The Book of Changes · Song

Hexagram 6: Conflict

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

A dispute where both parties are certain. The tradition does not say who is right; it says that carrying it to the end costs more than the thing being fought over.

The image

Heaven going up, water going down: two forces moving apart. The reading is that the work is done at the beginning, in how a thing is set up, so the fight never starts.

Heaven, above

Force, and the initiative that does not wait to be asked.

Water, below

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

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Do not carry it on. A little talk and it ends here.
2. Line 2You cannot win this one. Withdraw; there is no dishonour in the count.
3. Line 3Live on what you have and let the credit go elsewhere. It holds.
4. Line 4You could fight and you turn back. Sitting with that is the line.
5. Line 5Brought before someone fair. This is the good outcome and it required a third party.
6. Line 6Winning it, and losing it again three times before the morning is out. A victory that will not stay won.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 6 is Gate 6, Friction.