The Judgment
Increase. It is favourable to undertake something. It is favourable to cross the great water.
Hexagram 42
Increase
I / Yì 益
I is the season of blessing in full flow: what is above sacrifices to what is below, and the people rejoice; wind and thunder amplify one another as gales feed storms. Progress that lately cost everything now comes with help — a sense of inner and outer independence, and a following wind behind every worthy undertaking. Great crossings, long deferred, are open.
Hexagram
42
Wind ☴ (Sun, the Gentle)
Thunder ☳ (Chên, the Arousing)
Increase. It is favourable to undertake something. It is favourable to cross the great water.
Classical frame
Judgment and image
Read these as the root statements before moving into modern interpretation, lines, and situation-specific paths.
The Image
Wind and thunder, each strengthening the other: this is Increase. In the same way, when we see good, we imitate it; when we find faults in ourselves, we root them out.
Deeper reading
The full meaning of Hexagram 42
Overview
I is the season of blessing in full flow: what is above sacrifices to what is below, and the people rejoice; wind and thunder amplify one another as gales feed storms. Progress that lately cost everything now comes with help — a sense of inner and outer independence, and a following wind behind every worthy undertaking. Great crossings, long deferred, are open.
The Judgment's urgency is the season's: such times do not last. Use the increase while it flows — undertake, cross, build — and use it on what deserves it, for the same wind that fills good sails fills careless ones.
The Spirit of I
The image compresses the whole ethics of a fortunate hour into one practice: see good, imitate it; find faults, remove them. Increase is for self-improvement and generosity together — sacrificing for others, forgiving the inferior, encouraging and assisting until the superior person in everyone is drawn into devoted action.
The inner condition is a steady heart: amid the abundance, keep free of the desires that chaos and blessing alike stir up; maintain humility and conscientiousness as though the hard season had never ended. The help of the higher power attends exactly that steadiness.
The Shadow Side
Increase spoils through the ways it is held. Carelessness: assuming the flow is permanent and letting discipline dissolve into it. Appetite: growth converted to greed, the blessing spent on the ego's expansion. And withholding: the increased who pass nothing downward — forgetting that the whole season began with the above giving to the below, and ends the moment that giving stops. The final line of this hexagram is one of the I Ching's starkest warnings, and it is aimed at precisely this.
Changing lines
Six line readings
Open any line for the full changing-line interpretation, including its direct answer, action guidance, and direction of change.
Line 1
Great Deeds Are Favoured
It is favourable to accomplish great deeds. Supreme good fortune. No blame.
The increase reaches even the lowest place, and with it a commission: help received obliges great undertakings. Act on the scale the season permits — selflessly, for the general good — and the extraordinary succeeds without blame. There is even room for error now: mistakes made in sincere effort correct themselves without harm in a time of increase. Hold to universal truths, stay humble in the advantage, and build large.
Read line 1 in full
Line 2
The Increase None Can Oppose
Someone increases him indeed; ten pairs of tortoise shells cannot gainsay it. Constant steadfastness brings good fortune. The king presents him before God: good fortune.
Blessing so aligned with the order of things that no oracle could contradict it — the mirror of Decrease's fifth line, seen from the receiving side. It comes to the one who loves the good for its own sake rather than merely seeking relief from a hard fate: hold that love with constant perseverance and what was lost is restored by cosmic law. So held, the blessing is presentable before the highest — increase that heaven itself co-signs.
Read line 2 in full
Line 3
Enriched Through Misfortune
One is enriched even through unfortunate events. No blame — if you are sincere, walk in the middle, and act with the authority of a true commission.
The season's strangest gift: in a time of increase, even the blows enrich. Adversity arriving now carries instruction and strength for the one who stays sincere and centred through it, turning loss into wisdom the way a storm turns to rain. The conditions are exact — sincerity, the middle path, and action taken as if sealed by higher authority rather than improvised by the ego. Met so, misfortune itself joins the increase.
Read line 3 in full
Line 4
The Trusted Intermediary
Walking in the middle and reporting to the prince, one is followed. It is favourable to be used in great removals.
The position between: mediator among powers, translator between above and below, entrusted — because of proven balance — with the weightiest transfers and changes. Everything rests on the qualities the middle demands: dedication, responsibility, sincerity, and an impartiality that never bends the message toward personal desire. Serve the transmission, not yourself, and your counsel will be followed in matters as great as the moving of capitals.
Read line 4 in full
Line 5
Kindness That Does Not Ask
A truly kind heart need not ask — supreme good fortune. Kindness will be recognised as your virtue.
The apex of increase: generosity become nature. Kindness of this order springs from inner necessity and spontaneity — it does not calculate returns, seek recognition, or require penitence before it forgives; it does not even ask whether it will be acknowledged, and precisely therefore it is. Act with this unmeasuring goodness — patient, moderate, just — and the line's circle closes of itself: the virtue unadvertised becomes the virtue known everywhere.
Read line 5 in full
Line 6
Increase Withheld
He brings increase to no one — indeed, someone strikes him. He does not keep his heart steady. Misfortune.
The season's terminal warning: increase hoarded at the top, passed to no one below. The heart, unsteadied by acquisition, forgets the law that started the flow — the above giving downward — and the flow reverses: isolation first, then the blow from an unexpected quarter, for the hostile forces gather wherever generosity has withdrawn. The correction is the whole hexagram in reverse: steady the heart, resume the giving, and rejoin the circuit before the season closes on the wrong side of it.
Read line 6 in full
Sage advice
When the wind is with you, sail — and carry passengers. Undertake the great things, imitate every good you see, evict every fault you find, and pass the increase downward as fast as it arrives from above. Blessing is a current, not a possession: it flows through the open-handed and shorts out in the clenched. Keep the heart steady, the hands open, and the season will do the rest.
Situation meanings
Read this hexagram through real life
Love
Love's season of increase — build boldly and give generously.
Open interpretation
Career
A season of increase — build boldly and pass the gains downward.
Open interpretation
Business
A tailwind season — build boldly, and pass the gains downward.
Open interpretation
Family
The household's season of increase — build boldly and give downward.
Open interpretation
Money
Money's season of increase — build boldly, keep it flowing.
Open interpretation
Growth
The wind is with you — imitate good, root out faults, build.
Open interpretation
Learning
Learning flies with a tailwind now — attempt the hard thing.
Open interpretation
Creativity
A fertile season with a tailwind — build boldly, give freely.
Open interpretation
Decision
Act now — the wind is with you; cross the great water.
Open interpretation
Spirit
A season of blessing — use it, and pass it downward.
Open interpretation
Community
A season of growing circles — build boldly, give generously.
Open interpretation
Transitions
A change with a tailwind — build boldly, and pass it on.
Open interpretation
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Return to steadiness
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