Hexagram 60, Limitation

Lake below, Water above. Two solid lines hold the base of the figure, and above them the lines alternate, broken, broken, solid, broken, like water finding its level inside a shape.

The figure

Lake is the trigram of the youngest daughter, joyous and open, two solid lines with a broken line on top. Water is the middle son, the abyss, depth and danger, a single solid line between two broken ones.

Put water above the lake and the picture is of a lake with banks. Without the banks there is no lake, only a flood that spreads thin and dries out. The banks are what make the water useful. You can drink from it, swim in it, water the garden from it, because something said this far and no further.

Its pair is Hexagram 59, Dispersion, Wind over Water, the thaw that this figure gives shape to.

When it comes up in a reading

When Limitation comes up for a question, the moment is asking you to set a boundary, and it is asking you to set a fair one. Something has been spreading. Money, time, a relationship, a project, your own energy. The hexagram says put a bank around it, and it says the bank should be in the right place.

The sense of the hexagram is that limits serve life when they are measured and strangle it when they are harsh. The book is firm about this. A limit so tight that it hurts to live inside will not hold, because people, including you, will not keep it. So the first question when this is my answer is where the line should actually sit. Too loose and the water runs away. Too tight and the water goes stale.

The second thing it says is that the limit has to be yours before you ask it of anyone else. Lake is the open mouth, Water is depth. The figure asks you to say less and mean it more.

And there is comfort in it that people miss. Limitation is the figure that makes things possible. A budget means you can actually buy the thing. A closing time means the shop opens tomorrow. A boundary in a friendship means the friendship survives.

As a birth hexagram

If this is your birth hexagram, or if it keeps coming back to you, you understand limits in a way most people have to learn the hard way. You know that a boundary, a structure, a measured discipline, these are very often the conditions under which life actually works. Other people hear a rule and feel a cage. You hear a rule and see the garden it makes room for.

You live by measure. Excess does not appeal to you and neither does going without. You look for the amount that serves, and you tend to find it.

You build containers. In a relationship, a project, a workplace or your own inner life, you are the one who sets up the shape inside which the real work can happen. You can say no cleanly, and the people around you are better off for it.

The gift is the right amount of structure. Your home, your work and your relationships tend to have enough form to hold and no more than that.

The shadow is restriction that keeps tightening. A limit that was right ten years ago can quietly become a wall, and the person who built it is the last to notice because the wall feels like home. The mature Limitation checks the banks every so often, asks whether the lake still needs them where they are, and moves them when the answer is no.

The work of a life here is to keep your limits alive, calibrated to what is actually in front of you, and never set in concrete.

If a line moves

The I Ching counts lines from the bottom, so line 1 is the lowest. When one of the lower lines is moving, the matter is at its beginning and the counsel is about knowing when to stay inside the door and when to step out of it. A moving middle line puts the question at its heart, the point where the limit is being set and where it is either comfortable or harsh. A moving upper line speaks to the end of the matter, and here it carries the sense of limitation gone too far, the rule kept past the point where anyone can live by it. Whichever line moves, change it to its opposite and you have a second hexagram, the direction the situation is heading. The How to Cast a Hexagram page walks through that step by step.

Across the traditions

The Eight Trigrams page gives Lake and Water 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, and this is a good figure to read beside it, with yang holding the base and yin and yang taking turns above. My own association in the tarot is Temperance, the angel pouring water from one cup to the other and spilling none, and I hold that as my picture and nothing stronger.

Where in your life does the water need banks, and where have the banks you built years ago become a wall?

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