Hexagram 8 for work
Hexagram 8 Alliance for work and career
In work Bi is the coalition: the team that forms around a capable leader, the partnership between firms, the client who has decided whom to work with. The Great Image shows the ancient kings 'establishing the many states and drawing the princes close' — organisation by affinity rather than command, water finding its level. The judgment's instruction is to divine again — to check that the association is well founded, lasting and correct before entering it — and then not to hang back.
The lines sort the members of any alliance. The first is the early joiner whose honesty is repaid; the second is the insider whose loyalty is natural and should not be strained; the fourth is the outsider who goes to the worthy and is right to. The third has fallen in with a weak crowd. The fifth is the leader's method: open purpose, no coercion, a way out left unblocked, and no suspicion toward one's own people. The top line is the latecomer who wants to lead what has already formed, and it ends badly.
The hexagram in brief
Water on the earth, flowing together: alliance and mutual support. Favourable to unite around a worthy centre; latecomers who hesitate lose their chance.
Choose alliances by character and sincerity, join early, and let those who want to leave go freely.
The judgment
比：吉。原筮元永貞，无咎。不寧方來，後夫凶。Pî indicates that (under the conditions which it supposes) there is good fortune. But let (the principal party intended in it) re-examine himself, (as if) by divination, whether his virtue be great, unintermitting, and firm. If it be so, there will be no error. Those who have not rest will then come to him; and with those who are (too) late in coming it will be ill.
Which line changed?
A changing line sharpens the answer. Each line of 比 Alliance has its own page:
- 初六Six at the beginningsincerity · a full jar · unexpected good
- 六二Six in the second placefrom within · steadfast · not losing oneself
- 六三Six in the third placethe wrong people · misplaced loyalty · harm
- 六四Six in the fourth placefrom without · following the worthy · upward
- 九五Nine in the fifth placeopen alliance · three-sided hunt · letting the game go
- 上六Six at the topno head · too late · nowhere to end
The same hexagram for
Questions
- What does hexagram 8, Alliance, mean for a career question?
- In work Bi is the coalition: the team that forms around a capable leader, the partnership between firms, the client who has decided whom to work with. The Great Image shows the ancient kings 'establishing the many states and drawing the princes close' — organisation by affinity rather than command, water finding its level. The judgment's instruction is to divine again — to check that the association is well founded, lasting and correct before entering it — and then not to hang back.
- What does Hexagram 8, 比 Alliance, mean?
- Water on the earth, flowing together: alliance and mutual support. Favourable to unite around a worthy centre; latecomers who hesitate lose their chance.
Chinese text: the received Zhouyi (Wuyingdian lineage). English: James Legge, The Yî King, Sacred Books of the East XVI, 1882 (public domain).