Hexagram 19, Approach

This is the hexagram of good things coming on, steadily, the way spring comes on. It also carries a quiet warning about what rising does to people.

The figure

Lake sits in the lower place and Earth sits above it. Lake is the youngest daughter, joyous and open. Earth is the mother, receptive and yielding, the ground that takes whatever is given to it.

Together the picture is the earth standing above the lake, the high bank looking down at the water. The bank is close to the water and the water is rising toward it. There is no gap between them. The great thing is coming near the small thing, and the small thing is rising to meet it.

Look at the lines and you will see two solid lines at the bottom with four broken lines above. The strong is entering from below and has room to grow. That is why the tradition reads this one as spring, the light increasing a little every day.

Approach is paired with Hexagram 20, Contemplation, which turns the same figure upside down and looks out from the top of the climb.

When it comes up in a reading

When Approach comes up I tell people something is on the increase and they should get on with it. Influence is growing. Capacity is growing. The door that was shut is opening, and the people who could not be reached are suddenly reachable. The time to act is now, while the current runs your way, because currents turn.

The second thing I say is that this is spring, and spring does not last. The tradition attaches to this hexagram a reminder that the good season has an end and that you should think about that while you are in it. I read that as a counsel against assuming the climb goes on forever. Build while it is easy. Put something aside. Thank the people who are helping you up.

The third thing is about how you carry it. Rising power changes people, and rarely for the better. The person approaching a position of influence should approach the people under them with the same care. The hexagram is as much about how you treat those you are coming closer to as about the fact that you are coming closer. Generosity on the way up is the cheapest insurance there is.

So I would ask: what is growing in your life right now, and are you tending it or just enjoying it? Both are allowed. Only one of them lasts.

As a birth hexagram

If this is your birth hexagram, or if it keeps coming back to you in casts, you grow. Your career, your capacity, your reach and your substance increase across the decades. There are few dramatic leaps in it. It is accumulation, one year adding to the next, until one day you look round and you are a much larger presence than the person who started.

Wherever you began, you tend to finish in a bigger role than that. The arc of your life points upward, and people come to trust you a little more each year as the evidence builds that you can carry more. Teams around you improve. Communities you belong to do better for having you in them. Your rising lifts other people with it.

The gift of this is the steady climb into real contribution. Short brilliant lives do not achieve what a long rising one does. You are built for the long version.

The shadow is being captured by the climb itself. Advancing because advancing has become the habit, and never stopping to ask whether this next step actually serves you. I have watched people climb straight past the life they wanted. The mature form of this hexagram pauses now and again and asks whether up is still the right direction. The other shadow is forgetting where you came from. The rising person who loses touch with the people who first held the ladder pays for it, and so do they.

At maturity, the person who carries Approach has grown a great deal and has kept the values they started with. That is the whole point of the hexagram. Real ascent with nothing rotten in it. The fruit of that is substantial, and it is shared.

If a line moves

When a line moves in Approach, the bottom two lines speak to the beginning of the matter, the first signs of increase and the first approach made. The middle lines are its heart, the rising itself and how it is handled. The top lines are its end, where growth has reached its proper size or where the season is turning. The changed line gives the second hexagram, the direction the situation is heading, and the How to Cast a Hexagram page shows you how to find it.

Across the traditions

The Eight Trigrams page describes Lake and Earth and the family the eight belong to. The Chinese Astrology section covers yin and yang, the two forces every line is built from. In my own tarot work I put Approach beside The Star, the card of hope arriving after a long dark, though that is my association and no older than me.

What in your life is coming on like spring, and what will you do with it before the season turns?

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