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.