Hexagram for the Gentle Wind

Gentle, persistent influence, like wind getting into every gap.

A hexagram is a stack of six lines, read from the bottom up; solid lines are yang, broken lines yin. ䷸ is two copies of the trigram ☴, Xun, a broken line under two solid ones. Xun stands for wind and also for wood, things that slip in everywhere and work slowly. Doubled, the image is wind following wind.

The traditional judgment promises success in small things, says it helps to have a clear goal, and advises seeking out a wise person. Gentle does not mean giving in: the point is to keep one direction and win by repetition, not pressure.

Where does a figure like ䷸ come from?

From the I Ching, a Chinese book of divination about three thousand years old.

Its core, the Zhouyi, took shape in Western Zhou China around 1000–750 BC. It holds 64 hexagrams, each with a name, a judgment and texts for its six lines. To consult it, people throw three coins or sort yarrow stalks six times, building a hexagram line by line; lines marked as changing turn it into a second hexagram.

Commentaries added around 300 BC turned the book into philosophy as well, and it became a classic across China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. A manuscript copied about 175 BC, dug up at Mawangdui in 1973, orders the hexagrams differently from today's standard sequence, where ䷸ is 57.