Nourishment — 颐

What Is Hexagram 27?

Hexagram 27, Yí (頤), Nourishment, is Thunder under Mountain — 山雷頤 — and it is drawn as a body part: two firm lines for the jaws, four yielding ones for the hollow between them. 頤 is both the jaw and the act of feeding, and the book uses the one character for both.

Its subject is everything that crosses that opening. What a person takes in, what a person gives out, and whether the two directions are in the right order: that is the whole of the figure. The judgment does not ask whether you are hungry. It asks you to watch what is being nourished and to locate your own supply, and every line below follows from the position a person is standing in.

The book names this shape twice. Here it is the jaw and its feeding; at Hexagram 21 the Tuan opens with 頤中有物，曰噬嗑, there is something in the jaw, and that is Biting Through. The two figures are the same mouth, once empty and once occupied, and the difference between them is the difference between eating and grinding.

The verdicts of the figure divide exactly in half. All three lines of the lower trigram are judged badly, 凶 three times; all three above them carry 吉, with 无咎 once, and two of the three have a caution set beside the good fortune. The vocabulary does not divide that cleanly at all, since 顛頤 and 拂經 each turn up in two lines with opposite verdicts. Nothing in the hexagram's own account suggests the lower lines are worse people. They stand in the positions where feeding is hardest to get right, and the book's verdict is that a wrong direction in a season of nourishing costs more than a wrong appetite does.

The Sequence puts this figure between a store and a load too heavy for its beam. 物畜然後可養，故受之以頤；頤者養也 — once there is a store, there is something to be fed on, which is why Nourishment follows Great Taming; and forward, 不養則不可動，故受之以大過 — what is not fed cannot move, which is why Great Excess follows Nourishment. The 雜卦 gives its verdict in four characters, 頤養正也, feeding is the setting right of what is fed.

Structurally the figure belongs to a small club. Turn it upside down and nothing changes: 頤 is one of the eight hexagrams that read the same inverted, along with 乾, 坤, 大過, 坎, 離, 中孚 and 小過. Flip every line instead, firm for yielding and yielding for firm, and the whole thing becomes Hexagram 28, Great Excess, a figure whose most remembered image is a ridgepole bending under its load. That is the book's own comment on what happens when a container is asked to hold more than it can hold.

Trigram Structure

Yí is Thunder below and Mountain above, 震下艮上, and the Great Image states the arrangement as 山下有雷, thunder beneath the mountain. Kong Yingda turns that into the mechanics of a mouth in a single line: 山止於上，雷動於下。頤之為用，下動上止 — the mountain rests above, the thunder moves below, and the way a jaw works is that the lower half moves while the upper half does not.

The two trigrams divide the labor accordingly. 震 supplies the motion: the arousing, the beginning of movement, what opens. 艮 supplies the frame: stopping, resting, the firm line at the top of the upper trigram that does not shift. A mouth is one organ made of a hinge and a roof, and the hexagram is a diagram of the difference between the half that acts and the half that holds.

The four yielding lines in the middle are the empty space, and the emptiness is the point. A shape that is full cannot receive. Hexagram 26, one step back, is the figure of a full container, heaven stored inside a mountain; Hexagram 27 is the figure of an empty one. In this book a store and a mouth are consecutive episodes of one story rather than opposites.

The Tuan reads the judgment as a statement about correctness, 養正則吉也, nourish what is correct and there is good fortune, and then unfolds the second half of the judgment in two directions with a single verb. 觀頤，觀其所養也 — look at the nourishing, that is, look at what the person nourishes; 自求口實，觀其自養也 — seek your own mouth's substance, that is, look at how the person feeds himself. The same 觀 does the work in both clauses, which is the hexagram's argument stated as a grammatical fact: what you give and what you take are two views of one account.

The Tuan then widens the frame three times: 天地養萬物，聖人養賢，以及萬民 — heaven and earth feed the ten thousand things, the sage feeds the worthy, and thereby reaches the ten thousand people. Kong's subcommentary explains the order of that sentence: 先須養賢，乃得養民, the worthy have to be fed first, and only through them does anyone else get fed. He also insists that 養正 covers two different things at once, 一者養此賢人 and 二者謂養身得正, feeding capable people and keeping one's own person straight, which is exactly the pair the Image will spell out as speech and diet.

One character at the end of the Tuan is not stable across editions. The Wang Bi text reads 頤之時大矣哉, the season of Nourishment is great. Other copies of the classic carry 頤之時義大矣哉, adding 義, meaning or significance. Kong Yingda's note is the interesting part, because he explains the absence of 義: 以《彖》釋頤義於理既盡，更無餘意，故不云義 — the Tuan has already accounted for the whole sense of the figure, nothing remains over, and so it does not add the word for sense. Where other hexagrams have to say that their meaning is great, Nourishment says that its season is.

The Judgment

頤：貞吉。觀頤，自求口實。

Yí: zhēn jí. Guān yí, zì qiú kǒu shí.

Our rendering: Nourishment: holding correct brings good fortune. Watch what is being nourished; seek your own mouth's substance.

Word by word. 頤 (yí) is the jaw, and as a verb it is to feed, to nourish, to keep. 貞 (zhēn) is firmness, correctness, holding a line. 吉 (jí) is good fortune. 觀 (guān) is to look at, to watch, and in this book it is a verb of attention rather than of eyesight. 自 (zì) is self, of oneself, without being given. 求 (qiú) is to seek, to ask for. 口實 (kǒu shí) is the mouth's substance: 實 is solid, real, actual, so the phrase names what makes the mouth substantial rather than what fills it. Kong Yingda glosses the clause simply, 求其口中之實也, seeking what is solid in the mouth.

The judgment runs to two short clauses, and it grants nothing spectacular: no 元亨, no crossing of the great river, no room to expand. Its two imperatives are a verb of watching and a verb of seeking, and neither of them is a move in the world. That is worth pausing over. The heaviest instruction this hexagram has is to watch and then to seek, and both are aimed at the same place.

Then 自. The judgment locates the supply at the self and does it with a verb that implies effort: 求 is seeking, not being handed something. The tradition reads 自求口實 as the standard that gives 觀頤 its meaning, since watching what a person nourishes is diagnostic only because he is the one who has to seek his own supply. What the lower lines describe is the failure of exactly that self-location. The book makes the whole shape a jaw and puts a demand in the middle of the sentence, and the two belong together.

The Tuan's gloss on the judgment is the practical version: 養正則吉也, feed what is correct and the fortune follows, and Kong Yingda unfolds that phrase into two senses at once, 養此賢人 and 養身得正, feeding capable people and keeping one's own person straight. A figure that says this much about what a person is fed by, and so little about what a person should eat, hands the practical half of the question to the Image.

Jungian reading: Jung's account of the transference is the closest thing in his writing to what this judgment is doing, and the parallel is structural rather than thematic. On his description, the analysand projects onto the analyst a supply that belongs to the analysand's own unlived life, and the work consists in withdrawing the projection and taking it back; the cure is not the feeding but the relocation of the source. He also warned that the analyst who lets himself become the supply joins the patient's problem rather than solving it. 自求口實 is that relocation made into a rule: the substance is to be sought at one's own mouth. A figure whose imperatives are to watch and to seek is a figure about where a person's centre of supply has been placed, and the answer it wants is 自.

The Image

象曰：山下有雷，頤；君子以慎言語，節飲食。

Shān xià yǒu léi, yí; jūnzǐ yǐ shèn yányǔ, jié yǐnshí.

Thunder beneath the mountain: Nourishment. The noble one weighs his words and sets a limit on food and drink.

This is the most quotable sentence in the figure and the most physical. Kong Yingda's note joins the trigrams to the anatomy: 人之開發言語、咀嚼、飲食，皆動頤之事 — opening the mouth to speak, chewing, eating and drinking are all doings of the jaw. The movement of the lower half is the whole of the imagery, and the counsel is to regulate what that movement does.

Each character in the instruction is doing work. 慎 (shèn) is to weigh, to be careful with; it governs 言語, words and speech, what leaves. 節 (jié) is to measure, to set a limit, to make a joint or a section of a thing; it governs 飲食, food and drink, what enters. The same character is Hexagram 60, Limiting, which is what this book does with a key term: puts it to work as a verb long before it turns up as the name of a figure. The pair is asymmetrical in kind. Words get 慎, a quality of attention, because the harm a sentence does cannot be undone by drinking less. Food gets 節, a quantity with a limit, because what enters can be counted.

Wang Bi, quoted in the subcommentary, adds the sentence that makes the instruction portable: 言語、飲食猶慎而節之，而況其餘乎 — if speech and food are still to be weighed and measured, how much more everything else? And the older proverb Kong cites to explain why the mouth is the place to draw the line gives the figure its tone: 禍從口出，患從口入, disaster leaves through the mouth and harm comes in through the mouth. Eight characters, and both directions of the judgment's watching are in them.

Jungian reading: Jung held consistently that the instincts cannot be legislated away, only related to, and the Image takes that line: not 禁, prohibition, but 慎 and 節, caution and measure. The difference matters, because a mouth that is forbidden is a mouth that finds another route; Jung's general account of what is kept out of awareness is that it does not vanish but returns in a form harder to recognize. Speech is the cheapest place for that return, which is why the guard goes on words before it goes on food: the slip of the tongue, the sentence that went one clause too far, is where a person's unexamined material gets its first chance to be real in the world. Measure at the mouth is the earliest available intervention, and, by this book's habit of naming the cheap remedy first, the one worth keeping.

The Lines

Nine at the Base — 初九：舍爾靈龜，觀我朵頤，凶。 (You set down your own numinous tortoise to watch me work my jaws: misfortune.)

靈龜 is the numinous tortoise, the shell whose omens were read, and the tradition takes it as a figure for a person's own clear sight: Kong, 靈龜謂神靈明鑒之龜兆，以喻己之明德也, the tortoise's signs are the metaphor for one's own bright capacity. 朵頤 is a moving jaw; 朵 carries the sense of movement, as Kong notes when he explains that a hand taking hold of something is called 朵, so the phrase is chewing, or gaping at food.

Wang Bi's note on the line is the sharpest commentary in the figure: 以陽處下而為動始，不能令物由己養，動而求養者也 — a firm line placed at the bottom at the beginning of movement, unable to be the one by which things are fed, and therefore moving in order to be fed. Then the pair of sentences worth memorizing: 夫安身莫若不競，修己莫若自保。守道則福至，求祿則辱來, for securing one's position nothing beats not contending, for cultivating oneself nothing beats self-preservation; keep to the way and fortune arrives, chase the salary and disgrace comes. The Small Says answers it in five characters, 亦不足貴也, not worth esteeming.

The line is about comparison, and the comparison is with someone who is eating. What the first line gives up is not food but its own source of judgement, traded for the sight of somebody else's supply arriving. Jung's account of the Self as an inner centre that cannot be borrowed says the same thing in another register: what is projected outward comes back as dependence, and dependence is never satisfied because its object was never the food. The figure's first verdict is a misfortune, and it is the mildest thing it could have said about a trade this bad.

Six in the Second — 六二：顛頤，拂經，于丘頤，征凶。 (Feeding turned upside down, off the standing way, sought on the mound: setting out brings misfortune.)

顛 (diān) is to tip over, to reverse; 拂 (fú) is to go against, to swerve from; 經 (jīng) is the constant, the rule, what is proper; 丘 (qiū) is a mound or height, and Wang Bi takes it as 所履之常, the ground a person normally stands on. What the line does is feed downward. It sits in the middle of the lower trigram with no correspondent above it, and instead of passing anything up it turns and feeds 初九 beneath it. Wang Bi: 處下體之中，無應於上，反而養初居下，不奉上而反養下 — in the middle of the lower trigram, with nothing answering above, it reverses and feeds the bottom line, failing to serve upward and instead nourishing downward.

The received text and the Correct Meaning punctuate the same words differently, and the difference is real: the classic reads 顛頤，拂經，于丘頤，征凶, while Wang Bi's text reads 顛頤，拂經於丘。頤，征凶, taking the mound with the going-against and letting 頤 open the next clause. Kong's subcommentary follows the second reading. Either way the line is judged 征凶, misfortune for setting out, and the Small Says gives the reason in four characters: 行失類也, its course loses its class. Wang Bi's own note on the image states it plainly: 類皆上養，而二處下養初, the whole class feeds upward, and this one line feeds downward.

The decisive fact about the second line is that it performs the same act as the fourth line, with the opposite verdict. 六四 also carries 顛頤 and is judged 吉 and 无咎, and Kong states the criterion directly: 六二身處下體而又下養，所以凶也；六四身處上體，又應於初，陰而應陽 — the second stands in the lower trigram and feeds downward, and that is why it is inauspicious, while the fourth stands in the upper trigram and answers the first line, a yielding line responding to a firm one. Feeding has a direction proper to each place. Where you stand decides whether giving is generosity or a failure to be where you were put.

Six in the Third — 六三：拂頤，貞凶，十年勿用，无攸利。 (Feeding turned from its right way: holding to this is misfortune. Ten years out of use; nothing serves.)

The third line fails in the direction the second failed in, and for a worse reason. It is a yielding line in a firm place, which Wang Bi calls 履夫不正, standing where it does not belong, and its feeding runs upward as flattery: 以養於上，納上以諂者也, feeding the line above by handing itself up as a compliment. His verdict on the habit is severe: 處頤而為此行，十年見棄者也, do this in a season of nourishing and you are discarded for ten years. Then 立行於斯，無施而利, taking that stand, there is nowhere it pays.

十年, ten years, is the longest interval the book names for a consequence, and it uses it in only three places: a marriage postponed in the second line of Hexagram 3, a campaign that cannot be mounted in the top line of Hexagram 24, and this dismissal. The Small Says explains the length in four characters, 道大悖也, the way is greatly perverted: not a small mistake with a long sentence but a habit whose whole direction is wrong.

The practical content of the line is the feed that is really a bid. Flattery is a form of nourishment, and what makes it corrosive is that the flatterer is not the one who eats first: a person whose supply runs upward toward approval has handed control of their food to the appetite of the one above them. The hexagram gives that arrangement ten years, which is its way of saying the arrangement outlasts its usefulness but not its cost.

Six in the Fourth — 六四：顛頤吉，虎視眈眈，其欲逐逐，无咎。 (Feeding downward, and good fortune: the tiger's gaze fixed on its mark, its wants pressing after substance. No blame.)

This is the second line that feeds downward and the only one judged well, because it sits at the base of the Mountain, correct in its place and answering the first line, 陰而應陽, so feeding downward here is a gift rather than an inversion.

虎視眈眈 is a fixed, deep stare, an eye held on its object. 其欲逐逐 is harder, and the commentary's reading of it is not the obvious one: 逐逐 is taken as pressing steadily rather than as greed. Wang Bi: 下交不可以瀆，故虎視眈眈，威而不猛，不惡而嚴 — dealings with those below must not be treated lightly, hence the tiger's gaze, authority without ferocity and severity without hostility. On the wants: 養德施賢，何可有利？故其欲逐逐，尚敦實也, if you are nourishing capacity and giving to the worthy, what room is there for profit? The pressing wants are aimed at solidity. Kong reads it the same way: 既養於下，不可有求，其情之所欲逐逐然，尚於敦實也.

So the only 无咎 in the figure belongs to the line that gives, and the two qualities it requires are the ones people find hardest to hold together: an unblinking eye on those you are responsible for, and no appetite for anything in return. The Small Says: 顛頤之吉，上施光也, the good fortune of inverted feeding is that the giving from above has brightness in it. Set beside the second line, which was punished for the identical act, the pair makes the figure's most concrete rule: the direction of feeding is judged by the height it is given from, not by the generosity of the impulse.

Six in the Fifth — 六五：拂經，居貞吉，不可涉大川。 (Off the standing way; settled and correct brings good fortune. It is not for crossing the great river.)

A yielding line in a firm place at the ruler's seat, which is the ground of its awkwardness: Wang Bi calls it 以陰居陽，拂頤之義也, a yielding line occupying a firm position, contrary to the sense of nourishing. With no correspondent below and only the top line beside it, its counsel is to stop moving and keep its place, 行則失類，故宜居貞也, if it moves it loses its class, so it should settle and keep correct, and its good fortune comes from following: 無應於下而比於上，故可守貞從上，得頤之吉. The Small Says names the mechanism in five characters, 順以從上也, it follows what is above.

The line is the clearest illustration in the figure of the difference between authority and supply. The fifth line is the ruler of the hexagram and it is refused the great river; the top line, which holds no office at all, is granted it. Kong explains why the fifth must not cross: 處頤違謙，患難未可涉也 — in a season of nourishing but lacking the modesty the position requires, its difficulties are not yet resolved. It is worth noticing how the book uses its own formula here. 不可涉大川 is usually a verdict about scale, and in this figure it is a verdict about supply: a position that lives on what it is given cannot afford a venture whose whole cost is a stretch of its own resources.

Nine at the Top — 上九：由頤，厲吉，利涉大川。 (From him the feeding comes: danger, and good fortune; it serves to cross the great river.)

由 (yóu) is from, by way of, by means of, the character of a route rather than a possession. The top line is the only firm line in the upper half, and everything beneath it depends on it: 以陽處上而履四陰，陰不能獨為主，必宗於陽也。故莫不由之以得其養 — a firm line placed above and treading on four yielding ones that cannot be masters on their own and must take the firm line as their head, so that none of them gets fed except by way of it. Hence 厲吉, danger and then good fortune, with Wang Bi's reason: 為眾陰之主，不可瀆也，故厲乃吉, the master of a crowd of yielding lines must not be treated lightly, so the danger comes first. His note then gives the whole position: 貴而無位，是以厲也。高而有民，是以吉也 — honored with no office, which is the danger; high, and holding people, which is the good fortune. The Small Says: 由頤厲吉，大有慶也, and there is great celebration.

Jung's essay on the mana-personality is the account of what goes wrong here, and the line's own word for the risk is his: the one from whom everyone draws becomes the carrier of a projection, and the projection flatters, because the supply was never his to own. Wang Bi's phrase 貴而無位 is the structural protection. The top line has influence without office, holds people without ruling them, and the 厲 in its judgment is not a warning against helping; it is what keeps the help from being mistaken for a possession. That is why the figure's last word is the crossing. The only line permitted the great river is the one that does not need it for its own feeding.

How This Hexagram Shows Up in Daily Life

The split in the figure is the first thing to use. Three lines judged badly below, three judged well above, and what separates them is position rather than character: which direction of feeding the place a person currently occupies can carry. That question takes a few minutes to answer and it is worth asking at the start of a season rather than the end, because the two halves fail in ways that look nothing alike. Someone at the bottom fails by comparison, and by waiting for supply to arrive from where it does not live. Someone higher up fails by taking flattery as payment, or by mistaking what passes through their hands for something they own.

慎言語，節飲食 is the most testable instruction in the classic, and it is deliberately modest: two habits at the two ends of one opening, words measured and food measured. Wang Bi's 而況其餘乎 is the reasoning, and it holds up. If these two are kept, everything else gets easier, because the mouth is both the first place a person leaks and the first place a person can practise measure. A week of noticing when a sentence slipped out a clause too long, and when a meal went past the point of need, shows how much of this figure a person is already living without knowing it.

The line worth carrying out of the page is the one with the tiger's eyes. Its two requirements are usually assumed to be in tension, watch them closely and want nothing from them, and the hexagram's claim is that they are one discipline seen from two sides. Attention that wants something turns into management; generosity that stops looking turns into neglect. The fourth line's 无咎 is the only uncomplicated acquittal in the figure and it goes to the position that gives from above and wants nothing but substance. The top line adds the last piece: the difference between being a source and believing that you are one. 由 means the feeding comes by way of you. It was never yours, and the figure says so before it hands over the river.

Related Links

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 27 mean in one sentence?

That everything a person lives on arrives through a mouth and leaves through the same one: the judgment asks you to watch what is being nourished and to locate your own supply rather than someone else's, and the six lines divide cleanly in half, the three below failing at feeding and the three above getting it right, with the difference coming from the position rather than from the person.

What does 頤 mean, and why is the figure drawn as a mouth?

頤 is both the jaw and the act of feeding, and the figure is a picture of it: two firm lines for the jaws and four yielding ones for the hollow between them. The book names the shape twice, here as Nourishment and at Hexagram 21 as Biting Through, whose Tuan begins 頤中有物，曰噬嗑, there is something in the jaw.

What does 自求口實, seeking your own mouth's substance, mean?

實 is solid, real, substance, so the phrase is not quite food but what makes the mouth substantial. Kong Yingda glosses it as 求其口中之實也, seeking what is solid in the mouth, and the tradition treats it as the corrective half of the judgment: watching what nourishes you is diagnostic only because you are the one who has to seek the supply. What a person is fed by and what a person seeks are two views of one account.

What is 顛頤, and why is it misfortune in one line and good fortune in another?

顛 means to tip over, so 顛頤 is feeding turned upside down, nourishing downward instead of upward. It appears in 六二 and 六四 with opposite verdicts, and the criterion is position. The second line stands in the lower trigram with no correspondent above, so its downward feeding is a failure to serve where it was placed, 行失類也; the fourth stands in the upper trigram and answers the first line, so giving downward from there is a gift, 上施光也. Feeding has a direction proper to each place, and where you stand decides what giving means.

The I Ching is a mirror for reflection, not a prediction machine.