Hexagram 54歸妹Marrying Maiden
The commitment is being entered for reasons that are not clean. One party arrives with less power than the other, the conditions are visibly tilted, and the temptation is to advance anyway. The practical question is whether the asymmetry can be read honestly before the move, and whether what is signed can still be signed knowingly.
60-second read
Marrying Maiden is the hexagram for the impulsive or compromised commitment. The hexagram statement is unusually direct: advance, evil; nothing advantageous. The image is the younger sister sent into a household whose first marriage failed, or the second wife arriving in already-occupied territory. The line texts walk through the asymmetry honestly — the lame leg of line 1, the half-blindness of line 2, the empty basket and bloodless sheep of line 6. The instruction is to read the actual position before committing, and, if the commitment cannot be refused, to make it with full awareness of the tilt.
The hexagram
歸妹：征凶，無攸利。
Marrying Maiden: advance — evil. Nothing advantageous. — Translation by YiGram Editorial from the classical Chinese
“Kwei Mei indicates that (under the conditions which it denotes) action will be evil, and in no wise advantageous.”
— 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.
初九：歸妹以娣，跛能履，征吉。
The younger sister married off in a position ancillary to the principal wife. Lame, yet able to walk. Going forward, fortunate.
“The first NINE, undivided, shows the younger sister married off in a position ancillary to the real wife. (It suggests the idea of) a person lame on one leg who yet manages to tramp along. Going forward will be fortunate.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 1 is the yang at the bottom of the lower trigram Dui — the first stage inside the compromised commitment, the actor who arrives explicitly as the secondary party. The line is unsentimental about the position. 歸妹以娣 — married off as the ancillary, the 娣 being the formal junior sister-companion who accompanied the principal bride in early-Zhou aristocratic marriages. The actor is not the headline name; the actor arrives at a lower rank in the household, and the line is direct that this is the actual position. The lame-leg image — 跛能履, lame yet able to walk — names the structural limitation honestly: the actor does not have the full set of feet, but can still move.
The decision-relevant translation is that the line-1 position is the cleanest in the entire hexagram precisely because the asymmetry is acknowledged. The fortune clause — 征吉, going forward is fortunate — is conditioned on the actor accepting the junior role rather than pretending to the senior one. For founders this is the line of the co-founder joining as the second name on the cap table, or the executive accepting the deputy seat under a more senior CEO; the position is real, the constraint is real, and the work that fits the constraint moves forward genuinely. The trap at line 1 is to act as if the asymmetry were not there. The fortune is in the lame-leg walking, not in the pretence of two good legs.
九二：眇能視，利幽人之貞。
Blind in one eye, yet able to see. Advantageous in the firm correctness of the solitary person.
“The second NINE, undivided, shows her blind of one eye, and yet able to see. There will be advantage in her maintaining the firm correctness of a solitary widow.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 2 is the centred yang in the lower trigram. The image sharpens the line-1 limitation: 眇能視 — blind in one eye, yet able to see. The actor's perception is genuinely incomplete; the situation cannot be read in full because the position itself only allows half the field of view. The instruction is the unusual phrase 利幽人之貞 — advantageous in the firm correctness of the 幽人, the solitary or withdrawn person. Legge renders this as the solitary widow; the underlying sense is the actor who maintains internal correctness despite occupying a position whose external conditions cannot be fixed.
The decision-relevant translation is the line of the kept commitment. For founders this is the partnership entered with a co-founder whose values diverged after the agreement was signed, or the customer relationship that turned exploitative after the contract; the line names the discipline of holding the actor's own correctness even when the structural position cannot be repaired. 幽人之貞 is the inner posture of a party who knows the situation is one-eyed and refuses to compensate by pretending to see what the position cannot show. The line is not generous in the conventional sense — there is no headline fortune — but it is precise about what the actor's correctness still produces in a structurally limited position. The half-blind seeing is the work.
六三：歸妹以須，反歸以娣。
The younger sister sent in a mean position. She returns and accepts a position ancillary to the principal wife.
“The third SIX, divided, shows the younger sister who was to be married off in a mean position. She returns and accepts a position ancillary to the real wife.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 3 is the top of the lower trigram and the place where the actor's initial expectation has to be revised downward. The classical character 須 in this line is read by the Qing commentators as a position of low standing — the actor was sent forward expecting a particular role and the role on arrival turns out to be smaller than the one negotiated. The instruction is structural and ungrand: 反歸以娣 — return and accept the ancillary position. The actor goes back, accepts the formal junior status, and reframes the participation under terms the situation actually permits.
The decision-relevant translation is the line of the renegotiated entry. For founders this is the term sheet that closes at a lower valuation than the conversation implied, the strategic partnership that turns out to deliver less channel than promised, the board seat that arrives without the authority the discussion described; the line is explicit that the discipline is to formally revise the role rather than to act as if the original framing still held. Reverting to the ancillary position is not failure in the line's framing — it is the corrective move that prevents the larger collapse the hexagram statement warned about. The trap at line 3 is to refuse the downgrade and proceed under the old framing; the line points at the explicit return to the smaller role as the move that keeps the commitment workable.
九四：歸妹愆期，遲歸有時。
The younger sister protracting the time. Marriage may be late, but its time will come.
“The fourth NINE, undivided, shows the younger sister protracting the time. She may be late in being married, but the time (for it) will come.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 4 is the yang at the bottom of the upper trigram Zhen — the first stage where the actor crosses from the lower trigram's compromised conditions into the upper trigram's more visible field of action. The line is the rare position in the hexagram where delay is the corrective. 歸妹愆期 — the younger sister protracts the time; 遲歸有時 — late, but the time will come. The actor refuses the immediate commitment that the lower-trigram conditions were pushing toward, and accepts the cost of waiting for a structurally cleaner moment.
The decision-relevant translation is the line of the deferred yes. For founders this is the funding round delayed until the metrics support a clean valuation rather than the rushed one available now, the partnership postponed until a less asymmetric counterparty appears, the hire held open until the candidate who fits the role's actual shape arrives. The line is direct that the time will come — 有時, there is a time — but the timing is not the actor's to force. For an actor reading at line 4, the instruction is to treat the protraction as legitimate work rather than as indecision. The line stands against the rest of the hexagram's compressed-commitment images precisely because it is the position where the structural option of refusing the bad timing still exists.
六五：帝乙歸妹，其君之袂，不如其娣之袂良。月幾望，吉。
King Di Yi gives his younger sister in marriage. The princess's sleeves are not as fine as the sleeves of her junior companion. The moon nearly full. Fortune.
“The fifth SIX, divided, shows the case of the marriage of the younger sister of (king) Tî-Yî, when the sleeves of her the princess were not equal to those of the (still) younger sister who accompanied her in an inferior capacity. (The case suggests the thought of) the moon almost full. There will be good fortune.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 5 is the ruler line and the unusual position in the hexagram where the fortune is unconditioned. The image is the marriage of the royal sister of 帝乙 Di Yi, a late Shang king whose dynastic alliance is the historical referent the Yijing returns to in several places. The detail the line names is small and exact: 其君之袂不如其娣之袂良 — the princess's own sleeves are not as fine as those of her ancillary companion. The princess deliberately wears the plainer dress; the junior wears the finer one. The image is the high-status actor who refuses to amplify her own status in a situation where amplification would have made the commitment harder to keep.
The decision-relevant translation is the line of the restrained senior. The actor at line 5 has every right to wear the headline robes — has the standing, has the resources — and chooses the plainer presentation precisely because the commitment is being entered into asymmetric conditions. The moon-almost-full image is the precise structural correlate: 月幾望, the moon at three-quarters; the fortune of the position depends on not pushing to full. For executives this is the senior partner who accepts the junior's framing on a deal whose mutual benefit only survives if the senior does not press the full advantage; for founders this is the established company that closes a partnership with a smaller startup on terms that respect the smaller party's footing. The fortune is unambiguous — 吉 — and it is conditioned on the senior actor's deliberate restraint.
上六：女承筐無實，士刲羊無血，無攸利。
The woman bears the basket — nothing in it. The man slaughters the sheep — no blood. Nothing advantageous.
“The topmost SIX, divided, shows the young lady bearing the basket, but without anything in it; and the gentleman slaughtering the sheep, but without blood flowing from it. There will be nothing in any way advantageous.”
— Legge (1882)
Line 6 is the topmost position and the picture of what happens when the asymmetric commitment is carried through despite the warning. The image is the canonical Zhou wedding ritual emptied of its substance. The bride carries the offering basket to the ancestral altar — 女承筐無實, but the basket is empty. The groom performs the sacrificial slaughter — 士刲羊無血, but no blood flows from the sheep. The exterior form is observed; the interior reality is gone. 無攸利 — nothing advantageous — is unambiguous and final.
The decision-relevant translation is severe. The line is the I Ching's most precise picture of the collapsed ritual: a commitment whose external shape was preserved while its substance was hollowed out. For founders this is the partnership signed and never delivered on, the merger announced and never integrated, the hire formalised and never integrated into the team's real work. The trap is to treat the empty form as if it were the commitment itself; the line is direct that no amount of ritual completion produces the substance the ritual was supposed to mark. Read against the hexagram statement's blunt warning — 征凶，無攸利 — line 6 is the image that statement was preventing. The cheapest moment to refuse the empty-basket commitment is upstream of line 6, at the line-4 protraction or earlier; once the basket is being carried, the form has already outlived the substance.
PostureAsymmetric commitment · knowing one's position
Marrying Maiden puts Lake (Dui) below and Thunder (Zhen) above — joy beneath movement, attraction stirring action. TheTuan compresses the image into a single sequence: 說以動，所歸妹也 — delight with movement, this is what marrying-maiden means. The hexagram is naming a specific structural pattern: attraction is the motive force, but the motive does not by itself establish the conditions under which the move should be made. The original ritual referent is the early-Zhou aristocratic marriage where the younger sister of a high-status family was sent to a household whose preferred match had failed, or arrived as second wife into a household whose principal wife was already in place. The wedding happens; the household has prior occupants; the new arrival’s rank is structurally below the position the marriage formally creates.
The hexagram statement is unusually direct. 征凶，無攸利 — advance, evil; nothing advantageous. The Tuan then names the structural reasons explicitly: 位不當也 — positions are not appropriate; 柔乘剛也 — the yielding rides on the firm. The line positions inside the hexagram do not align with their natural correctness; the soft lines sit above the hard lines they should rest beside. The whole hexagram is the I Ching’s instruction for the situation where the surface attraction is real, the formal commitment is available, and the underlying structural conditions make the commitment a tilted one. The discipline is to read the tilt honestly before the advance, and, if the advance cannot be refused, to enter under the smaller framing the situation actually permits rather than the larger one the attraction suggests.
Failure modesEmpty basket / bloodless sheep (line 6 collapsed ritual)
The dominant failure mode is the line-6 collapsed ritual. The actor carries the commitment through to its formal completion while its substance has already drained out: the basket is borne but contains nothing, the sheep is slaughtered but no blood flows. The hexagram is graphically explicit that the ritual completion does not recover the missing substance.無攸利 — nothing advantageous — is the final judgement, the same phrase that opens the hexagram statement, closing the structure on the same note it began on. The secondary failure mode is the line-3 refusal to formally revise the role: the actor was sent forward expecting one position, the position on arrival is smaller, and rather than explicitly accepting the ancillary status the actor proceeds under the original framing. Both failures share a root: an actor who has read the surface attraction of the lower trigram Dui and ignored the structural reality the upper trigram Zhen is moving them into.
Application & adjacentQuestion shape · Hexagram 53 pair · Impulsive vs gradual commitment
A note on the question shape this hexagram answers best. Marrying Maiden rewards questions framed around a specific commitment being entered under asymmetric or impulsive conditions — an alliance considered from a weaker position, a partnership where one party arrives in already-occupied territory, a fundraise accepting tilted terms because the runway forced the timing, a hire taken at a smaller scope than the conversation suggested. It is less useful for questions about whether a commitment is fundamentally worth making; for that question, re-read with Hexagram 31 — Mutual Influence — or 32 — Duration — depending on whether the underlying question is about attraction or about endurance. Marrying Maiden presumes the situation has already produced the attraction and the conditions are now visibly tilted.
The canonical adjacent reading is 漸 — Hexagram 53, Gradual Progress — the King Wen reverse pair. Both hexagrams use the wedding as the central image; 53 names the long correct sequence and 54 names the premature compromise. Read together they form the canonical fast/slow dyad for any sequenced commitment: in Hexagram 53 the marriage follows the proper rites and produces the public exemplar at the top line; in Hexagram 54 the engagement is rushed or tilted, the bride arrives as a secondary, and the line-6 image is the ritual whose substance has been hollowed out. Founders and executives who keep both hexagrams in view tend to ask the same question at the right altitude — what kind of commitment is this, and does the situation support the gradual sequence or only the compromised one?
The line-1 acknowledged-junior position and the line-5 restrained-senior position are the hexagram’s two operational exits. Both are conditioned on honest reading of the structural tilt. The decision-relevant move is to ask which side of the asymmetry the actor actually stands on. If the actor is the entering party at a structurally lower rank — the second co-founder, the deputy executive, the smaller partner in the alliance — the instruction is line 1: accept the junior framing explicitly and let the lame-leg work be the legitimate work. If the actor is the receiving party with the higher standing — the senior partner, the established company, the larger institution — the instruction is line 5: deliberately wear the plainer robes so the commitment survives the asymmetry the situation already contains. The gendered framing of the classical text reads descriptively; the decision content is about asymmetric commitment of any kind.
SynthesisYiGram Editorial
Each Western line of reading approaches Marrying Maiden from a different angle. James Legge transliterates 歸妹 as “Kwei Mei” and frames the hexagram within his Confucian moral lens — the canonical warning against the marriage entered under improper conditions and the gendered framing of the junior-sister position read literally. Richard Wilhelm’s symbolic-philosophical posture reads the hexagram as “The Marrying Maiden” or “The Younger Sister Marrying” — the great image of the impulsive or socially compromised union and the discipline of recognising what such a union can and cannot become. A reading in the lineage of Carl Jung’s 1949 foreword would treat 54 as a marker of psychological compromise, with the asymmetric marriage read as the inner figure entering a relationship from a position of less power. Bradford Hatcher’s linguistic project (below) abandons all three framings and returns to the semantic field of 歸妹 itself — premature engagement, compromising position, impulsiveness, impatience, the difficulties of right mating. 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 54 歸妹, his clusters are:
Premature engagement, compromising position, settling early for less, entrapment Jumping to conclusions, immediate gratification, haste, impulsiveness, immaturity Impatience, eagerness, quick solutions, ephemera, transience; whim, flush, rush Fascination, allurement, unenduring enthusiasm, charm, appeal, desire as a leader Passing fancy, short sight, seduction, bait; addiction meaning to give into slavery Difficulties in right mating, discrimination, subordinating offer to long term goals
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 54 names a very specific working posture: a commitment being entered for reasons that are not clean, and the corresponding discipline of reading the structural tilt before the advance and refusing the empty ritual at the end. The Wings give the canonical reading: marrying-maiden is the great rightness of heaven and earth, but advancing under tilted positions produces evil because the yielding is riding on the firm; the noble person knows lasting endings and recognises decay. Wang Bi sharpens the structural reading: the line positions inside 54 do not align with their natural correctness, and the line-by-line texts trace the consequences of that misalignment from the lame-leg of line 1 to the bloodless sheep of line 6. Zhu Xi reframes the hexagram around the early-Zhou wedding institution — the formal ancillary role of the junior sister-companion, the ritual sequence that line 6 voids — and stresses the line-5 restrained senior as the structural exit that preserves the asymmetric commitment without forcing it to the line-6 collapse. The divinatory manual Bushi Zhengzong reads 54 strictly as the marker for impulsive or asymmetric commitments — alliances entered from weaker positions, partnerships closed on tilted terms, mergers signed for reasons other than the merger’s own merit. The unified posture across all four sources is the same: Marrying Maiden is a discipline for reading the actual position before committing, accepting the smaller framing if the position is genuinely smaller, and refusing to carry through a ritual whose substance has already left it.
Yi ZhuanTuan + Xiang · Ten Wings
The Ten Wings are the canonical Confucian commentary stratum embedded in the received Yijing. For Hexagram 54 the two most directly relevant Wings are the Tuan Zhuan (彖傳, the Judgement Commentary) and the Xiang Zhuan (象傳, the Image Commentary).
Tuan 彖傳: 歸妹，天地之大義也。天地不交，而萬物不興，歸妹人之終始也。說以動，所歸妹也。征凶，位不當也。無攸利，柔乘剛也。
Marrying Maiden: the great rightness of heaven and earth. If heaven and earth did not meet, the ten thousand things would not flourish — Marrying Maiden is the end and the beginning of human affairs. Delight with movement — this is what marrying-maiden means. “Advance, evil” — positions are not appropriate. “Nothing advantageous” — the yielding rides on the firm.
Xiang 象傳: 澤上有雷，歸妹。君子以永終知敝。
Thunder above the lake — Marrying Maiden. The noble person accordingly knows lasting endings and recognises decay.
The Tuan does the structural work: the marrying-maiden situation is acknowledged as one of the fundamental human institutions — the meeting of heaven and earth without which the ten thousand things would not flourish — and then immediately diagnosed as the place where the structural conditions fail. The phrase 柔乘剛 — the yielding rides on the firm — names the inversion: the soft lines occupy positions above the hard lines they should rest beside, and that misalignment is what the hexagram statement’s evil-and-no-advantage refers to. The Xiang then compresses the ethical instruction into a single four-character phrase: 永終知敝 — know lasting endings and recognise decay. The structural correlate is that the noble person reading 54 anticipates how the empty-basket collapse of line 6 develops out of the unrecognised asymmetry at line 1, and acts upstream of the collapse rather than at it. Translations by YiGram Editorial from the classical Chinese.
Classical commentariesWang Bi · Zhu Xi · Bushi Zhengzong
Wang Bi (Zhouyi Zhu, 3rd century) reads Hexagram 54 as a hexagram about position-correctness. For Wang Bi the analytical centre is the explicit observation that the line positions inside 54 do not match their natural correctness — yang lines in even positions and yin lines in odd positions — and the line-by-line texts trace the consequences of that misalignment downstream. The lame-leg walking of line 1, the half-blind seeing of line 2, the downward revision of line 3, the protraction of line 4, the deliberate plain robes of line 5, and the empty basket of line 6 are stages in a single structural diagnosis: a commitment whose positions are wrong cannot be made substantially correct, but can be made knowingly limited.
Zhu Xi (Zhouyi Benyi, 1188) reframes the hexagram around the institutional reality of the early-Zhou aristocratic marriage. The 娣 of lines 1 and 3 is the formal junior sister-companion who accompanied the principal bride under the early-Zhou marriage system, and the 帝乙歸妹 of line 5 is the historical referent of King Di Yi of Shang giving his sister in dynastic marriage. For Zhu Xi the hexagram is not a generic warning about commitment but a precise reading of the specific institutional position in which the new arrival comes in at a structurally subordinate rank. The line-5 plainer-robes image is the structural exit Zhu Xi reads as central: the senior party’s deliberate restraint preserves the asymmetric commitment from the line-6 collapse the rest of the hexagram trajectory was moving toward.
The Bushi Zhengzong (Qing-dynasty divinatory manual, 1709) reads 54 practically: a hexagram drawn in answer to a question about an impulsive or asymmetric commitment — an alliance considered from a weaker position, a partnership entered for reasons other than the partnership’s own merit, a marriage rushed because the window was closing, a merger signed under tilted terms. The manual is explicit that 54 is not a general warning against commitment; the cast applies specifically when the underlying situation is structurally asymmetric and the attraction is moving the actor toward an advance the conditions do not support. The practical recommendation tracks the line position the question lands at: accept the junior role at line 1; hold inner correctness at line 2; formally revise the role at line 3; protract the timing at line 4; deliberately restrain the senior position at line 5; refuse the empty ritual 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: Dui (lake · metal), returning-soul generation (歸魂). Binary, bottom-up: 110100. Lower trigram: Dui (lake). Upper trigram: Zhen (thunder). Shi line: 3. Ying line: 6.
The line branches, bottom-up, follow the Dui-below / Zhen-above najia composition for Marrying Maiden: 巳 (line 1), 卯 (line 2), 丑 (line 3), 午 (line 4), 申 (line 5), 戌 (line 6). Read against the Dui palace, whose element is metal, the six-relatives assignments are: line 1 巳 (fire) — officer-ghost (官鬼); line 2 卯 (wood) — wealth (妻財); line 3 丑 (earth) — parents (父母); line 4 午 (fire) — officer-ghost (官鬼); line 5 申 (metal) — siblings (兄弟); line 6 戌 (earth) — parents (父母).
The shi line at position 3 carries parents (丑, earth), the element that generates the Dui palace’s own metal — the actor stands on the generative ground that produces the palace’s nature. The ying line at position 6 carries parents (戌, earth) as well, the same generative element at the top of the upper trigram. Read as a structural pair, the shi-ying axis of Marrying Maiden says that the actor and the receiving position both stand on parental ground — the structural form is doubly supported by the generating element — while the line positions between them carry the officer-ghost and wealth tensions that the hexagram’s line-by-line text spells out. The structural correlate of theXiang’s 永終知敝: the lasting-endings the noble person knows are anchored at the shi position, where the parental ground holds even when the intermediate lines are mis-positioned.
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.
Share this reading