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Hexagram 62 — Gou, Coming to Meet
Chronological no. 62 (binary-weight order) · King Wen no. (traditional) 44 · 姤
By Anibal Edelberto Amiot — Updated October 1, 2026
the father
the eldest daughter
Beneath Heaven, Wind: the image of coming to meet. Wind travels through space without having been summoned, touching everything in its path — an encounter that imposes itself rather than being planned. This is the figure of the unforeseen that must be welcomed with discernment. Thus the sovereign, through his decrees, instructs the four horizons: what comes to meet us uninvited deserves to be examined before being accepted or turned away.
The unforeseen encounter risks as much as it unites. Everything that presents itself without warning carries an ambiguity within it: promise of connection or seed of danger, one never knows which at first. This line teaches the vigilance that is not suspicion, but discernment at the very moment of encounter.
The six lines
At the base of the earth, emptiness closes over: what was still an opening begins to fill.
The steadied earth reaches its limit: the solidity that upheld the structure is about to change its nature.
At the threshold between earth and man, force wavers: what acted through firmness hesitates before turning.
In the action of man, fullness meets its limit: the initiative that led the figure folds back upon itself.
At the sage's seat, fullness hollows out: the force that governed the figure from its center is about to invert.
At the summit, fullness completes its course and breaks: what had culminated cannot go further without turning back.
Source: La Livrée d'Hermès, Anibal Amiot — chapter 7.1 (pp. 63–68). French version of this page.
For the notions used here — magic square, layer and casting, the Yi Jing — see the project lexicon.
The patterns of this hexagram
This hexagram is the binary complement of hexagram 1 — Fu, Return (63 − 62 = 1): its patterns have exactly the same shape, only their colours are permuted. Here are the eight patterns of hexagram 1, one for each admissible family.
Bases — YANG mutant
Bases — YANG
Pair of two — YANG + YIN mutant
Pair of two — YIN mutant + YANG mutant
Pair of two — YIN + YANG
Pair of two — YIN + YANG mutant
Triple — without YANG
Triple — without YANG mutant
Neighbouring hexagrams
61 — Tong Ren, Fellowship with Men · 63 — Qian, The Creative
Hexagrams sharing a trigram
Same upper trigram (☰ Qian): 56 — Pi, Standstill · 57 — Wu Wang, Innocence · 58 — Song, Conflict · 59 — Lu, Treading · 60 — Dun, Retreat · 61 — Tong Ren, Fellowship with Men · 63 — Qian, The Creative
Same lower trigram (☴ Xun): 6 — Sheng, Pushing Upward · 14 — Heng, Duration · 22 — Jing, The Well · 30 — Da Guo, Preponderance of the Great · 38 — Gu, Work on What Has Been Spoiled · 46 — Ding, The Cauldron · 54 — Xun, The Gentle, Wind
