Darkening of the Light — 明夷

What Is Hexagram 36?

Hexagram 36, Míng Yí (明夷), Darkening of the Light, is Fire below and Earth above, ䷣ — the sun gone down into the ground, its brightness eaten into by the dark it has entered. The judgment asks for one thing only, correctness held through hardship. The Image asks the noble one to oversee a crowd by keeping his own light out of sight. Two men out of history stand in the commentary as the people who could live in such a time, and one of them also stands inside a line.

The 序卦 arrives here from the figure before it: 進必有所傷，故受之以明夷；夷者傷也 — wherever there is advance there is some hurt, and so comes Darkening of the Light, 夷 meaning to wound. It leaves by the same road: 傷於外者，必反其家，故受之以家人 — whoever is wounded abroad must turn back to his own household, and so comes the Family. The 雜卦 puts the pair into one line, 晉晝也，明夷誅也: Progress is the daylight, Darkening is the killing. The book's two figures for the sun and for its absence sit next to each other in the sequence because the second one carries the cost of the first.

The 疏 opens with the name itself: 夷者，傷也。此卦日入地中，明夷之象. 夷 means to wound; the figure is the sun entering the earth, and that is the picture it makes. The same paragraph then says at once what the picture is about in human terms, 施之於人事，闇主在上，明臣在下，不敢顯其明智, applied to human affairs it is a dim ruler above and a bright minister below who does not dare to show what he understands. The commentary does not soften the political reading. It also says, in the same breath, what the times demand of anyone living in them, 時雖至闇，不可隨世傾邪: the age may be as dark as it likes, and one is still not permitted to go crooked along with it.

The 彖 names two exemplars rather than describing one kind of person. 內文明而外柔順，以蒙大難，文王以之 — clear within and yielding without, so as to take on great hardship: that was King Wen. 內難而能正其志，箕子以之 — hardship inside the house, and the will still held straight: that was 箕子. The 疏 explains the first as a life inside a court, 內懷文明之德…外執柔順之能，三分事紂，以此蒙犯大難，身得保全: clarity held inward, the outward face compliant, two parts of the realm in his keeping and the tyrant still served, and by that way the danger was survived. It explains the second as a life inside a collapse, 內有險難，殷祚將傾，而能自正其志: danger within, the house of Shang about to come down, and the mind kept correct rather than bent by it. The figure's answer to a dark age is not one plan. It is two, and it names them instead of describing them.

The shape of the figure does part of the work of the judgment, so it is worth setting out. This is 離下坤上: bright, yielding, bright at the bottom, with three yielding places above it, which is ䷣, four yielding lines and two firm ones. Turn the figure over and the same six strokes become Hexagram 35, 晉, Fire above Earth. Reverse every line instead and they become Hexagram 6, 訟, Conflict. The figure inverts into the daylight it came from, and inverts by line into an argument.

One more thing about the shape. This figure and the one before it are the pair whose 彖 and 象 speak of the trigram image in the same words, and the 疏 says so outright, 故此及《晉卦》皆《彖》、《象》同辭也. In 晉 the shared words are 明出地上, brightness coming up above the ground. Here they are 明入地中, brightness going down into the ground. The book's two statements about where the sun is happen also to be its two statements about which way the sun is travelling, and each is made twice inside the same figure.

Across the judgment and all six lines, the text uses exactly one verdict of the ordinary kind: 吉, fortune, on the second line. There is no 凶 in the figure, no 咎, no 悔 and no 吝. A hexagram about damage turns out to be nearly free of the language of damage, and what stands in the place of that language is instruction: 利艱貞 in the judgment, 利貞 on the fifth line, 不可疾貞 on the third. The figure does not tell anyone what will happen to them; it tells them how to hold.

Trigram Structure

The lower trigram is Fire, 離, and the upper is Earth, 坤. The 說卦 sums up each of them in a single word: 坤，順也…離，麗也, Earth as the yielding and Fire as that which attaches. The 彖 folds both into its reading of the situation, 內文明而外柔順: clarity inside, compliance outside. The order the 彖 gives them matters here. Clarity that shows itself is a threat to a dim ruler; the same clarity under a yielding surface is survivable, and the whole method of the hexagram depends on the two words staying in that order.

The 說卦 also assigns each trigram a part of the body, and the two parts it gives this pair are 坤為腹…離為目: Earth is the belly and Fire is the eye. The eye is what daylight is for, and the belly is what the dark takes in. The fourth line of this hexagram goes in at the left of the belly; the top line is the one that used to shine over the four quarters. Eye below and belly above describe a seeing that is covered over, and the arrangement is the exact reverse of the one in the figure before it.

The chapter that maps the eight directions puts 離 in the south: 相見乎離 … 離也者，明也，萬物皆相見，南方之卦也。聖人南面而聽天下，嚮明而治，蓋取諸此也. Light is where everything comes into view of everything else, and it is the southern position. That single fact explains the third line, which hunts in the south; the 疏 reads the direction without hesitating, 南方，文明之所, the south is where brightness and order have their seat. The one line in this figure that fights walks back into the quarter the sun belongs to.

The same chapter gives Earth an office, and the office makes the figure's tension explicit: 致役乎坤 … 坤也者，地也，萬物皆致養焉, Earth is where all things are nourished. Here the earth nourishes nothing. It buries the light, and the trigram whose business is to feed everything is the one standing on top of the sun.

The list of images supplies the last pieces. 離 is 為火、為日、為電、為中女、為甲冑、為戈兵 — fire, the sun, lightning, the middle daughter, armor, weapons. The weapons belong in this figure, since the third line's hunt ends with a leader taken and the top line's fall is called 誅, a killing, by the 雜卦. Earth's own list runs 為地、為母、為布、為釜、為吝嗇、為均、為子母牛、為大輿、為文、為眾、為柄 — ground, mother, cloth, cauldron, holding back, leveling, the cow with its calf, the great cart, pattern, the crowd, the handle. The word doing work here is 為眾, the crowd, since the Image is about standing in front of one.

The 繫辭上 gives a general sentence that describes this figure exactly: 剛柔者，晝夜之象也, firm and yielding are the images of day and night. In 晉 the two firm strokes sit at the fourth place and the top, high in the figure, and the light is up. Turn the strokes over and the same firm pair sits at the first and third places, low in the figure, and the light is down. What the 雜卦 calls day and killing is, line by line, the position of two strokes. The 繫辭上 also has the phrase this hexagram illustrates at length, 仰以觀於天文，俯以察於地理，是故知幽明之故: look up at the patterns of heaven and down at the order of earth, and know by that the reasons of the hidden and the visible.

The Judgment

明夷：利艱貞。

Míng Yí: lì jiān zhēn.

Our rendering: Darkening of the Light: what serves is to hold to what is correct through hardship.

Read character by character:

Three characters, against eleven in the figure before it. 晉 is given 康侯用錫馬蕃庶，晝日三接, horses and audiences crowded into one sentence, and this figure is given 利艱貞, three characters of instruction. The book made its loudest statement about reward in the sun-over-the-ground figure and its shortest statement about method in the sun-under-the-ground figure. The shortness is the argument. There is nothing here to wait for and nothing to collect, and the only subject left is how a person holds.

The 彖 gives the reason in one clause, 利艱貞，晦其明也: what serves is hard-held correctness, because the light has to be kept dim. That is a strange prescription for a book whose business is clarity, and the commentary knows it. The 疏 ties the halves together, 明在地中，是晦其明也。既處明夷之世，外晦其明，恐陷於邪道，故利在艱固其貞，不失其正: the light is down in the earth, so it is dimmed; someone living in this season dims his outward face, and what the 疏 names as the danger is 陷於邪道, sliding into a crooked way, which is why the correctness has to be hard. Nobody in this figure is asked to pretend. They are asked not to advertise.

The two names the 彖 gives are the reason the judgment reads as biography as much as advice. 文王以之 … 箕子以之, and the 疏 keeps the two cases apart with care. Wen's hardship is taken on from outside, 以蒙大難, and carried through a court he does not belong to in his heart. Ji's hardship is 內難, internal; the house that is falling is his own. Wen stays at the tyrant's court and is not of it. Ji stays inside the collapse and keeps his own mind straight, and the phrase the 彖 uses for him, 內難而能正其志, has no verb of escape in it at all. Two people, one judgment, and the figure is honest that they are not the same kind of survival.

Jungian reading: Jung took the image of the sun's passage through the underworld and called it the night sea journey, a descent that has to be made before anything can be re-formed. The judgment of this hexagram is what that journey looks like when it stops being a myth and becomes a stretch of ordinary time: the light is not gone, it is out of sight, and what instruction there is concerns how to hold while it is out of sight. Jung's warning about such periods belongs beside 利艱貞. What damages a person in a dark season is rarely the dark. It is the adaptations made to it, each of which looked reasonable on the day it was made.

The Image

明入地中，明夷；君子以蒞眾，用晦而明。

Míng rù dì zhōng, Míng Yí; jūn zǐ yǐ lì zhòng, yòng huì ér míng.

Our rendering: Brightness enters the earth: Darkening of the Light. The noble one therefore oversees the crowd by keeping his brightness out of sight, and it is that which makes him bright.

Wang Bi's notes on the sentence are two short lines and they carry the whole reading. On 蒞眾 he writes 蒞眾顯明，蔽偽百姓者也, to oversee a crowd is to be clear about it while keeping it from its disguises, and then he draws the comparison with the neighbouring figure, 故以蒙養正，以明夷蒞眾: the figure called 蒙 teaches how to nourish what is correct, and this one teaches how to stand in front of a crowd. On the last three characters he is shorter still. 藏明於內，乃得明也。顯明於外，巧所辟也 — store the light inside and only then do you have light; put it outside where it shows and the clever will find their way around it.

The 疏 turns that into a picture of a ruler, and the picture is oddly specific: 冕旒垂目，黈纊塞耳，無為清靜，民化不欺. The ceremonial cap carries a row of beads hanging before the eyes and silk plugs in the ears; the ruler wearing it does nothing and stays still, and the people come round and stop deceiving him. He is not blind and not deaf. He has arranged not to look and not to listen. The 疏 then says what the arrangement buys, 若運其聰明，顯其智慧，民即逃其密網，奸詐愈生, run the machinery of your cleverness and put your intelligence on display, and the people slip your net the faster while the deceit multiplies. The sentence that closes the passage is the figure's argument in one line: 豈非藏明用晦，反得其明也, is this not a case of hiding the light and using the dim, and getting the brightness back by it.

The Image is the twin of the one in Hexagram 35, and the 疏 on that page quotes this figure to draw the contrast, 又此卦與明夷正反. Progress says 君子以自昭明德, the noble one brings his own virtue into view. Here the same noble one keeps it out of view. Same six strokes, opposite instructions, and what decides between them is the state of the sky rather than the character of the person.

Jungian reading: Jung put the matter as bluntly as anyone has, that a person does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious. 用晦而明 is the working version of that sentence. The Image does not tell the noble one to wait for better light or to find a brighter room; it tells him that the dimness is the medium he has to work in for as long as it lasts, and that there is a way of being bright inside it which does not consist of shining. The cap in the 疏 makes the same point as a physical arrangement: not to look, on purpose, so that there is no need for anyone to lie to him.

The Lines

初九：明夷于飛，垂其翼。君子于行，三日不食。有攸往，主人有言。 (Míng yí yú fēi, chuí qí yì. Jūn zǐ yú xíng, sān rì bù shí. Yǒu yōu wǎng, zhǔ rén yǒu yán.) Wounded light on the wing: the bird lets its wings hang. The noble one takes the road, three days without a meal. He has somewhere to go, and his host there will have something to say.

Wang Bi puts the danger where the diagram puts it and then explains why the first line is running: 明夷之主，在於上六。上六為至闇者也。初處卦之始，最遠於難也. The ruler of this darkness is the top line, which is the extreme of dimness, and the first line stands at the very start of the figure and is therefore furthest from it. From there he reads the line's four images as one movement. The flight is complete enough to leave no tracks, 遠難過甚…絕跡匿形，不由軌路，故曰「明夷于飛」. It travels in fear and does not fly where it can be seen, 懷懼而行，行不敢顯，故曰「垂其翼」也. It is in too much of a hurry to stop for food, 志急於行，饑不遑食，故曰「三日不食」也. And the last clause is the one that costs something, 殊類過甚，以斯適人，人心疑之，故曰「有攸往，主人有言」: someone who has cut himself off from his own kind that thoroughly is doubted wherever he arrives, which is what the host's talk amounts to.

The Small Says give the reason in four characters, 義不食也, and the 疏 reads 義 as the point of honour rather than as a manner: 君子逃難惟速，故義不求食也, the noble one fleeing a difficulty has speed as the whole of his business, so by what is right he does not go looking for a meal.

The line is a flight, and what stands out is how little in it is optional. The first place is the furthest from the darkness in the whole figure and its counsel is still to go, without eating, without showing its wings, and without expecting a welcome. The figure does not imagine a safe corner from which to watch a bad age go by. Its freest place is still a man leaving in a hurry.

六二：明夷，夷于左股，用拯馬壯，吉。 (Míng yí, yí yú zuǒ gǔ, yòng zhěng mǎ zhuàng, jí.) The light is wounded: hurt in the left thigh. Rescue comes by a strong horse: good fortune.

Wang Bi's note turns on a detail that is easy to skim past: 夷于左股，是行不能壯也, a wound in the left thigh means the walking cannot be vigorous. Then he gives the reason the line can still get out. 以柔居中，用夷其明，進不殊類，退不近難，不見疑憚，順以則也，故可用拯馬而壯吉也 — it is yielding and holds the center, it dims its own light, it does not cut itself off from its kind when it advances and does not come near the danger when it withdraws, so it is neither suspected nor feared, and a strong horse is enough. His last phrase is the one to keep, 不垂其翼，然後乃免也: this line does not drop its wings, and that is how it escapes. The 疏 explains the left by quoting an earlier commentator, 莊氏云：言左者，取其傷小, the left is named because the wound there is the smaller one, and it adds the social reason for the line's safety, 不為闇主所疑, the dim ruler does not suspect it.

This is the only 吉 in the figure, and it stands in the middle of the lower trigram, in the middle of Fire. The place is central and correct, the line is yielding, and its method is given in four characters, 用夷其明, it puts its own brightness out. The figure's single piece of good fortune belongs to the person who dims himself without leaving, which is exactly what the first line could not manage. The Small Says name the reason in four characters, 順以則也, and the 疏 is quick to point out that this compliance is not the same as the first line's flight from his own kind.

九三：明夷于南狩，得其大首，不可疾貞。 (Míng yí yú nán shòu, dé qí dà shǒu, bù kě jí zhēn.) Darkening of the Light: the hunt goes south and takes the great chief. Correctness cannot be hurried.

Wang Bi places the line at the top of the clarity, facing the top of the dark: 處下體之上，居文明之極，上為至晦，入地之物也。故夷其明，以獲南狩，得大首也. Then he gives the phrase that sets the whole line moving, 南狩者，發其明也, the southern hunt is the light being let out. The second half of the line is the harder one, and he spends it on the aftermath rather than the strike: 既誅其主，將正其民。民之迷也，其日固巳久矣。化宜以漸，不可速正，故曰「不可疾貞」. The chief is killed and the real problem starts, which is the people; they have been lost for a long time already, change has to come by degrees, and correctness must not be hurried. The 疏 adds that 狩 is the hunt in the sense of a punitive expedition, 狩者，征伐之類, and that 大首 means the dim ruler himself, and it notes the correspondence the line rides on, 九三應於上六，是明夷之臣發明以征闇君: the third line answers the top one, and this is a servant of the darkening letting his light out to march against a dim ruler.

The Small Says give the line its one unqualified success, 南狩之志，乃大得也, and the 疏 reads it as the intention being fully met, 志欲除闇，乃得「大首」.

Of the two firm strokes in the figure, only this one strikes back. It stands at the top of Fire, which the commentary calls the extreme of clarity, and it strikes at the top of Earth, which it calls the extreme of dimness. The 說卦 puts Fire in the south, so the hunt walks back into the light's own quarter to break the darkness there. The line permits all of it, and then withholds the one thing people want most from a victory. 民之迷也，其日固已久矣: the ones who lived under the darkness are the problem the sword does not solve, and taking the head off a bad order does not restore anybody's sight. Anyone who has watched an institution change hands and then change nothing will recognize the interval the line is describing.

六四：入于左腹，獲明夷之心，于出門庭。 (Rù yú zuǒ fù, huò Míng Yí zhī xīn, yú chū mén tíng.) He goes in at the left of the belly and wins the heart of the darkening, then comes out to the gate and the yard.

Wang Bi reads the two nouns as directions, not anatomy. 左者，取其順也。入于左腹，得其心意，故雖近不危 — the left is taken for its yielding; to enter on the yielding side is to win the heart's intent, so that being near is not the same as being in danger. Then comes the limit, 隨時辟難，門庭而巳，能不逆忤也: he avoids the difficulty as the moment allows, goes no further than the gate and the courtyard, and does not oppose or offend. The 疏 supplies the reason the left is the side that matters, 凡右為用事也。從其左不從其右，是卑順不逆也: the right hand is the one that does the work, and to come in on the left is to enter as someone who is not there to manage anything. It then explains 腹 as 事情之地, the place where affairs are kept, and it places the line in the diagram, 六四體柔處坤，與上六相近，是能執卑順「入于左腹」, yielding by nature, sitting in Earth, close to the top line, able to hold itself low enough to be let in.

The Small Says reduce the line to a single clause, 獲心意也.

The fourth place is the bottom of Earth, the first step up into the dark, and one of the places in the book where a person stands near a ruler he does not trust. Both of Wang Bi's phrases about it are measurements of distance: near but not endangered, at the gate but not inside. The line survives by being close enough to know what is going on and not close enough to be part of it, and the 說卦's assignment of the belly to Earth gives the whole manoeuvre its geography.

六五：箕子之明夷，利貞。 (Jī zǐ zhī Míng Yí, lì zhēn.) The darkening as it was borne by Viscount Ji: what serves is to hold to what is correct.

箕子 was a nobleman of the Shang house; the 疏 identifies him simply as the man nearest the dim ruler, 六五最比闇君，似箕子之近殷紂, which is also the whole of the line's position. Wang Bi puts the danger first: 最近於晦，與難為比，險莫如茲. There is no place closer to the dimness than this one and none more dangerous, and then he gives the answer in a sentence worth reading twice, 而在斯中，猶闇不能沒，明不可息，正不憂危，故「利貞」也: standing there, the dark still cannot drown it and the light cannot be put out, and a correct person does not fret over the danger, which is what 利貞 amounts to in this place.

The Small Says choose one word and defend it, 箕子之貞，明不可息也, and the 疏 glosses 息 as 滅, extinction, before drawing the conclusion, 明箕子能保其貞，卒以全身，為武王師也: it makes plain that Ji kept his correctness, came through whole, and ended as the teacher of the man who replaced the dynasty.

The fifth place is the closest thing to the darkness in the whole figure, and the line is the shortest of the six. Nothing in it is a technique. The one active verb is 貞, holding, and every other word in the 疏's account is a thing that failed to happen to him, 闇不能沒，明不可息. The 彖 had already named this man, and had already called his hardship 內難, the kind that comes from inside the house. What the line adds is the ending the 彖 leaves out. The brightness does not escape. It does not go out either.

上六：不明晦，初登于天，後入于地。 (Bù míng huì, chū dēng yú tiān, hòu rù yú dì.) No brightness but dark: raised to the sky at first, into the ground afterward.

Wang Bi reads the line as a short life of one light: 處明夷之極，是至晦者也。本其初也，在乎光照，轉至於晦，遂入於地. At the extreme of this figure it is the extreme of dimness; at the beginning it was shining; it then turned dim and went into the ground. The 疏 does not let the fall stay abstract, 其意在於光照四國…「遂入於地」，謂見誅滅也: the intention at the start was to shine over the four quarters, and the going into the earth means he was put to death. 誅 is the same word the 雜卦 uses for this figure, 明夷誅也.

The Small Says give the two halves their names, 初登於天，照四國也。後入於地，失則也, and the 疏 pins the cause to the second of them, 由失法則，故誅滅也. The failure is 失則, a lost standard, and the commentary is careful to locate it there rather than in weakness or bad luck.

This is the ruler of the darkness in the figure, 明夷之主，在於上六, as Wang Bi called it back on the first line, and what the hexagram shows about such a ruler is not that he was a tyrant from the beginning. 本其初也，在乎光照. It also finishes the pair with the figure before it. In Hexagram 35 the top line is already standing on the first day of the darkening, 明將夷焉; here the darkening is complete, and the Small Says say both halves of the fall out loud, 照四國 in one breath and 失則 in the next. The sequence does not leave him there. What it does next is send him home: 傷於外者，必反其家.

Daily Life

Most people meet this hexagram at work rather than in a dynasty. The situation is a place where being visibly good at something is not safe: a manager who reads competence as a threat, a team that has learned to punish anyone who understands more than the room. The figure's counsel is specific and it is not invisibility. The second line keeps its position and keeps its competence and dims only the display, 用夷其明, and it is the one line that is given good fortune. The fourth line goes further in: close enough to be trusted with how the place really works, and no further than the gate. Neither line asks anyone to get worse at the job; what both ask is that the job stop being the face he wears.

The third line carries the harder warning, and it is the one most easily read as permission. It does allow the strike; the hunt goes south and the head comes off. What follows is the part that gets skipped, 民之迷也，其日固已久矣, the people who were governed by the darkness have been in it a long time. Removing the person at the top of a bad system takes an afternoon. The habits that grew up under him do not have a removal date, and the line says so in four characters, 不可疾貞. The failure it warns against is not mercy. It is expecting that removal to change the habits of everyone below.

The fifth line is the one to keep, and the one that gives the least back. Ji holds his mind upright inside a house that is coming down, is not destroyed by it, and outlives it into a position of respect. Nothing in the line is a strategy. The 疏's account of him is almost entirely a list of things the darkness failed to do, and the single active word is 貞, holding. The figure's sense of proportion is plain too. Six places and one 吉 between them, and no 凶 given to anybody, not even to the ruler who ends the hexagram in the ground. The book is less interested in who gets punished than in who is still standing at the end.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 36 mean in one sentence?

That a light in a dark season survives by being correct rather than by being seen, and that the discipline it asks for is 利艱貞, correctness held through hardship. The mechanism is stated in the 彖 as 晦其明也, the light deliberately kept dim, and the 疏 gives the reason, 時雖至闇，不可隨世傾邪: the age may be at its darkest and one is still not permitted to bend along with it. The figure hands out one 吉 across six lines and no 凶 at all, and the two people the 彖 names, 文王 and 箕子, both came through by holding rather than by striking.

Who are 文王 and 箕子, and why does the 彖 name them?

They are the 彖's two answers to the question of who could live in this figure, and it keeps them apart rather than blending them. King Wen, who held his provinces and served the last Shang king, is the outside case, 內懷文明之德…外執柔順之能，三分事紂, clarity held inward and a yielding face turned to the tyrant, with two parts of the realm in his keeping and the service still rendered. 箕子, a nobleman of that same Shang house, is the inside case, 內難而能正其志, danger within the house he belongs to and his own mind held straight through it. The 疏 is explicit that these are not general types, 惟文王能用之 and 惟箕子能用之, each of them the only one who could do it that way. The difference between hardship taken on from outside and hardship carried from within is the range of the whole hexagram.

What does 用晦而明 mean — is it an instruction to hide?

It is an instruction about display, not about truth. The Image says the noble one oversees a crowd by keeping his brightness out of sight, and Wang Bi's note gives the mechanism, 藏明於內，乃得明也, store the light inside and only then do you have light. The 疏's reason is practical rather than moral, 顯明於外，巧所辟也: what is put on display gives clever people something to work around. The cap with its hanging beads and ear plugs makes the same point as an arrangement, 冕旒垂目，黈纊塞耳, so that a ruler does not inspect everything he could, and the passage closes the loop with 豈非藏明用晦，反得其明也, hide the light, use the dim, and the brightness comes back. Nothing in the figure asks anybody to lie. The second line, the only one with good fortune, keeps its position and its competence and dims only the showing.

How is 明夷 different from 晉 (Hexagram 35)?

They are one figure read from two ends. 晉 is 坤下離上, ䷢, the sun above the ground; turn the six strokes over and Fire drops below Earth, which is ䷣, this one. The 雜卦 pairs them in one line, 晉晝也，明夷誅也, and the 序卦 makes the second the price of the first, 進必有所傷. Their Images are the matching instructions, 自昭明德 in Progress and 用晦而明 here, and the 疏 on Progress quotes this figure's Image while working out its own. The judgments are worth setting side by side as well: eleven characters of horses and audiences there, three characters of hard-held correctness here.

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