in the figure: fit to use, and unused.
4. Line 4The well is being lined. Work that produces nothing today and makes the well permanent.
5. Line 5A clear cold spring, and it is drunk from. What the whole figure was for.
6. Line 6Drawn from and not covered over. Great good fortune, and it is in leaving it open.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 48 is Gate 48, Depth.