The Book of Changes · Xun

Hexagram 57: The Gentle

Wind (wind, and wood growing) over Wind (wind, and wood growing)

Wind doubled: penetration by persistence rather than by force. The tradition attaches the image of something that gets in everywhere by not stopping and by not announcing itself.

The image

Winds following one upon the other. The reading is that a person spreads their commands abroad and carries out their undertakings, which works here only by repetition.

Wind, above

Penetration, patience, and what works by not stopping.

Wind, below

Penetration, patience, and what works by not stopping.

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Advancing and retreating in the same motion. The constancy of a disciplined person is what is wanted.
2. Line 2Working underneath, out of sight, and calling in a great deal of help. Good fortune and no fault.
3. Line 3Asking again and again. Humiliating: the same question until the answer is the wanted one.
4. Line 4The regret lifts, and the work takes everything it was sent for.
5. Line 5No beginning, and an end. Three days before it and three days after: that is where the care goes.
6. Line 6Working underneath and losing both the property and the means of defending it. Constancy here brings misfortune.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 57 is Gate 57, Intuitive Clarity.