Hexagram for Deliverance

It means relief after difficulty, followed by a choice: return or act. ䷧ is Hexagram 40 in the Yijing, the Chinese “Book of Changes,” a divination classic.

If you are weighing release or deliverance, both translations fit: each suggests a difficulty coming undone. The Chinese name 解 carries the sense of loosening or untangling.

The hexagram’s judgment—a short reading attached to it—gives two cases: return when no task remains; move swiftly when work is still needed. This is advice within a divination text, not a promise that every problem has already vanished.

Why is it associated with thunder and water?

The storm image makes release visible: pressure breaks and movement resumes. In the figure, thunder is above water. A traditional commentary connects thunder and rain with accumulated tension being released.

In the received order of the hexagrams, ䷧ follows ䷦, Obstruction. An old explanation of that order says difficulty cannot last forever, so release comes after the impasse.

What was this symbol used for?

It belongs to a Chinese divination text, not a general freedom code. The Zhouyi is the core text within the Yijing. Its 64 figures each have a judgment and statements for their six lines, which readers used in divination.

The earliest known manuscript of the Zhouyi was copied about 175 B.C. and found among silk texts at Mawangdui, a burial site near Changsha, China. It preserves the divination text alongside several commentaries, showing that the tradition already had layers of interpretation. The manuscript date marks a surviving witness, not the creation of ䷧.