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Home · The 64 Hexagrams · Hexagram 30
離
Hexagram 30 · Lí

The Clinging Fire

離 · lí
Clarity and brightness; cling to what illuminates.
☲
Lí · Fire
above
☲
Lí · Fire
below
義

Core Meaning

The Judgment: The Clinging, Fire: steadfastness rewards and brings success. Tending the cow — quiet, docile receptivity — brings good fortune.
The Image: Brightness rises twice: the sun's repeated dawning. So the great person carries the light onward and illumines the four quarters of the world.

Fire doubled, brightness rising twice: Lí is the clinging — light's dependence on what it burns, radiance conditioned on care of the fuel. Everything that shines clings to something.

Its counsel is the docility of the cow: brilliance sustained by humble tending. Clarity, like flame, needs feeding and steadiness; it flares and dies when it forgets its dependence. Cling consciously to what illuminates you, and burn with the yellow, balanced light of midday rather than the blaze that consumes itself.

問

The Clinging Fire in Your Question

情Love & Relationships

Lí sees love as flame and fuel: radiant, warm, and dependent — on attention, on care, on what each of you feeds it. Its counsel is steady tending over dramatic blaze; the fourth line's fire that flares up suddenly is thrown away as fast. Even its tears line is hopeful: sorrow fully felt at the turning point clears the light.

業Career & Money

Professionally, Lí concerns clarity and what it depends on: your best thinking clings to sleep, structure, and the right collaborations — tend the fuel, not just the flame. It favors work of illumination — analysis, teaching, design — done with midday's yellow balance. In correction, its final counsel: strike the ringleaders of a problem, spare the followers.

修Personal Growth

Inwardly, Lí asks what you cling to, since clinging is not optional — only its objects are chosen. Attach to what genuinely illuminates: practices, people, and truths that make you clearer. Its emotional honesty is rare — neither drumming false cheer nor lamenting age, but burning steadily at the brightness your fuel honestly supports.

爻

The Six Lines

A line speaks only when it is a changing line in your own casting.

Line 1
Footprints cross in every direction at daybreak. Amid the rush of beginnings, seriousness keeps one free of blame.
Line 2
Yellow light: the glow of midday measure and balance. Supreme good fortune.
Line 3
In the light of the setting sun, people either drum on pots and sing, or loudly lament their age. Both miss the moment. Misfortune.
Line 4
It comes blazing up suddenly — flares, dies, and is cast aside. Brilliance that consumes itself.
Line 5
Tears in floods, sighing and sorrow — the chastened heart at the turning point. Good fortune.
Line 6
The discipline strikes only at the ringleaders, not the followers. Correct the root, spare the rest. No blame.
變

Related Hexagrams

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