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Hexagram 57 · Xùn

The Gentle Wind

巽 · xùn
Persistent gentle wind; subtle influence prevails.
Xùn · Wind
above
Xùn · Wind
below

Core Meaning

The Judgment: The Gentle: success through what is small. It rewards one to have a direction, and to see a great person.
The Image: Wind follows upon wind. So the wise person spreads their intention abroad and accomplishes their undertakings — by penetration, not by force.

Wind following wind, entering every crevice: Xùn is the gentle — penetration by persistence, influence that succeeds not by force but by ceaseless, unspectacular repetition.

Its power is cumulative: commands spread abroad and repeated, roots worked into hidden ground. Its failure modes are its own excess — penetration repeated past decision into dithering, searching carried under the bed into obsession. Gentleness needs a spine: somewhere, the wind must also decide.

The Gentle Wind in Your Question

Love & Relationships

Xùn works on the heart the way wind works on stone: small kindnesses repeated, understanding accumulated in layers, influence no single gesture could achieve. It favors patient re-approach over confrontation. Its warning is equally intimate — endless re-analysis of the relationship, the third line's repeated penetration, dissolves the very resolve it was meant to inform.

Career & Money

Professionally, Xùn is influence by iteration: the idea reintroduced until it becomes the room's assumption, the standard upheld daily until it becomes culture. Investigate hidden roots of problems thoroughly — but once, with resolve, not forever. Its calendar counsel is durable: weigh three days before the change, verify three days after.

Personal Growth

Inwardly, Xùn is the gentle discipline: habits that penetrate character through sheer dailiness rather than willpower storms. It also names the shadow — introspection become excavation, turning the same soil until nothing can grow. Enter yourself the way wind enters a valley: thoroughly, then move on.

The Six Lines

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

Line 1
Advancing, retreating, advancing again: indecision. What such drifting needs is the disciplined will of a soldier.
Line 2
Penetrating beneath the bed — searching out the hidden roots of the trouble, with help from those who see what is concealed. Good fortune, no blame.
Line 3
Penetration repeated past usefulness: turning the same thing over and over until resolve dies. Humiliation.
Line 4
Regret vanishes: the hunt brings threefold game. Modesty joined with energy is rewarded with everything needed.
Line 5
Steadfastness brings good fortune; regret vanishes. No clean beginning, but a clean end: weigh three days before the change, watch three days after.
Line 6
Penetration carried under the bed — into corners where searching becomes obsession — until one loses both means and defense. Misfortune.

Related Hexagrams

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