I Ching · Hexagram 27 Nourishment
Hexagram 27 line 1: Nourishment, yang in the first place
I Ching 27.1
You let your magic tortoise go and look at me with drooping jaws. Misfortune.
Someone who has everything they need and envies what another has. Self-sufficiency abandoned for craving. The line is sharp: the misfortune is self-inflicted, and the cure is to remember the tortoise.
Advice. Stop envying; you have your own sustenance and have let go of it.
What changes when line 1 moves
Line 1 of Hexagram 27 is yang, a solid line. When it is cast as old yang (a 9) it flips, and the hexagram becomes Hexagram 23, Splitting Apart: A structure being stripped away from below: not a time to act, a time to endure and to give.
Read together, the reading moves from Nourishment toward Splitting Apart. What you feed, and what feeds you: attention to nourishment, of the body, the mind and others. Earth below, mountain above: a mountain resting on earth that is eroding beneath it. Five yin lines rise beneath one yang line at the top; the structure is collapsing from the bottom. The primary hexagram describes the situation; the changing line is the point of movement in it; the resulting hexagram is where that movement leads. Both hexagrams belong to the reading, and the changing line is the hinge between them.
Line 1 in context
- Love & relationships
- Stop envying; you have your own sustenance and have let go of it. In love and relationships, Hexagram 27 reads: Ask what each of you feeds the other: attention, kindness, honest speech, or the opposite. The reading asks you to look at the diet of the relationship, and to be careful with words, which nourish or poison more than anything.
- Career
- Stop envying; you have your own sustenance and have let go of it. In career, Hexagram 27 reads: What sustains you at work, and what you are sustaining. Feed your competence with real learning, not gossip; support the people who depend on you properly. The reading warns against seeking nourishment from the wrong source.
- Money
- Stop envying; you have your own sustenance and have let go of it. In money, Hexagram 27 reads: Money as sustenance, not display. Spend on what feeds you and yours, be moderate, and be wary of dependence on a source that does not deserve trust. Look at what your money is feeding.
- A decision
- Stop envying; you have your own sustenance and have let go of it. In decisions, Hexagram 27 reads: Decide by asking what the option will nourish. The choice that feeds something worthwhile, in you or in others, is the right one; the one that only fills the mouth is not.
Cast your own reading
The topic is pre-selected. The hexagram is not: the coins decide it.
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