The Book of Changes · Wei Ji

Hexagram 64: Before Completion

Fire (flame and the sun) over Water (the gorge and the deep)

Everything out of place and the transition not yet made: the last hexagram in the book, and it ends on incompleteness rather than on arrival. The little fox almost across the stream gets its tail wet.

The image

Fire over water. The reading is that a person is careful in differentiating things, so that each finds its place.

Fire, above

Clarity, attachment, and what depends on its fuel.

Water, below

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

The six lines

Read from the bottom up.

1. Line 1Getting the tail wet. Humiliating: moving before the crossing is understood.
2. Line 2Braking the wheels. Constancy brings good fortune, and the brake is the constancy.
3. Line 3Attacking now is a mistake, and even so, a real crossing is worth making.
4. Line 4Constancy, and the regret lifts. Three years of hard work, and the rewards come at the end of them.
5. Line 5Constancy, and nothing to regret. The light is genuine, and it is being read correctly.
6. Line 6Drinking in real confidence. No fault. Getting your head wet at this point is losing it through carelessness.

The same figure in Human Design

Human Design took its sixty four gates from this book, in this numbering, so hexagram 64 is Gate 64, Confusion.