Hexagram 47: Oppression澤水困 · Kùn

• Upper trigram　Duì, Lake: joy, exchange and open conversation.
• Lower trigram　Kǎn, Water: danger, flow and keeping faith through difficulty.

The Judgment

Success; perseverance. The great person has good fortune, without blame. Words are not believed.

亨，貞，大人吉，无咎。有言不信。

Our plain English rendering, with the Zhouyi original

Reading

A lake with no water: feeling hemmed in. Today suits saying less and doing more, holding on to your beliefs and letting action stand in for explanation; the pressure will slowly ease.

Something to do today

• Put your attention today on one small thing you can actually improve.

How a hexagram is cast

The three-coin method: toss three coins together, counting heads as 3 and tails as 2. The total, 6, 7, 8 or 9, gives one line; six tosses, recorded from the bottom up, make a hexagram. A 6 (old yin) or 9 (old yang) is a changing line, which turns this hexagram into another and shows where things are heading.