Hexagram 28, Great Excess

The figure

Four solid lines in the middle and a single broken line at each end. The old readers saw a roof beam, thick and heavy through its length, resting on two supports too thin to carry it. The beam is about to sag. Something has to give.

Wind is the lower trigram, the eldest daughter, gentle and penetrating, which is also called Wood, the tree. Lake is the upper, the youngest daughter, joyous, open water. So the picture is water standing over the top of the tree. A flood, with the trees under it. Too much of a good thing in a place that was never built for it.

Great Excess is paired with Hexagram 27, Nourishment, which is its exact opposite line for line. Nourishment is an open mouth, firm at the edges and empty in the middle. Great Excess is the reverse, all weight in the middle and nothing much holding the ends.

When it comes up in a reading

This one tells me the load is too heavy. Whatever the question is about, there is more on it than the structure can carry, and the oracle is saying so plainly. It might be your work, a relationship doing the job of three, a body asked to run on four hours of sleep, a family where one person holds everything up.

The first thing to do is admit it. Most of us carry too much for a long time while telling ourselves it is fine. The beam does not care what we tell ourselves. It bends under the actual weight, and the figure has arrived to say the bending has started.

The tradition calls this an extraordinary moment, and an extraordinary moment needs an extraordinary response. Ordinary measures will not do. You may have to shed something you would normally never shed, ask for help you would normally never ask for, stop a thing you promised to finish. Standing alone for a time, out of step with everyone, without fear and without resentment, is part of the teaching here.

I would also say, do not wait for the beam to break before you act. The whole point of the warning is that there is still a little time. Take the weight off now, deliberately, while it is still your choice. Once it snaps you are no longer choosing anything.

As a birth hexagram

If this is your birth hexagram, or if it keeps coming back to you, your life does not run to the ordinary pattern. You find yourself in situations that ask for more than a normal response. Crises, unusual responsibilities, loads most people would refuse. And the odd thing is that something in you can meet them.

You take on what looks like too much because you suspect you can carry it, and most of the time you are right. You work at an intensity others cannot hold for long. You are the one the family rings when the wheels fall off, because you are the one who does not flinch.

The shadow is obvious once it is named. The willingness to carry an extraordinary weight tips over into carrying an impossible one, and when you break, you break badly. The second shadow is sneakier. If only emergencies make you feel alive, you will find yourself creating them. Your work is learning the difference between a load that is yours and a load you picked up because the room went quiet and nobody else moved.

The mature person who carries this figure has used that capacity when it was really needed. The family held together through a long illness, the business pulled back from the edge, the piece of work that took years of more than most people could give. They have also learned, usually the hard way, when to leave a weight on the ground. That is what keeps the strength available for the day it matters.

If a line moves

When you cast this hexagram with a moving line, notice where it sits. The two lower lines are the beginning of the matter, the first sign of strain and the care you take when setting something heavy down. The two middle lines are the heart of it, the beam at full load, where the old wood either finds new life or starts to split. The two upper lines are the end of the matter and its going too far, the point where the water closes over the top and the only thing left to decide is how you carry yourself through it. The moving line changes to its opposite and gives a second hexagram, the one the situation is moving toward. The How to Cast a Hexagram page walks through it.

Across the traditions

The Eight Trigrams page covers Wind and Lake and the family each belongs to. The Yin and Yang page in the Chinese Astrology section covers the two kinds of line. My own association, and nothing stronger, is with the Ten of Wands in the tarot, the figure staggering toward home under ten sticks that should have been two trips. The Ten of Wands has its own page in The 78 Cards.

What are you carrying right now that was never yours to carry?

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