兌 · duì · ☱
Lake
The lake delights. It is the mouth, the sheep, the youngest daughter: the tongue that speaks, the thing that snaps.
- Quality
- Shared joy
- Image
- the lake
- In the family
- the youngest daughter
- Direction
- west
- Season
- autumn
In a reading
Dui brings joy, conversation and the pleasure of sharing to your reading. Speak openly and listen gladly, but make sure kind words don't turn into empty promises.
The image
Two solid lines below and one open line on top: a soft, open surface over firm ground. This is the lake, still water that mirrors the sky and keeps everything around it green. The Shuogua (說卦) gives it the quality 說, a character that in early Chinese meant both to speak and to delight (later written 悅). Its joy is the kind you say out loud and share.
Symbols
- Family: the youngest daughter. The yin line sits in the top place, the last to arrive.
- Body: the mouth (口), where words and laughter come out.
- Animal: the sheep (羊).
The Shuogua also links it to the tongue, the shaman, and things that snap or break.
Direction and season
In the Later Heaven arrangement, Dui sits in the west, in autumn, the season of harvest. The Shuogua says 說言乎兌, joy is spoken in Dui: this is when all things take delight. In the Earlier Heaven arrangement, its place is the southeast.
In a hexagram
As the lower trigram, Dui is an open, friendly disposition. As the upper trigram, it's a welcoming setting, or a joy that others can see. Beneath heaven it makes hexagram 10, Treading Carefully; above heaven, hexagram 43, Overflowing. Doubled, lake over lake is hexagram 58, Inner Peace: two bodies of water that feed and refresh each other.
To see all eight side by side, read the guide to the trigrams.