Hexagram 61, Inner Truth

Lake below, Wind above. Two solid lines at the bottom, two solid lines at the top, and two broken lines in the middle. The figure is firm on the outside and open at the centre, and that shape is the whole teaching.

The figure

Lake is the trigram of the youngest daughter, joyous and open, two solid lines with a broken line on top. Wind is the eldest daughter, gentle and penetrating, a broken line at the base with two solid lines above it.

Put wind over the lake and the picture is a breeze moving across open water. The surface answers every touch. Nothing is hidden under it and nothing is forced on it. The wind says a thing and the water shows it at once.

Look at the figure as a whole and you see the other picture the tradition gives, an empty space in the middle held by strength above and below. The Chinese name carries the sense of a bird sitting on her eggs, and of trust, the kind that is kept because the heart inside is open and the actions outside are steady. The empty centre is where the openness lives.

Its pair is Hexagram 62, Small Excess, Thunder over Mountain, which turns the figure inside out, solid in the middle and broken at both ends.

When it comes up in a reading

When Inner Truth comes up for a question, the moment is asking whether what is inside you matches what is outside. That is the test the hexagram sets, and it sets it for you before it sets it for anyone else.

The sense of the hexagram is that sincerity reaches people that nothing else can reach. The old picture was of trust so deep it moved even pigs and fishes, the two creatures the ancients thought were hardest to influence. In plain words, when you are the same all the way through, people feel it, and even the difficult ones come round. When you are performing, they feel that too, and no amount of good technique covers it.

And a caution. An open centre is open to everything, including people who will fill it with their version of events. Inner Truth asks you to be sincere, and sincere people can still keep their wits about them. Know what you believe before you open the door.

As a birth hexagram

If this is your birth hexagram, or if it keeps coming back to you, you are someone whose inside and outside match. What you feel is what you show. What you believe is what you say. In a culture that rewards performance, that is rarer than it should be, and people notice.

You also see under other people's surfaces. What they actually feel, what they actually want, what they actually believe, these register for you under whatever show is being put on. You often know before they say it, and sometimes before they know it themselves.

Because of that, you are trusted with the hard things. People tell you what they have told nobody else, because they can feel that you will receive it as it is and do nothing with it except hold it. That trust is deserved.

The gift is a presence people can rely on. Your word carries weight because it comes from what is actually there.

The shadow is expecting the same from everyone else. Most people live further from their centre than you do, and if you take every performance as a personal betrayal you will be disappointed for life. The mature Inner Truth keeps its own centre clear, holds realistic hopes for other people without turning sour, and stays kind about the gap.

The work of a life here is maintenance. Inner Truth is kept by looking at yourself regularly and telling yourself the truth about what you find, and the looking never stops.

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 where you place your trust and how steady you are before you commit it. A moving middle line puts the question at its heart, the open centre, and asks whether your inner state is your own or has been borrowed from someone else. A moving upper line speaks to the end of the matter, and here it carries the sense of sincerity gone too far, the open heart that has climbed higher than it can hold and finds the words have run out ahead of the substance. 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 Wind 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, worth reading beside a figure built from yang on the outside and yin at the centre. My own association in the tarot is The High Priestess, the one who sits in front of the veil and knows what is behind it, and I hold that as my picture and nothing stronger.

If someone could see straight through to the middle of you today, what would they find, and is it the same thing you have been showing them?

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