Hexagram 12 for work
Hexagram 12 Blockage for work and career
In work Pi is the organisation where nothing connects: decisions made above without reference to below, the capable sidelined while the compliant rise — the Tuan's 'small people's way growing, the superior person's way fading.' The Great Image is precise about the right stance: restrain your virtue to avoid the trouble, and do not be bought with salary or honours. This is not a time to make one's mark but to be unbuyable.
The lines say how long to hold and when to move. One is loyal retreat with peers; two refuses the easy success of compliance; three is the colleague angling to profit from the mess. Four is the first legitimate action, under a mandate from above; five is the leader who ends the standstill and stays wary; six is the collapse of the bad arrangement and the relief that follows. A changing line in the lower trigram means the block still holds and the answer is endurance without compromise; in the upper trigram the turn has begun, and the question is whether you act with authority or alone.
The hexagram in brief
Heaven and earth pulling apart: nothing communicates. The great departs, the small arrives; the unworthy prosper while the worthy keep still.
Withdraw, conserve, and don't take office or honours now; stagnation gives way to return if you endure with integrity.
The judgment
否之匪人，不利君子貞，大往小來。In Phî there is the want of good understanding between the (different classes of) men, and its indication is unfavourable to the firm and correct course of the superior man. We see in it the great gone and the little come.
Which line changed?
A changing line sharpens the answer. Each line of 否 Blockage has its own page:
- 初六Six at the beginninggrass with its roots · withdraw together · loyal aim
- 六二Six in the second placebearing and obeying · great man accepts · not joining the herd
- 六三Six in the third placeshame harboured · wrong place · hidden motive
- 九四Nine in the fourth placea mandate · no blame · companions share the blessing
- 九五Nine in the fifth placeending obstruction · it may perish! · bound to the mulberry
- 上九Nine at the topobstruction overturned · first blocked, then joy · cannot last
The same hexagram for
Questions
- What does hexagram 12, Blockage, mean for a career question?
- In work Pi is the organisation where nothing connects: decisions made above without reference to below, the capable sidelined while the compliant rise — the Tuan's 'small people's way growing, the superior person's way fading.' The Great Image is precise about the right stance: restrain your virtue to avoid the trouble, and do not be bought with salary or honours. This is not a time to make one's mark but to be unbuyable.
- What does Hexagram 12, 否 Blockage, mean?
- Heaven and earth pulling apart: nothing communicates. The great departs, the small arrives; the unworthy prosper while the worthy keep still.
Chinese text: the received Zhouyi (Wuyingdian lineage). English: James Legge, The Yî King, Sacred Books of the East XVI, 1882 (public domain).