Hexagram 29, The Abysmal

The figure

Water doubled. The middle son twice over, the trigram of depth and danger, a single solid line sinking between two broken ones in each half. Water is the one trigram in the eight that the tradition names as dangerous, and here you get it twice. A gorge, a deep river, the dark water that closes over your head.

I do not soften this one when it comes up and I do not make it worse than it is. Water is dangerous because it is deep and it keeps moving. It is also the thing that gets through every obstacle on earth, given time. Both facts belong to the same figure.

The Abysmal is paired with Hexagram 30, The Clinging, which is its exact opposite line for line. Water and Fire. The one that sinks and the one that rises. The dark and the light, each of them doubled.

When it comes up in a reading

When this hexagram arrives I take a breath, and then I tell the person the truth. You are in a hard place, or you are about to be, and pretending otherwise will not help. The oracle has named it so that you can stop wasting energy on denial and put the energy into getting through.

The teaching is in how water behaves. Water fills whatever shape it is given, it keeps moving, and it comes out the other end every single time. It never once argues with the rock. In a dangerous passage you do the same. Stay true to what you actually are, keep moving, and do not try to be bigger than the situation. The rock wins that contest.

The hexagram also speaks of sincerity, of keeping your heart in one piece while everything around you is in pieces. People who come through the deep water well are the ones who did not lose themselves in it. They held on to one true thing, their faith, their word, a person they loved, the next small task, and let the water carry them.

Practical guidance follows from that. Do the thing in front of you. Do not plan the whole crossing, you cannot see it. Repetition is your friend here. The old commentary speaks of teaching by going over the same thing again and again until it flows, and I find that is how people get through grief and crisis too. One ordinary day at a time, the same small faithful acts, until one morning the water is shallower than it was.

As a birth hexagram

If this is your birth hexagram, or if it keeps coming back to you, you live closer to the deep end than most people. Your life has had, or will have, repeated chapters in what others would call the abyss. Grief, crisis, the parts of a family that nobody talks about, the parts of yourself that took years to look at.

The strange gift is that you can function down there. When the light goes out and everyone else panics, you can still see enough to move, and you do not leave.

You often end up working with depth for a living, in counselling, crisis work, palliative care or trauma, or you do it informally for the people around you, for nothing.

The shadow is drowning. Your capacity is large and it is not infinite. Knowing when to come up for air, when to refuse one more descent, when to take a holiday from other people's darkness, is the whole of the work. The second shadow is letting the gloom become a habit. Too long in deep water and everything looks dim. Go and sit in the sun on purpose now and then.

The mature person who carries this figure has gone down many times and come back every time with something worth having. The people they sat with in the dark are still here because of it. That is what the hexagram is for.

If a line moves

When you cast this hexagram with a moving line, notice where it falls. The two lower lines are the beginning of the matter, the first step into deep water and the danger of going in carelessly. The two middle lines are the heart of it, the passage itself, where you find out whether you can keep your footing and whether small steady acts will carry you. The two upper lines are the end of the matter and its going too far, the way out of the gorge, or the trap of staying down so long that the way out is lost. The moving line changes to its opposite and gives a second hexagram, the one the situation is heading toward. The How to Cast a Hexagram page shows how.

Across the traditions

The Eight Trigrams page covers Water and the family it belongs to, the middle son. 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 Moon in the tarot, the card of dark water, half seen shapes and the path that runs between two towers into the unknown. The Moon has its own page in The 78 Cards.

What is the one true thing you would hold on to if the water rose tonight?

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