Hexagram 40解Deliverance
Water below, thunder above — the storm has broken and the air has cleared. The obstacle that defined Hexagram 39 has been resolved, and the practical question is what to do with the opening it leaves. The hexagram is unusually precise about the timing: if there is nowhere left to go, consolidate the return; if there is somewhere left to go, go early — the window the release opens does not stay open.
60-second read
Deliverance is the hexagram for the aftermath of a resolved obstacle. The storm of Hexagram 39 has broken; the rain has fallen; the road is open again. The hexagram statement is unusually precise about the timing: if there is no further operation to undertake, the return is fortunate; if there is, going early is fortunate. Most of the decision-relevant work concentrates in the cleanup imagery of the lines — catching the foxes that hid during the obstruction, finding the yellow arrows, untying the cords that bound, shooting the falcon from the high wall. The release is not the end of the work. It is the moment the work becomes possible again.
The hexagram
解：利西南。無所往，其來復吉。有攸往，夙吉。
Deliverance: advantageous in the southwest. If there is nowhere to go, the return is fortunate. If there is somewhere to go, going early is fortunate. — Translation by YiGram Editorial from the classical Chinese
“In (the state indicated by) Chieh advantage will be found in the south-west. If no (further) operations be called for, there will be good fortune in coming back (to the old conditions). If some operations be called for, there will be good fortune in the early conducting of them.”
— James Legge, The Sacred Books of the East: The I Ching (1882), public domain.
The six lines
Click any line on the hexagram to read its passage. Use ↑ and ↓ after focusing the hexagram to step through the six positions.
無咎。
No error.
“The first SIX, divided, shows that its subject will commit no error.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 1 is the briefest line statement in the hexagram — two characters, 無咎, no error. The line sits at the bottom of the lower trigram Kan, the position where the release has just begun and the actor’s first move is registered. The instruction is unusually permissive. The hexagram does not name a specific action; it names the absence of cost attached to whatever the first cautious move actually is. The brevity is the point. Hexagram 39’s obstruction has just ended; the actor does not yet know which of the post-obstruction moves will pay; the line authorises the first cautious step and guarantees that the cost of taking it will not be charged.
In a decision context this is the line for the first move after a long blockade has lifted — the first sales call after the funding round finally closes, the first product release after the regulator finally clears, the first conversation with the partner after the dispute has finally settled. The temptation at line 1 is either to under-move (treat the release as fragile and wait for a clearer signal) or to over-move (read the release as full permission and over-commit before the new conditions have shown themselves). The line is explicit that the first move does not have to be the correct move; it has to be a real move. Founders and operators who learn to read line 1 cleanly take a small concrete step into the cleared space, register what the response actually is, and let that response calibrate the larger moves the higher lines authorise. The 無咎 is the protection that lets the first step be made.
田獲三狐，得黃矢，貞吉。
In the hunt, catching three foxes and obtaining the yellow arrows. Firm-correctness — fortune.
“The second NINE, undivided, shows its subject catching, in hunting, three foxes, and obtaining the yellow (golden) arrows. With firm correctness there will be good fortune.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 2 is the centred yang of the lower trigram and the hexagram’s most precise instruction about the cleanup imagery the deliverance imposes. 田獲三狐 — in the hunt, catching three foxes. The fox in early Chinese imagery is the small, hidden, deceitful agent: the actor whose interference operated during the obstruction because the obstruction itself provided cover. The release exposes them. 得黃矢 — and obtaining the yellow arrows. Yellow is the colour of the centre and the imperial; the arrows are the instruments of precise correction. The line is naming the specific work the release makes possible: identify the hidden interferers, recover the means of precise correction, and act with firm-correctness while both are still in hand.
The decision-relevant translation is the cleanup work the post-obstruction window allows. Founders who reach line 2 typically discover that the obstacle which dominated Hexagram 39 was cover for a set of smaller costs — a contractor whose work was always poor but whose mistakes were masked by the larger crisis, a team member whose performance had drifted but whose drift was indistinguishable from the general slowdown, a customer whose unprofitability survived because every customer looked unprofitable. The release exposes the three foxes. The yellow arrows are the operational discipline that the actor now has the bandwidth to actually deploy. The line treats the cleanup as time-bounded: 貞吉 — firm-correctness produces fortune — but only while the post-release window is still open. Institutions that mistake the deliverance for full normalisation and skip the line-2 cleanup typically rediscover the foxes inside the next crisis, where the cover has returned.
負且乘，致寇至，貞吝。
A porter with his burden riding in a carriage. He invites robbers. However firm-correct, occasion for regret.
“The third SIX, divided, shows a porter with his burden, (yet) riding in a carriage. He will (only) tempt robbers to attack him. However firm and correct he may try to be, there will be cause for regret.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 3 is the top of the lower trigram and the hexagram’s sharpest picture of status mismatch. 負且乘 — a porter with his burden, riding in a carriage. The porter is the figure whose station is to carry weight on his own back; the carriage is the conveyance reserved for those whose station is to be carried. The line composites them into a single figure who occupies a position his role does not match. The result is named immediately: 致寇至 — he invites the robbers. The post-release period is not a permission slip to climb into positions whose discipline the actor has not earned. The firm-correctness clause is severe: 貞吝 — however firm-correct, occasion for regret. The mismatch is the diagnostic; the firmness does not cure it.
Read into the decision context, line 3 is the line that catches the founder who reads Hexagram 40 as broad permission and immediately upgrades posture — the early-stage operator who closes the funding round and starts behaving like a late-stage CEO before the team and the playbook have actually scaled, the cleared-of-litigation executive who immediately reclaims the marquee external roles before the institution’s internal trust has been rebuilt, the partner whose dispute was just resolved who immediately reasserts authority the resolution did not actually restore. The line is honest about the trigger. The porter-in-the-carriage figure attracts loss not because the larger world is unjust but because the mismatch advertises the actor’s vulnerability to those who are looking for it. The deliverance is real; the upgrade has to be earned at a pace the role can actually carry.
解而拇，朋至斯孚。
Release your toes. Friends will then arrive; between you there will be sincerity.
“The fourth NINE, undivided, shows its subject (in the condition supposed by it). Remove your toes. Friends will (then) come, between you and whom there will be mutual confidence.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 4 is the yang at the bottom of the upper trigram and the hexagram’s instruction about the residual attachments the deliverance has not yet detached. 解而拇 — release your toes. The toes are the most peripheral part of the body, the connection the actor still drags from the previous obstruction period: the consultant who served the crisis but does not fit the recovery, the early supporter whose interest was the dispute and not the outcome, the operational habit that was protective inside the obstruction and is now drag. The line is explicit that the release of the trailing attachment is the precondition for the next thing the line names: 朋至斯孚 — friends will arrive, and between you there will be sincerity. The new relationships are gated on the old detachment.
The decision-relevant translation is the line of the actor whose post-release coalition cannot form because the old coalition is still in place. Founders who reach line 4 typically discover that the people they need next will not enter the room while the people they needed during the crisis are still there. The toes are not condemnation of the earlier relationships; they are honest description of what no longer fits. The line treats the detachment as a clean technical act: release the trailing connection, and the friends arrive on their own. The 孚 — sincerity, the mutual confidence that lets the next chapter actually function — is the structural deliverable of the line, and it is not available to the actor who has not done the line-4 release. Institutions whose deliverance period stalls typically stall here, holding on to the crisis-era relationships out of loyalty until the post-crisis coalition stops trying to form.
君子維有解，吉。有孚于小人。
The noble person carries out the release. Fortune. The effect shows in the treatment of the small people.
“The fifth SIX, divided, shows the superior man (executing his function of) removing (whatever is injurious to the idea of the hexagram); and (in this way) there will be good fortune. (The effect of his work) will be seen in (his treatment of) the small men.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 5 is the ruler line and the hexagram’s most institutional reading of the release. 君子維有解 — the noble person carries out the release. 維 here implies sustained, comprehensive action: not a single decree of forgiveness but the ongoing work of removing the residue the obstruction has left in place. 吉 — fortune. 有孚于小人 — the effect shows in the treatment of the small people. The line names the diagnostic by which the deliverance is actually verified: not in the leader’s own posture, not in the marquee outcomes, but in whether the ordinary, lower-status, less-protected members of the institution are released from the obstruction’s residue together with everyone else.
The decision-relevant translation is the canonical move the hexagram exists to make at the leadership altitude. Line 5 is the line of the executive who has cleared the regulatory crisis and whose actual work is now the methodical release of the operational restrictions that crisis imposed downward — the cost-cutting that was supposed to be temporary, the hiring freeze that the post-crisis budget actually allows to lift, the customer concessions that the resolved litigation no longer requires. The line is explicit that the deliverance becomes real for the institution only when it becomes real for the people whose visibility is lowest. The 有孚于小人 is the I Ching’s precise statement that institutional credibility is measured at the bottom of the org chart, not the top. Leaders who declare the deliverance complete without doing the line-5 downward work produce an institution that holds the rhetoric of the release while the underlying conditions remain unchanged for the people the conditions actually constrained.
公用射隼于高墉之上，獲之，無不利。
The duke shoots a falcon on top of a high wall. He hits it. Nothing without advantage.
“The topmost SIX, divided, shows a feudal prince with his bow shooting at a falcon on the top of a high wall, and hitting it. (The effect of his action) will be in every way advantageous.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 6 is the topmost line and the hexagram’s closing picture of the final corrective act the deliverance allows. 公用射隼于高墉之上 — the duke shoots a falcon on top of a high wall. The falcon is the residual predator that survived the obstruction and now perches in plain view; the high wall is the elevated position from which the predator was previously untouchable; the duke is the figure whose authority is now great enough, and whose vantage is now clear enough, that the precise shot is finally available.獲之 — he hits it. 無不利 — nothing without advantage. The line is naming the final cleanup the deliverance window allows: the precise removal of the last interferer who would otherwise re-establish the obstruction once the window closes.
For decision-makers this is the line of the final, well-targeted decisive act that completes the post-obstruction sequence. Founders who reach line 6 typically discover that one specific residual problem — the senior employee whose behaviour was the actual source of the cultural drift, the customer whose disproportionate influence shaped the wrong product decisions, the legacy system whose persistence has been the structural blocker — has become both visible and reachable in a way it was not during the obstruction. The line authorises the precise shot. The hexagram is honest about the prerequisites: the duke (the formal authority), the bow (the actual instrument), the high wall (the clear vantage), the visible target. The line does not endorse general aggression; it endorses one well-conditioned, well-targeted act at the close of the deliverance period, and it promises that the outcome is comprehensively favourable. Institutions whose post-obstruction periods end without the line-6 act typically rediscover the falcon during the next obstruction, perched on the same wall.
PostureStorm broken · timing the consolidation vs the advance
Deliverance puts water (Kan) below and thunder (Zhen) above. The image the Xiang compresses into four characters is exact: 雷雨作 — thunder and rain arise. The storm has broken; the rain has fallen; the obstruction that defined Hexagram 39 has been resolved. The Tuan extends the picture into the fundamental release the hexagram names: 天地解而雷雨作，雷雨作而百果草木皆甲坼 — heaven and earth release, thunder and rain arise, and the hundred fruits, grasses, and trees all burst forth. The structural claim is that the deliverance is not a passive lifting of pressure; it is the active condition under which growth that was suppressed becomes possible all at once.
The hexagram statement is unusually precise about the timing the release imposes. 利西南 — advantage in the southwest, the direction the King Wen tradition associates with the receptive, with the multitude, with the terrain where consolidation is possible. 無所往，其來復吉 — if there is nowhere left to go, the return is fortunate. The line names the actor for whom the work of the obstruction period is complete and whose correct move is to come back to the conditions that preceded it. 有攸往，夙吉 — if there is somewhere left to go, going early is fortunate. The second branch names the actor for whom the obstruction was a delay and not a redirection, and whose correct move is to resume immediately while the window is still open. The decision content is the timing diagnosis: the hexagram does not pick the branch for the actor; it forces the actor to decide which branch their situation actually occupies.
Read with H40’s structural pair Hexagram 39 — Obstruction — the posture is the precise inverse. Hexagram 39 is the discipline of stopping when the wall is impassable; Hexagram 40 is the discipline of moving cleanly once the wall has been removed. The line texts then walk through the specific cleanup the release allows: the foxes exposed at line 2, the trailing attachments released at line 4, the institutional downward release at line 5, the final shot at the falcon at line 6. The hexagram is honest that the release is itself the period of work, not the rest after it.
Failure modesPorter in the carriage (line 3 status mismatch)
The hexagram’s sharpest failure mode is the one line 3 names explicitly: 負且乘 — the porter who climbs into the carriage. The actor reads the deliverance as broad permission and immediately upgrades posture — the founder who closes the funding round and starts behaving like a late-stage CEO before the team has scaled, the cleared executive who reclaims the marquee external roles before the internal trust has been rebuilt, the partner whose dispute resolved who immediately reasserts authority the resolution did not actually restore. The line is honest about the trigger. The porter-in-the-carriage figure attracts loss not because the larger world is unjust but because the mismatch advertises the actor’s vulnerability to anyone looking for it. The firm-correctness clause is severe: 貞吝 — however firm-correct, occasion for regret. The diagnostic is the mismatch itself; the firmness does not cure it.
The mirror failure is the inverse — the actor who treats the deliverance as fragile and stays inside the obstruction posture long after the obstruction has ended. The hexagram is explicit at line 6 that the falcon perched on the high wall is a time-bounded target: while the post-release window is open, the duke’s shot is comprehensively favourable; once the window closes, the residual predator becomes a new obstruction. Both failures share the same root: the misreading of the deliverance period as either full normalisation (line 3) or persistent obstruction (the inverse). The hexagram treats it as neither — a specific working window during which the cleanup work is both possible and required.
Application & adjacentQuestion shape · Hexagram 39 pair · Cleanup after the obstacle
A note on the question shape this hexagram answers best. Deliverance rewards questions framed around the aftermath of a specific resolved obstacle: a regulatory crisis that has just cleared, a dispute that has just settled, a funding round that has just closed, a personal blockade that has just lifted. It is less useful for vague questions about whether things will eventually improve; for that question, re-read with Hexagrams 24 — Return — or 11 — Peace. Deliverance presumes the obstacle was real and is now resolved. The hexagram is the instruction layer for the specific window of work the resolution opens.
The canonical adjacent reading is Hexagram 39 — Obstruction — the structural pair in the King Wen sequence. Where Hexagram 39 names the discipline of stopping when the wall is impassable — the actor learns to read the wall, redirects the energy that would otherwise be spent breaking against it, and waits — Hexagram 40 names the work the actor does once the wall has finally been removed. The two together form the complete obstacle-and-release sequence. Founders and operators who keep both hexagrams in view tend to invest the obstruction period in the work that will compound when the release arrives, and to recognise the deliverance period as a specific working window rather than as a return to normal. The hexagram is the second half of a paired instruction; without H39 as context, H40 reads as easier than it is.
The line-6 instruction is the hexagram’s operational close. 公用射隼于高墉之上，獲之，無不利 — the duke shoots the falcon on the high wall, hits it, nothing without advantage — is the picture of the final well-targeted act that completes the post-obstruction sequence. The decision-relevant move is twofold. If the deliverance window is still open, the instruction is to identify the specific residual interferer who is now visible and reachable, and to take the precise shot while the conditions allow it. If the window has closed without the line-6 act, the instruction is to recognise that the residual predator has now become the seed of the next obstruction, and to plan the next Hexagram 39 cycle around the work that should have been completed in the previous Hexagram 40 window.
SynthesisYiGram Editorial
Each Western line of reading approaches Deliverance from a different angle. James Legge transliterates 解 as “Chieh” and frames the hexagram within his Confucian moral lens — the release as the lifting of an obstruction and the noble person’s corresponding ethical act of pardoning faults and forgiving crimes. Richard Wilhelm’s symbolic-philosophical posture reads the hexagram as “Deliverance / Liberation” in the broader sense — the natural release of accumulated tension, the thunderstorm clearing the air, the universal bursting-forth of growth the Tuan describes. A reading in the lineage of Carl Jung’s 1949 foreword would treat 40 as the marker of the psychic release that follows a sustained inner blockade, with the falcon at line 6 read as the residual shadow figure whose final integration the deliverance period allows. Bradford Hatcher’s linguistic project (below) abandons all three framings and returns to the semantic field of 解 itself — deliverance, discharge, follow-through, untying, release, the full vocabulary of liberation and let-go. None of these readings is quoted on this page; the synthesis is YiGram Editorial’s characterization of each tradition’s posture, written so a reader can triangulate the field without us reproducing copyrighted text.
Reception historyLegge · Wilhelm · Baynes · Jung
The Western reception of the I Ching has two main lines. The first is James Legge’s 1882 missionary translation in the Sacred Books of the East series — methodical, Victorian, framed around Confucian moral readings. It is the public-domain anchor reproduced above. The second is Richard Wilhelm’s 1923 German translation, prepared in Qingdao in collaboration with Lao Naixuan — sympathetic, philosophical, closer to Daoist intuitions. Cary F. Baynes rendered Wilhelm into English in 1950, with a foreword by Carl Jung that introduced the book to Western psychology as a window onto synchronicity and the unconscious.
We cite these two lines by name to credit the reception history and to help search systems and readers resolve the entities; the Wilhelm/Baynes text itself and Jung’s foreword remain in copyright and are not quoted on this page. A more recent academic-linguistic line is represented by Bradford Hatcher’s Yijing project (1990s–2010s), which appears in the next section under his explicit redistribution permission.
Bradford HatcherVerbatim · © 2011
Hatcher organizes each hexagram around six short clusters of keywords that sketch the field of decision and association the Chinese name opens onto. For Hexagram 40 解, his clusters are:
Delivery, deliverance, discharge, follow through, liberation, relief, emancipation Loosen, disentangle, extricate, forgive, pardon, allow, let go, free, release, slacken Explain, clarify, synthesize, reconcile, temper, transcend, alleviate, dissolve, undo Release arrows; casting (3rd step of a spell: tense, aim, release); be done, move on Begin anew; clean break with past, absolve; culmination, sublimation; untie knots Both forgiveness and permission; options opening; redemption, not salvation (#59)
Hatcher’s framing is vocabulary-centred rather than narrative — the reader is invited to feel the semantic shape of the Chinese name through the spread of English fragments. For his longer notes and the full glossary entry, read the complete passage on hermetica.info.
Quoted verbatim from Bradford Hatcher, Yijing Hexagram Names and Core Meanings (Version 12.1, 2011), hermetica.info/GuaMing.htm. © Bradford Hatcher, 2011. Reproduced under the author’s explicit permission to redistribute his work intact, with copyright notice. Bradford Hatcher (d. June 2020); site maintained to preserve his work.
SynthesisYiGram Editorial
Read across the four Chinese traditions, Hexagram 40 names the specific working window the resolution of an obstruction opens. The Wings give the canonical reading: peril with movement, the actor moving and escaping the peril; heaven and earth release and the hundred fruits, grasses, and trees all burst forth; the noble person accordingly pardons faults and forgives crimes. Wang Bi reads the hexagram as a structural argument about timing: the deliverance is the condition under which previously impossible moves become possible, and the line texts walk the actor through the specific cleanup the conditions allow. Zhu Xi reframes the hexagram around the line-5 ruler whose release extends downward through the institution, treating the 有孚于小人 clause — the effect showing in the treatment of the small people — as the hexagram’s defining diagnostic. The divinatory manual Bushi Zhengzong reads 40 strictly as the marker for questions about the aftermath of a specific resolved obstacle: the cleared lawsuit, the closed funding round, the settled dispute, the lifted regulatory restriction. The unified posture across all four sources is the same: Deliverance is a discipline for the specific working window the resolution opens, not a return to ordinary conditions.
Yi ZhuanTuan + Xiang · Ten Wings
The Ten Wings are the canonical Confucian commentary stratum embedded in the received Yijing. For Hexagram 40 the two most directly relevant Wings are the Tuan Zhuan (彖傳, the Judgement Commentary) and the Xiang Zhuan (象傳, the Image Commentary). The Tuan for Deliverance is one of the most lyrical in the Yijing, closing with the exclamation that the timeliness of the release is vast indeed.
Tuan 彖傳: 解，險以動，動而免乎險，解。解利西南，往得眾也。其來復吉，乃得中也。有攸往夙吉，往有功也。天地解而雷雨作，雷雨作而百果草木皆甲坼，解之時大矣哉。
Deliverance: peril with movement; moving and escaping the peril — Deliverance. “Deliverance, advantageous in the southwest” — going there gains the multitude. “The return is fortunate” — gaining the centre. “If there is somewhere to go, going early is fortunate” — the going has merit. Heaven and earth release, and thunder and rain arise; thunder and rain arise, and the hundred fruits, grasses, and trees all burst forth. Vast indeed is the timeliness of Deliverance.
Xiang 象傳: 雷雨作，解。君子以赦過宥罪。
Thunder and rain arise — Deliverance. The noble person accordingly pardons faults and forgives crimes.
The Tuan does the structural work: the peril-with-movement configuration is what makes the deliverance possible at all, and the line-2 firm that attains the centre is what makes the return fortunate. The same Wing extends the hexagram into the cosmological register — heaven and earth themselves release, and the universal bursting-forth of growth is the consequence — closing with the explicit exclamation that the timeliness of the release is the hexagram’s defining quality. The Xiang compresses the whole hexagram into a single ethical prescription: 赦過宥罪 — pardon faults and forgive crimes — treating the institutional act of forgiveness as the structural analogue of the natural release the upper image describes. Translations by YiGram Editorial from the classical Chinese.
Classical commentariesWang Bi · Zhu Xi · Bushi Zhengzong
Wang Bi (Zhouyi Zhu, 3rd century) reads Hexagram 40 as a structural argument about timing rather than about forgiveness. For Wang Bi the analytical centre is the hexagram statement’s precise pair of conditionals — if there is nowhere to go, return; if there is somewhere to go, go early — and the line texts then map the specific cleanup the release allows: the foxes exposed at line 2, the porter-in-the- carriage warning at line 3, the trailing-attachment release at line 4, and the falcon-on-the-wall closing act at line 6. The hexagram’s decision logic, in Wang Bi’s reading, is the recognition that the deliverance is a time-bounded working window during which previously impossible moves become briefly possible.
Zhu Xi (Zhouyi Benyi, 1188) reframes the hexagram around the line-5 ruler whose release extends downward through the institution. For Zhu Xi the line-5 有孚于小人 clause — the effect showing in the treatment of the small people — is the hexagram’s defining diagnostic: a deliverance that has not reached the lower-status, less-protected members of the institution has not actually occurred. The corollary is that leaders who declare the release complete on the basis of their own posture or the marquee outcomes alone produce a rhetoric of release without the substance of it; the substance is measured at the bottom of the order, not the top.
The Bushi Zhengzong (Qing-dynasty divinatory manual, 1709) reads 40 practically: a hexagram drawn in answer to a question about the aftermath of a specific resolved obstacle — the cleared lawsuit, the closed funding round, the settled dispute, the lifted regulatory restriction — rather than a hexagram about general relief. The manual is explicit that 40 is not a commentary on whether the actor is morally vindicated by the resolution; it is an instruction about the specific window of work the resolution opens. The practical recommendation tracks the line position the question lands at: take the first cautious step at line 1; catch the foxes and recover the yellow arrows at line 2; refuse the porter-in-the-carriage upgrade at line 3; release the trailing toes at line 4; extend the release downward at line 5; take the precise shot at line 6.
Translations and paraphrase by YiGram Editorial from the classical Chinese. We do not reuse any modern third-party English rendering of these commentaries.
These method notes are not required to read the hexagram. They organize the traditional six-line structure for readers who want to see the rule layer beneath the plain-language reading.
Palace: Zhen (thunder), second-generation (二世). Binary, bottom-up: 010100. Lower trigram: Kan (water). Upper trigram: Zhen (thunder). Shi line: 2. Ying line: 5.
The line branches, bottom-up, follow the Kan-below / Zhen-above najia composition for Deliverance: 寅 (line 1), 辰 (line 2), 午 (line 3), 午 (line 4), 申 (line 5), 戌 (line 6). Read against the Zhen palace, whose element is wood, the six-relatives assignments are: line 1 寅 (wood) — siblings (兄弟); line 2 辰 (earth) — wealth (妻財); line 3 午 (fire) — offspring (子孫); line 4 午 (fire) — offspring (子孫); line 5 申 (metal) — officials (官鬼); line 6 戌 (earth) — wealth (妻財).
The shi line at position 2 carries wealth (辰, earth), which the palace’s own wood overcomes — the actor stands at the position the palace is structurally oriented to organise, which is the najia correlate of line 2’s fox-catching and yellow-arrow-recovering cleanup work as the structural anchor of the deliverance window. The ying line at position 5 carries officials (申, metal), the element that the palace’s own wood is overcome by — the receiving position is the institutional authority through which the line-5 downward release actually propagates. Read as a structural pair, the shi-ying axis of Deliverance says that the actor does the operational cleanup at the centre while the receiving position is the institutional authority through which the release extends to the small people, which is the structural correlate of the Xiang’s 赦過宥罪: the pardoning and forgiving is the line-5 reach that the line-2 cleanup work makes possible.
For a cast, this static layer records the palace, generation label, shi and ying positions, each line's branch and six-relative, moving-line positions, transformed hexagram, and the use-spirit selected by question category. The public page keeps that structure as a method note rather than as default reading text.
Audit status: unaudited_draft. The static-layer tables are pulled from the standard 京房纳甲 sequence and have not yet been cross-checked against the three reference texts named in the methodology. Errors should be reported against the v0.1.0 rule version in the GitHub rules directory.
For the full pipeline (how the static layer reaches the AI interpretation), see Methodology → Najia engine.
Sources
- Classical text of the Yijing (周易) — hexagram and line statements (卦辭 / 爻辭) from the received Zhou-dynasty edition. Public domain.
- James Legge, The Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XVI: The Yi King, Oxford University Press, 1882. Public domain.
- Zhu Xi (朱熹), Zhouyi Benyi (周易本義), 1188. Public domain.
- Wang Bi (王弼), Zhouyi Zhu (周易注), 3rd century. Public domain.
- Bushi Zhengzong (卜筮正宗), Qing-dynasty divinatory manual, 1709. Public domain.
- Tuan Zhuan (彖傳) and Xiang Zhuan (象傳), two of the Ten Wings (十翼). Public domain.
- Bradford Hatcher, Yijing Hexagram Names and Core Meanings (Version 12.1, 2011). © Bradford Hatcher, 2011. Reproduced under the author’s explicit permission to redistribute his work intact, with copyright notice; this page quotes the “Key Words” subsection only and links readers to the full original for the longer notes. Bradford Hatcher (d. June 2020).
All Chinese-to-English translations on this page are by YiGram Editorial, working directly from the classical Chinese. We do not reuse third-party modern English translations of any of the listed Chinese sources. Read the full source policy in the methodology page.
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