Abundance — 丰

What Is Hexagram 55?

Hexagram 55, 豐 (Fēng), Abundance — ䷶, 離下震上, fire under thunder — is the shape of a height already reached: light at full strength with movement set on top of it, a judgment that grants the height, and an image that begins measuring the decline from the first line.

The name is a word for size before it is a word for wealth. The 彖 opens by glossing it flatly, 豐，大也, and the 疏 then makes a distinction that governs everything else on this page: 凡物之大，其有二種，一者自然之大，一者由人之闡弘使大, greatness has two kinds, the kind a thing has by nature and the kind a person brings about by opening out what was small and stuck. 王弼's note on the word is a single instruction to read it in the second sense, 音闡大之大也, and the 疏 spells out what that means for this figure: 豐之為義，既闡弘微細，則豐之稱大，乃闡大之大，非自然之大.

That is why the judgment can speak of abundance and of worry in the same breath. 疏: 豐者，多大之名，盈足之義，財多德大，故謂之為豐。德大則無所不容，財多則無所不齊, a name for plenty and for fullness, wealth in quantity and virtue in scope, and the two are measured differently: virtue admits everything, wealth levels everything. Then the same commentary defines the word 亨 by what it removes: 無所擁礙謂之為亨, nothing blocked anywhere.

English translations have long called this figure Abundance, and the name holds because 豐 is a quantity word. What the page keeps returning to is that the quantity is a rate rather than a state: something was opened, and the opening has a term.

Trigram Structure

The six strokes run 陽陰陽陽陰陰, 離 below and 震 above. 離 is two firm strokes with a yielding one between them, the shape of fire clinging to its fuel; 震 is one firm stroke at the bottom under two yielding ones, the shape of something starting. The 彖 joins the two trigrams into the reason for the name: 明以動，故豐, clarity put into motion, and that is what abundance is in this book — not a stockpile but light that keeps moving.

The family chapter fixes the pair as 離再索而得女，故謂之中女 and 震一索而得男，故謂之長男, the middle daughter under the eldest son. The single-word chapter gives their natures: 離，麗也 and 震，動也, clinging and stirring, the one that needs something to burn and the one that will not stay still.

Placement is the figure's strangest fact. The year's circuit gives 震 the east and the first stirring, 萬物出乎震，震，東方也, while 離 holds the south where things come into view, 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. So the figure puts noon underneath dawn: the hour when everything is visible sits below the force that keeps starting things over. It also explains the image's judicial instruction, since 嚮明而治, ruling by facing the light, is exactly what 折獄致刑 asks of the noble one.

The inventories supply the harder half. 離為火、為日、為電、為中女、為甲冑、為戈兵, fire and the sun, lightning, the middle daughter, armor and the weapons of war. 震為雷、為龍、為玄黃、為敷、為大涂、為長子、為決躁、為蒼筤竹、為萑葦, thunder, dragon, the dark-yellow, spreading, the great road, the eldest son, decisiveness running into impatience, young bamboo, reeds. Both lists point the same way: 離 carries the weapons themselves, 甲冑 and 戈兵, and 震 carries 決躁, the temper that decides too fast — which is why the figure's one instruction is a warning about acting on clarity without weighing it.

Of the six lines, four hold a position matching their kind — 初九, 六二, 九三 and 上六; the two that do not are 九四, firm in a yielding place, and 六五, yielding in a firm place. Only one answering pair holds the halves together: 九三 with 上六. The other two facing pairs are of the same kind, 初九 with 九四 both firm and 六二 with 六五 both yielding, so neither can answer. The 疏 is explicit that this is what the fourth line lacks: 王弼's note there reads 以陽居陰，豐其蔀也, and the 疏 adds 更應於陰，無由獲吉, no proper reply below, which is why it has to find its counterpart among its own kind instead.

Turn the figure over and 震 over 離 becomes 離 over 艮, Hexagram 56, 旅; exchange every stroke for its contrary and it becomes 巽 over 坎, Hexagram 59, 渙. The first of those is the one the 序卦 uses, and it supplies this figure's warning: 窮大者必失其居，故受之以旅, push greatness to its limit and the seat is lost.

The Judgment

豐：亨。王假之，勿憂，宜日中。

Fēng: hēng. Wáng gé zhī, wù yōu, yí rì zhōng.

Our rendering: Abundance: there is passage. The king arrives at it. Take no anxious thought; the noon hour is the fit one.

假 is the first word to get right. It is not "borrow" here: 疏 假，至也, and 王弼 gives the whole clause in eight characters, 大而亨者，王之所至, what is large and unobstructed is where a king arrives. The clause is not a promise that anyone can have abundance; it is a statement that the position is reached by a certain kind of person, and the 疏 makes the qualification sharper: 非有王者之德，不能至之, without the virtue of a ruler one does not arrive there at all.

勿 is likewise not a mood. 疏 勿，無也, so the phrase reads as "no worry", and 王弼 locates the moment when worry actually ends: 豐之為義，闡弘微細，通夫隱滯者也，為天下之主，而令微隱者不亨，憂未巳也，故至「豐亨」，乃得勿憂也. Abundance means opening out what is fine and small and getting through what is stalled; a ruler under whom the hidden and the small are still stuck has not finished worrying, and only when that is done does the worry stop. This is the least obvious sentence in the judgment, and it is the one that makes the figure usable: plenty is not counted in what is large, but in whether the small and the jammed have somewhere to go.

Then 宜日中, and the 疏 reads the noon as a task rather than a reward: 如日中之時，遍照天下, the light of midday is worth having because it reaches everywhere at once. The 彖 takes the same image and turns it inside out in the next line: 日中則昃，月盈則食，天地盈虛，與時消息，而況於人乎？況於鬼神乎？ The sun at its height begins to lean; the full moon begins to be eaten; heaven and earth give and take with the season. 王弼 draws the conclusion without softening it: 豐之為用，困於昃食者也。施於未足則尚豐，施於巳盈則方溢，不可以為常, abundance works only while there is still room, and a thing already full is already spilling, which is why it cannot be a standing condition. The 疏 adds the practical form of the warning: 勉令及時脩德，仍戒居存慮亡也, be in time with the work, and while safe keep the loss in view.

The 序卦 then makes the claim that gives the next figure its reason: 得其所歸者必大，故受之以豐；豐者大也. What has found its place must grow; what has grown to its limit must lose its place. 雜卦 puts the same thing in four characters, 豐多故也, abundance means many affairs — 故 in the sense of 事故, what happens and has to be handled, so that fullness is described as a load of business rather than a state of rest.

Jungian reading. This judgment refuses the two moves consciousness usually makes at a peak. It does not deny the height, and it does not promise to keep it. What it asks for is a specific kind of attention: 闡弘微細，通夫隱滯, keep the small and the stalled inside the light. The midday sun is the image of a consciousness that can see everything at once, and the danger named in the same breath is that such a consciousness takes its own brightness for permanence. In Jung's terms this is the moment when an achieved adaptation starts to feel like an identity, and the shadow it cannot see is the fact that adaptation has an expiry. The figure's counsel is not modesty; it is a working attention that includes the things it would rather not count.

The Image

雷電皆至，豐；君子以折獄致刑。

Léi diàn jiē zhì, fēng; jūn zǐ yǐ zhé yù zhì xíng.

Our rendering: Thunder and lightning arrive together: Abundance. The noble one therefore settles cases and puts the sentence into effect.

王弼's note gives the two trigrams their function in two clauses, 文明以動，不失情理也, clarity brought into motion without losing either the facts or the measure. The 疏 separates the two halves of the image and then recombines them: 雷者，天之威動，電者，天之光耀。雷電俱至，則威明備，足以為豐也, thunder is the sky's authority in motion and lightning is its brilliance, and only when both have come is the figure complete. Then the judicial instruction: 斷決獄訟，須得虛實之情；致用刑罰，必得輕重之中。若動而不明，則淫濫斯及, a case has to be taken to the truth of what happened, a penalty has to land at the right weight, and motion without light ends in excess.

That is a demanding reading of a figure about abundance, and it is the one this page adopts. Many of the other 大象 give the noble one a habit of character; this one gives him a procedure. Lightning without thunder is insight that does nothing, and thunder without lightning is force that has not looked — the figure says abundance is only real where the two arrive at once.

The 說卦's sixth chapter supplies the physical form of the same claim: 動萬物者，莫疾乎雷 and 燥萬物者，莫熯乎火, nothing moves things faster than thunder and nothing dries things faster than fire. A figure built of these two is built of speed. What keeps speed from becoming damage is the 疏's second clause, 輕重之中, the weight that is neither too much nor too little, which is a matter of judgment rather than of force.

The word 折獄 appears in one other 大象 in the book, and the contrast is worth having. At Hexagram 22 the noble one is told the opposite: 山下有火，賁；君子以明庶政，无敢折獄, with fire at the foot of the mountain he orders the common business and does not dare to decide a case. The figure of ornament keeps its hands off verdicts; the figure whose upper trigram is lightning is handed them. Whatever else the book means by fullness, it treats the authority to judge as something that belongs to the moment when light and force arrive together.

Jungian reading. Clarity that acts is also clarity that judges, and the shadow of insight is the punishment it authorizes. The image sets the terms for using it well: take the case to its bottom before the sentence, and give the sentence the weight the case actually carries. Both halves are disciplines against the same failure — 動而不明, motion without light — which in personal life looks like acting on a conclusion that was never checked against the facts of the situation.

The Lines

初九：遇其配主，雖旬无咎，往有尚。 Chū jiǔ: yù qí pèi zhǔ, suī xún wú jiù, wǎng yǒu shàng. Meeting his counterpart: though they are equals, no blame; going forward earns regard.

The line is the bottom of the figure, and the fourth place above it holds a stroke of the same kind, so the ordinary pairing of unlike lines never forms between them. 王弼 reads that as a strength rather than a defect: 處豐之初，其配在四，以陽適陽，以明之動，能相光大者也, at the start of abundance the counterpart is in the fourth place, firm meets firm, and light set in motion by light makes both larger. 旬 he glosses as 均, even, equal, so the line's first words are an admission that the two parties are of the same rank rather than complementary kinds. The 疏 says why that needed saying: 俱是陽爻，謂之為均，非是陰陽相應，嫌其有咎, both are firm, so this is not the ordinary pairing of unlike things, and one might suspect blame; what saves it is that the two make each other shine.

The Small Image supplies the limit, 雖旬无咎，過旬災也, and 王弼 gives the mechanism in eight characters, 過均則爭，交斯叛也, push past equality and the two begin to contend, and the exchange turns into a breach. The 疏 adds that the breach falls precisely on the relation, 初、四之相交，於斯乖叛矣.

One reading note belongs here. 旬 also carries the ordinary sense of a ten-day cycle, and some translators take the line as "ten days together"; 王弼's 均 is the reading followed on this page, and the Small Image's 過旬 only makes sense under it.

Jungian reading. This is the figure's picture of a working partnership between equals, and its condition is exact: it holds while neither takes precedence, and it breaks the moment one does. The psychological error it guards against is the quiet one of turning a peer into a subordinate in order to feel the height of the moment — the very thing abundance invites.

六二：豐其蔀，日中見斗，往得疑疾，有孚發若，吉。 Liù èr: fēng qí bù, rì zhōng jiàn dǒu, wǎng dé yí jí, yǒu fú fā ruò, jí. Thickening the screen; at noon the Dipper is seen. Going brings the sickness of being doubted; where there is trust, it opens, and there is good fortune.

蔀 is the word the whole figure turns on, and 王弼 defines it as a thing rather than a mood: 蔀，覆曖，障光明之物也, the covering that shuts light out. The second line is yielding in a yielding place, inside the lower trigram, and what it manages to make abundant is exactly that covering. Then the image: 日中者，明之盛也；斗見者，闇之極也, noon is the peak of light and the Dipper is what shows when the dark is at its worst — the brightest hour of the world, and the only thing visible is the constellation that belongs to night.

往得疑疾: 王弼 reads 疑疾 as the sickness of being met with suspicion, 不能自發，故往得疑疾, unable to open itself, so going forward earns doubt. What rescues the line is not effort but a quality: 然履中當位，處闇不邪，有孚者也, it stands in the middle and in the right place, in the dark without going crooked, and that is what 孚 means here. 若 he identifies as a particle, 若，辭也, so 有孚發若 is not "trust opens it like something" but simply trust that opens the will: 有孚可以發其志，不困於闇，故獲吉也. The 疏 repeats the structure without adding conditions: 居中履正，處闇不邪，是有信者也.

Jungian reading. This is the most usable line in the figure for anyone who has ever been at their most capable and least visible. The screen is not an enemy from outside; the line built it, out of whatever material was at hand, and at the brightest hour it is what stands between the person and the sky. The remedy named is not to tear the screen down by force but to be honest inside it — 處闇不邪 — because trust, not display, is what lets the will come out.

九三：豐其沛，日中見沬，折其右肱，无咎。 Jiǔ sān: fēng qí pèi, rì zhōng jiàn mò, zhé qí yòu gōng, wú jiù. The screen grows to a banner; at noon the faint light shows. His right arm is broken: no blame.

沛 is read by 王弼 as cloth rather than as marsh: 沛，幡幔，所以禦盛光也, the hanging banner used to keep off a strong light, which makes this line a heavier version of the second — a bigger screen and a smaller remainder of light. 沬 he glosses as 微昧之明, a dim and doubtful brightness; the other common reading takes it as the name of a small star, and either way the noon has been reduced to a glimmer.

The structural reason is given next: 應在上六，志在乎陰, the line's only correspondence is with the yielding line at the very top, so its will is turned toward the dark. 王弼 is careful to say this is better than the second line and still not good: 雖愈乎以陰處陰，亦未足以免於闇也, better than a yielding line in a yielding place, and still not out of the dark. Then the consequence, in the note's own words: 施明，則見沬而巳；施用，則折其右肱，故可以自守而巳，未足用也. Put it to the work of seeing, and all that is left is a glimmer; put it to the work of doing, and the working arm goes. The verdict 无咎 is therefore not praise. It means the line is blameless because it has stopped claiming the great work: 折其右肱，自守而巳，乃得無咎, keep to yourself and there is no blame.

Both halves of the Small Image point the same way: 豐其沛，不可大事也 and 折其右肱，終不可用也, with 王弼's note closing the door, 雖有左在，不足用也, the left arm is still there and it is not enough.

Jungian reading. There is a specific dignity in this line that the series' other figures rarely grant: a capacity can be lost and the person still be blameless, provided they stop pretending the loss did not happen. The broken right arm is the end of instrumental action; what remains is 自守, keeping to what one is. The error it warns against is the one that follows every injury to capacity — insisting on the great work with the arm that is left, which turns a blameless position into a damaged one.

九四：豐其蔀，日中見斗，遇其夷主，吉。 Jiǔ sì: fēng qí bù, rì zhōng jiàn dǒu, yù qí yí zhǔ, jí. Thickening the screen; at noon the Dipper is seen. Meeting his level lord: good fortune.

The fourth line repeats the second line's first two clauses word for word and reverses its ending, and the reason is position: 以陽居陰，豐其蔀也, firm in a yielding place, so the abundance again goes into the covering, and the note grants the diagnosis outright, 闇同於六二. What the second line lacked is what this one has: 得初以發，夷主吉也, it gets the first line to open it out.

夷 is glossed 平也, level, and the 疏 works out why the same pair is named twice with different titles: 若據初適四，則以四為主，故曰「遇其配主」。自四之初，則以初為主，故曰「遇其夷主」也. Going from the first place to the fourth, the fourth is host and the first is the counterpart; going from the fourth to the first, the first is host and the fourth is the one met on level ground. 二陽體敵，兩主均平, two firm lines of matched strength, each host in turn.

The Small Image takes the line's clauses one at a time and answers each: 位不當也 for the screen, 幽不明也 for the Dipper, 吉行也 for the meeting. The 疏 explains the last one as the figure's own exception, 處於陰位，為闇巳甚，更應於陰，無由獲吉，猶與陽相遇，故得吉行也, sunk in a yielding place and dark past the point of help, with no yielding counterpart to answer it — what saves it is meeting a firm line, and that is the whole ground of the good fortune.

Jungian reading. Two lines can be in the same structural trouble and come out differently, and the difference here is company. The fourth line's darkness is not lifted by more light; it is lifted by meeting someone of its own kind who can reflect what it cannot see alone. The form of the good fortune matters: 夷, level, not rescue from above.

六五：來章，有慶譽，吉。 Liù wǔ: lái zhāng, yǒu qìng yù, jí. Coming into display: there is blessing, and there is repute. Good fortune.

The line is the ruler's place and the stroke in it is yielding, which by the ordinary rule is a fault. 王弼 turns it into the plainest of the figure's good endings: 以陰之質，來適尊陽之位，能自光大，章顯其德，獲慶譽也, a yielding substance arriving at the honored firm place, able to make itself large and to bring its virtue into view, and so receiving both the blessing and the name for it. The 疏 keeps the same ground and names it: 以柔處尊，履得其中, yielding in the honored place and standing in the middle.

Two things are worth noticing. The verb is 來, coming, not 往, going — the only line in the figure whose good fortune is put in the grammar of arrival. And the reward is double, 慶 and 譽, the good that is real and the good that is spoken of, and no other line in the figure attaches 譽 to its 吉. The Small Image reduces the whole line to three characters, 有慶也, and the 疏 explains that the repute rests on the middle, 言六五以柔處尊，履得其中，故致慶譽也.

Jungian reading. In a figure obsessed with screens and noon light, the fifth line is the one that simply lets itself be seen, and it is praised for it. 章 is display in the sense of making something legible, not of showing off, and the line's condition is the middle — the position where display is a report on what is actually there. The error it corrects is the second line's: hiding is not modesty, and being seen is not exposure, provided the substance is in the place it claims.

上六：豐其屋，蔀其家，窺其戶，闃其无人，三歲不覿，凶。 Shàng liù: fēng qí wū, bù qí jiā, kuī qí hù, qù qí wú rén, sān suì bù dí, xiōng. The house grows large; the household is shut away. One looks in at the door and it is empty, no one there. Three years, and nothing is seen: misfortune.

屋 is the figure's last screen and its largest: 王弼 calls it 藏蔭之物, a thing that shelters and shades, and then explains the position that built it: 以陰處極而最在外，不履於位，深自幽隱，絕跡深藏者也, yielding at the extreme, outermost, not standing in the place it holds, hiding itself deeply and cutting its own tracks. 屋厚家覆，闇之甚也, the house thick and the household covered — the figure's darkest state, and the only one it condemns outright.

The image of looking in is exact about what is missing: 雖闚其戶，闃其無人，棄其所處，而自深藏也, one looks at the door and there is the silence of nobody, because the occupant has abandoned the place and gone further in. 王弼 then gives the judgment its reason in a sentence that deserves to be read twice: 處於明動尚大之時，而深自幽隱，以高其行；大道既濟，而猶不見，隱不為賢，更為反道，凶其宜也 — to hide deeply in an age of clarity and motion in order to make one's conduct look high; when the great work is done and one still will not be seen, withdrawal is not worth, it is the reverse of the way, and misfortune is the fitting outcome. He even dates the term: 三年，豐道之成。治道未濟，隱猶可也；既濟而隱，是以治為亂者也, three years is the full term of the abundance process; withdrawal while the work is unfinished is permitted, and withdrawal once it is finished is treating order as disorder.

The Small Image adds the picture and the verdict. 天際翔也, with the 疏 reading it as a bird wheeling at the very edge of the sky, 如鳥之飛翔於天際，言隱翳之深也; and 自藏也, with 王弼 closing on the distinction the whole figure has been building, 可以出而不出，自藏之謂也，非有為而藏, able to come out and not coming out — that is self-burial, not a hiding done for a reason. The verb 覿, to be seen face to face, appears in the received copies in both the traditional and the simplified form, 覿 and 觌, and neither changes the sense.

Jungian reading. The last line is what inflation looks like from inside: the house is bigger than everyone else's, and it is empty. Nothing has been taken away by force; the occupant enlarged the walls until they became the thing that keeps the world out, and then withdrew behind them. The figure's judgment is unusually harsh for a withdrawal, and the reason is stated: the age was one of clarity and motion, the work was finished, and the absence was a choice. There is a form of disappearing that looks like depth and functions as refusal.

Daily Life

Most people meet this figure at a good moment rather than a great one: a project that has come together, a season when the work is visible, a household running on all its cylinders. The judgment's first demand is the least intuitive — 勿憂, no worry, is not permission to relax but a statement of what full attention looks like when there is finally room for it. 王弼's condition is the practical test: 闡弘微細，通夫隱滯, does the small thing still get through? Does the stuck item still move? A person can check their own abundance by that measure alone, and it is a better measure than any count of what has gone right.

The screens are the second thing to watch. 蔀 and 沛 are not enemies in this figure; they are things the lines made out of the material at hand — the busyness that keeps the day at arm's length, the standing that has to be maintained, the protocol that decides who gets through. The diagnostic question is exact and answerable: at your brightest hour, what can you still see, and what does it take to see it? The second line's 有孚發若 suggests the exit is not demolition but honesty inside the condition, and the fourth line's 遇其夷主 suggests it is often another person of the same rank rather than a superior insight.

折獄致刑 is the third practice, and it applies far outside a courtroom. 疏's two clauses, 虛實之情 and 輕重之中, are a working method for any judgment made in the heat of clarity: get the facts to the bottom first, then weigh the response, and treat motion without light as the failure mode to avoid. The figure is candid about why this matters — one of its trigrams carries the weapons, 甲冑 and 戈兵, and the other carries 決躁, the decisiveness that outruns patience. Where the light is strong, the temptation is to act on it before it has been checked.

The last line is the one to keep for later. Withdrawal after the work is done reads as wisdom from inside and as disappearance from outside, and 王弼's sentence marks the difference with a single test: 可以出而不出, able to come out and not coming out. Modesty that keeps the door open is not the same act as a door that has been walled up, and the figure gives three years as the term in which the difference becomes visible.

Related Links

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 55 mean in one sentence?

That abundance is a rate and not a state: 明以動，故豐, clarity kept in motion, with the judgment's 勿憂 made conditional on 闡弘微細，通夫隱滯 — worry ends when the small and the stalled have somewhere to go — and with 宜日中, noon, carrying its own limit in the next line of the 彖, 日中則昃.

Why does a figure about abundance spend four of its six lines on screens and darkness?

Because 蔀 and 沛 are what the lines produce when they have light and no opening. The 疏 defines 蔀 as 覆曖，障光明之物, and 王弼 calls 沛 a 幡幔 used to keep off a strong light: both are coverings built against the glare, and at noon they are the reason the Dipper is the only thing visible. The figure is less interested in how much light a person has than in what their covering does with it.

Is 勿憂 a promise that nothing will go wrong?

No. 疏 勿，無也 gives the plain sense, no worry, and then 王弼 attaches a condition: a ruler under whom 微隱者 are still stuck has not finished worrying. The 彖 follows immediately with 日中則昃，月盈則食, and 王弼's note on that clause says the whole use of abundance is 困於昃食, bound up with the decline. What is offered is a working freedom from anxiety, not an exemption from the arc.

What does 折獄致刑 mean for someone who is not a judge?

The 疏's two requirements travel: 須得虛實之情, take the case to the truth of what happened, and 必得輕重之中, make the response land at the right weight. 王弼 compresses the whole instruction into 文明以動，不失情理也, clarity in motion without losing the facts or the measure. The failure it names is 動而不明, acting before looking, and the figure is built out of two trigrams fast enough to make that failure easy.

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