Fu / Return (The Turning Point)
above:K'un The Receptive, Earth
below:Ch^ en The Arousing, Thunder
Fu indicates that there will be course and progress (in what
it denotes). (The subject of it) finds no one to distress him
in his exits and entrances; friends come to him, and no error
is committed. He will return and repeat his (proper) course.
In seven days comes his return. There will be advantage in
whatever direction movement is made.
Overall Meaning
Returning, the symbol of reversal
Fu symbolizes the idea of returning, coming back or over again. The last
hexagram showed us inferior prevailing over superior men, all that is good in
nature and society yielding before what is bad. But change is the law of
nature and society. When decay has reached its climax, recovery will begin to
take place. In Po we had one strong topmost line, and five weak lines below
it; here we have one strong line, and five weak lines above it. To illustrate
the subject from what we see in nature, - Po is the hexagram of the ninth
month, in which the the triumph of cold and decay in the year is nearly
complete. It is complete in the tenth month, whose hexagram is Khwan ( ::::::
); then follows our hexagram Fu, belonging to the eleventh month, in which was
the winter solstice when the sun turned back in his course, and moved with a
constant regular progress towards the summer solstice. In harmony with these
changes of nature are the changes in the political and social state of a
nation. There is nothing in the Yi to suggest the hope of a perfect society
or kingdom that cannot be moved.
The strong bottom line is the first of chan, the trigram of movement, and
the upper trigram is Khwan, denoting docility and capacity. The strong
returning line will meet with no distressing obstacle, and the weak lines
will change before it into strong, and be as friends. The bright quality
will be developed brighter and brighter from day to day, and month to month.
The sentence 'in seven days comes his return', occasions some perplexity.
If the reader will refer to hexagrams 44, 33, 12, 20, 23, and 2, he will see
that during the months denoted by those figures, the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th,
and 10th, the yin lines have gradually been prevailing over the yang, until
in Khwan (2) they have extruded them entirely from the lineal figure. Then
comes our Fu, as a seventh figure, in which the yang line begins to reassert
itself, and from which it goes on to extrude the yin lines in their turn.
Explained therefore of the months of the year, we have to take a day for a
month. And something analogous - we cannot say exactly what - must have
place in society and the state.
The concluding auspice or oracle to him who finds this Fu by divination
is what we might expect.