Trigram
☲ Fire
離Lí · The Clinging
- Quality
- light-giving
- Family
- the middle daughter
- Animal
- pheasant
- Body
- eye
- Direction
- south
- Season
- summer
Fire is the trigram of light. Two solid lines with a broken line between them. Wilhelm calls it The Clinging. That name sounds odd for fire, until you remember that fire cannot exist without something to burn on.
Light with an empty core
The images from nature for this trigram are fire, the sun and lightning. All three give light and make the world visible. But a flame does not exist on its own. It clings to wood, to oil, to a wick. Without fuel it goes out. The light depends on what carries it.
The lines show exactly this. The yin line stands in the middle, held between two yang lines. From outside the trigram is strong and radiant, but in the middle it is empty. It is the reverse of Water, where the strong is inside. In Fire the soft is inside and the bright outside. That empty core is not a flaw: precisely because there is room in the middle, the fire can cling and give light. The quality that belongs to it is light-giving.
How Fire shows up
Fire is clarity. The moment you finally see how something fits together. The teacher who explains a complicated subject so that everyone gets it. Someone who asks the right question in a muddled discussion. Fire is also radiance: the person who lights up a room on walking in, or work that gives others ideas.
The word clinging points to the other side. Light always needs something to attach itself to: an idea, a person, a tradition, a task. If you want to be clear, you need to know what you are clinging to. Without that foundation, radiance soon becomes a flicker that catches the eye for a moment and then goes out. The shadow side is dependence, or light that blinds instead of clarifying.
The middle daughter and the eye
In the family, Fire is the middle daughter. Her one yin line stands in the middle, and that sets her place: between the eldest, Wind, and the youngest, Lake. Together the three daughters show three forms of the soft: penetrating, illuminating and gladdening.
The animal is the pheasant, a bird with beautiful, gleaming plumage. In the body Fire is the eye: the organ that catches light and sees the world. In the arrangement of King Wen, the later heaven Wilhelm describes, Fire stands in the south and belongs to summer. It is the time of year with the most light, when everything is visible and all things can see one another.
Fire below, Fire above
When Fire is at the bottom of your hexagram, the light is in you: insight, clarity, an inner understanding that has not yet come out. In hexagram 36, Darkening of the Light, Fire lies beneath Earth: the sun has set. The light is still there, but hidden. The image belongs to times when you had better not show what you know, and keep your clarity for later.
When Fire is at the top, the light shines outward. In hexagram 35, Progress, Fire stands above Earth: the sun rises over the land. It is exactly the reverse of hexagram 36. Now the light may be seen, and whoever works clearly and openly moves forward naturally.
When Fire doubles itself, in hexagram 30, The Clinging, there is light upon light. The lesson there is to know what you cling to, because the quality of your light depends on it.
Hexagrams with Fire below
- 13
Fellowship with Men - 22
Grace - 30
The Clinging - 36
Darkening of the Light - 37
The Family - 49
Revolution - 55
Abundance - 63
After Completion
Hexagrams with Fire above
- 14
Possession in Great Measure - 21
Biting Through - 30
The Clinging - 35
Progress - 38
Opposition - 50
The Caldron - 56
The Wanderer - 64
Before Completion