Hexagram 44: Gou

Heaven over Wind · 天风姤 · Tendency: Inauspicious

Structure

• Number: 44 (King Wen sequence)
• Symbol: ䷫
• Upper trigram: Qian (Heaven)
• Lower trigram: Xun (Wind)
• Lines: yin yang yang yang yang yang (bottom to top)

The statement

女壮，勿用取女。

——《周易》

What this hexagram indicates

This hexagram indicates encountering someone, an opportunity, or a temptation suddenly; you need to observe before deciding. Suitable to cautiously engage with new relationships or collaborations; don't invest too deeply from the start. Good things that seem to come quickly may also bring subsequent entanglements.

A Buddhist reading

Gou (Encounter) is meeting. Ouyi Zhixu explains the yielding meeting the firm as cultivation revealing innate nature, insight arising out of stillness, wisdom born from concentration. The single yin appearing below is no calamity; it is where practice begins to touch what was always there. He dismisses as shallow the reading that turns this hexagram into a warning to suppress the yin and guard against petty people: Return shows the heart of heaven and earth, Encounter shows the greatness of timing, one being innate nature and the other cultivation, and neither can be dispensed with. His harshest words fall on the fourth line: clinging to principle while abandoning practice, trusting wisdom while discarding meditation, talking loftily about mind and nature in a display of wild intellect, until at death the hells appear and regret comes too late.

After Ouyi Zhixu (1599-1655), whose Chan commentary on the Changes reads each hexagram as a stage of practice.

The statement is quoted from the Book of Changes, which is in the public domain. The English reading on this page was prepared for this library.

Related hexagrams

• Previous / Inverted: Hexagram 43: Guaithe whole figure turned upside down
• Next: Hexagram 45: Cui
• Opposite: Hexagram 24: Fuevery line changed to its opposite
• Nuclear: Hexagram 1: Qianlines two to four below, three to five above

Related

• Liu Yao Divination ChartLiu Yao casts a hexagram about one specific matter and reads its structure. Unlike BaZi or Zi Wei, which describe a person, Liu Yao describes how a situation stands at a particular moment. This page walks through the full process from casting to attribution.
• Mei Hua Yi Shu CalculatorMei Hua Yi Shu is traditionally attributed to Shao Yong. What sets it apart is how freely it casts: a time, a spoken number, a direction or something noticed in passing will all serve. It attaches no stems and no relatives, reading the trigrams directly. This page covers casting through to the subject and object.