Hexagram 32 · 恆 · héng
Hexagram 32. Héng · Duration
☳☴ Thunder over wind: Zhèn above, Xùn below.
Hang indicates successful progress and no error (in what it denotes). But the advantage will come from being firm and correct; and movement in any direction whatever will be advantageous.
Hang indicates successful progress and no error (in what it denotes). But the advantage will come from being firm and correct; and movement in any direction whatever will be advantageous.
Thunder and wind: movement that endures. Duration is not rigidity but faithfulness to one's path within change, like the turning of the seasons. Continue what you have begun without shifting course at every gust; a steady rhythm now matters more than bursts.
The Image
Thunder and wind — movement become a stable regime. Duration is not immobility but the capacity to hold course within change, as the seasons hold the year. Examine your rhythm: what in your life reproduces itself daily and weekly? These cycles, not single feats, now determine the result. Change anything except the direction.
Interpretation of hexagram 32
XXXII. The Hang Hexagram. x. The first line, divided, shows its subject deeply (desirous) of long continuance. Even with firm
The lines of hexagram 32
First line
The second line, undivided, shows all occasion for repentance disappearing.
No influence, it is said, is so powerful and constant as that between husband and wife; and where these are young, it is especially active. Hence it is that Hsien is made up of Kan and Tui. All this is to me very doubtful. I can dimly apprehend why the whole
Second line
The third line, undivided, shows one who does not continuously maintain his virtue. There are those who will impute this to him as a disgrace. However firm he may be, there will be ground for regret.
line (-•) was assumed as the symbol of strength and authority,
Third line
The fourth line, undivided, shows a field where there is no game.
and the broken line as that of weakness and submission. Beyond this I cannot follow Fu-hsi in his formation of the trigrams; and still less can I assent to the more recent symbolism of them ascribed to king Wan.
Fourth line
The fifth line, divided, shows its subject con¬ tinuously maintaining the virtue indicated by it. In a wife this will be fortunate; in a husband, evil.
Coming now to the figure, and its lines, the subject is that of mutual influence; and the author teaches that that influence, correct in itself, and for correct ends, is sure to be effective. He gives an instance,—the case of a man marrying a young lady, the regulations for which have been laid down in China from the earliest times with great strictness and particularity. Such influence will be effective and fortunate.
Fifth line
The topmost line, divided, shows its subject exciting himself to long continuance. There will be evil.
Line 1 is weak, and at the bottom of the hexagram. Though 4 be a proper correlate, yet the influence indicated by it must be ineffective. However much a man’s great toes may be moved, that will not enable him to walk.
Top line
The calves cannot move of themselves. They follow the moving of the feet. The moving of them indicates too much anxiety to move. Line 2, moreover, is weak. But it is also the central line, and if its subject abide quiet, till he is acted on from above, there will be good fortune.
Did hexagram 32 come up in your reading? The oracle itself gives the full reading, with changing lines and the second hexagram.
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