Transformation · lines 4, 5, and 6

Darkness becomes Gathering with Equals

Starting hexagram
Resulting hexagram

What this change means

Heaven together with fire: the three upper lines move, and the Earth that covered the light becomes Heaven. The starting hexagram set you among people who weren't your own, safe only while you kept quiet and kept faith with yourself. The resulting hexagram, 13 Gathering with Equals, brings meetings with people of a nature like yours, with whom you can carry out important, innovative projects built on trust and mutual support. Weighed together, they describe a full turn in company. The wrong people give way to the right ones. Your light, hidden for so long, can come out among equals. Watch for carrying the wariness of the dark into relationships that deserve trust. Order your circle carefully, and then commit to the shared work.

What to read, in order

Marked ● is what Zhu Xi's tradition puts at the center for this number of moving lines.

  1. The judgment of 36 Darkness

    It's a dark time: circumstances force you to live alongside the wrong people. If you know how to protect yourself, hold on to your integrity, and go unnoticed, without openly showing your light and your talents, you'll stay safe until better times come. However hard they seem, hard times pass too.

    Constancy in hardship is favorable.

  2. The judgment of 13 Gathering with Equals

    It's a time of meetings with people of a high nature like yours, with whom you can carry out important tasks and projects. Relationships built on trust and mutual support take shape. Large, innovative projects are favored.

    Community in the open country. Success. It is favorable to cross the great river. The constancy of the noble person is favorable.

  3. Line 4 of 36 Darkness

    You'll be allowed to see the causes of the hard situations you're facing. This will help you act quickly and withdraw to safe ground before adversity takes complete control.

    It enters the left side of the belly; it reaches the heart of the wounded light and goes out through the courtyard gate.

  4. Line 5 of 36 Darkness

    For now you can't withdraw to better circumstances, so you have to stay where you are, with your mind fixed on your goal and a low profile so you don't draw attention.

    The wounded light of Jizi. Constancy is favorable.

  5. Line 6 of 36 Darkness

    If you keep persevering, quietly and without drawing attention, the bad situations and the people behind them will fall under their own weight.

    No light, darkness. First it climbs to heaven; later it goes into the earth.

The trigrams

Below Fire stays
Above Earth Heaven

The way back

13 Gathering with Equals → 36 Darkness
lines 4, 5, and 6

Other transformations of Darkness

Make your own cast

The answer changes with the question. Toss the coins and see which lines move for you.

Toss the coins