Hexagram 6, Conflict

Turn Waiting upside down and the patience is gone. Heaven is on top now, and it wants to go up, and Water underneath wants to go down, and there you have it.

The figure

Water sits below, the middle son, the abyss, depth and danger. Heaven sits above, the father, creative and strong. The picture is the sky and the river moving in opposite directions, the sky pulling upward and the water running down, each one certain it is going the right way.

That is a dispute. Two parties, two legitimate directions, no meeting point. Heaven above is the principle, the sense of being in the right. Water below is the hidden current, the fear or the old hurt or the plain self interest that is actually driving the thing.

Its pair is Hexagram 5, Waiting, the same six lines the other way up.

When it comes up in a reading

When Conflict comes up for a question, the moment is telling you that you are in a dispute, or heading into one, and that winning it outright is unlikely to be on offer. The sense of the hexagram is to stay clear in your own mind about what is true, to say your piece to someone who can judge fairly, and to stop well before the point where the fight becomes the point.

The counsel most people do not want to hear is that carrying a conflict through to the bitter end rarely pays, even when you are right. The old picture is of someone who wins a case and is handed a belt of honour, and has it taken off them three times before lunch. A victory that has to be defended every day is not much of a rest. Meeting halfway, when halfway is on offer, is the strong move here.

There is a sharper line in it as well. If the dispute has not properly started, the hexagram says now is the time to head it off. Sort out the terms before the work begins. Say the uncomfortable thing early, while it is still small. Most wars I have watched between friends and in families began as something that could have been settled with one awkward conversation a year earlier.

As a birth hexagram

If this is your birth hexagram, or if it keeps coming back to you, disagreement is your home ground. Your life tends to put you where competing claims have to be held, where two sides need a go between, or where a position has to be argued against opposition. Law, diplomacy, counselling, mediation, reform of any kind, the fields where conflict is the material you work in tend to find you.

You have a strong sense of what is right. Heaven above gives you real principles, and you are prepared to argue for them. Water below gives you the other gift, the ability to see the roots of the other person's position, the fear or need under the stated case, and that is what makes you useful in a room full of shouting. You can fight fairly. A lot of Hexagram 6 people can have a blazing disagreement with someone and still love them afterwards, and that is a skill, whatever it looks like from outside.

It costs you, though. A career spent in contested territory takes a toll, and proper recovery, time well away from the argument, is part of the job and should be planned like one.

The shadow is combativeness that has become a habit. The capacity for conflict turns into a need for it, and you find yourself starting battles that did not have to exist. The second shadow is cynicism, the slow slide into a view of the world where everything is opposition and nobody cooperates about anything. Keeping your faith in the possibility of harmony is daily practice for this hexagram, and some days it is hard practice.

The work is to choose your battles and to let the rest go. The mature Hexagram 6 person becomes a valued mediator, a wise advocate, a negotiator whose settlements actually hold.

If a line moves

Lines are counted from the bottom. A moving lower line puts the matter at its beginning, where the counsel is to drop a small quarrel before it has a chance to grow, and to accept a little gossip as the price. A moving middle line is the heart of the dispute, where the question is whether to press on against someone stronger or to step back and live on what you have, and the hexagram leans toward stepping back. A moving upper line is the end of the matter, and here the going too far is the hollow victory, the win you have to keep winning every morning. Change the moving line to its opposite and you have the second hexagram, the direction the situation is heading. The How to Cast a Hexagram page shows how.

Across the traditions

The Eight Trigrams page gives Water and Heaven on their own, with their lines, their places in the family and the pictures they carry. The Chinese Astrology section has a page on Yin and Yang for the two kinds of line. My own association in the tarot is the Five of Swords, the one walking off with the swords and nobody left to talk to, and I hold that as my picture and nothing stronger.

Which argument in your life would be over by now if you had said the uncomfortable thing a year ago?

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.