A hexagram about deliberate reduction. Decrease describes giving something up on purpose, and its Judgement is unusually warm for a figure whose name promises loss, on one specific condition, which the text then names.
Forty-first in the King Wen order. The Sequence places it after Deliverance, on the reasoning that a relaxation of tension necessarily involves some loss, and sun means to diminish or take away.
The Judgement: Decrease with sincerity brings supreme good fortune and no blame. One may persevere. It furthers to undertake something. How is this to be carried out? Two small bowls may be used for the offering.
The last clause is the whole hexagram. Ritual vessels in the Zhou were regulated by rank, and the number you set out was not a matter of taste. Reducing to two is a visible shortfall, and the text licenses it explicitly, on the condition it names first. Sincerity is not offered here as a consolation for having less. It is offered as the thing that makes having less acceptable, and the text is unusually direct about the trade.
The Image: below the mountain, the lake. Decrease. The noble person checks his anger and restrains his appetites.
A lake at the foot of a mountain wears the mountain away, slowly, from underneath. The Xiang turns that outward process inward and names two specific things to reduce: anger and appetite. It is one of the few Images in the book that gives a list rather than a principle, and the list is not arbitrary. Both are things that increase on their own if nothing is done, which makes them the natural subjects for a hexagram about taking something away deliberately.
Decrease is about giving something up on purpose, and the hexagram is much more favourable than its name leads people to expect. The Judgement grants supreme good fortune in its second clause. What it attaches that to is sincerity, and what it illustrates it with is a reduced sacrifice: two bowls where more were prescribed.
The figure describes voluntary reduction rather than loss. Something is being taken from below and added above, which is the structural reading of a yielding line at the top of the lower trigram, and the text is consistently interested in who is doing the reducing and to whom. The first line warns about how much you decrease others. The second says you can increase others without decreasing yourself. The sixth says the same thing again from the top.
The third line is the one people remember. Three travel together and lose one; one travels alone and gains a companion. Both movements arrive at two, which the text treats as the number a real partnership has. What the question changes is whether the reduction was chosen. Asked by someone deciding what to give up, this hexagram is favourable and specific. Asked by someone who has had something taken, it is describing a different situation, and the figure has less to say about that than its name suggests.
In a relationship question Decrease describes something being given up deliberately, usually by one person and usually to make room. Time, a plan, a place, a version of the future that both people had been assuming.
The third line is the one that applies most often and it is unsentimental. Three people travelling lose one; one travelling gains a companion. The text is describing the arithmetic of pairs, and it says without comment that a third party gets subtracted. Where the question involves someone outside the couple, that line is the hexagram's answer, and it is not a moral judgement. It is a statement about what the structure does.
At work this is scope reduction done on purpose. Cutting a feature, dropping a client, narrowing a role, taking a smaller budget in order to keep something else intact. The hexagram treats all of that as competent rather than as failure.
The two-bowls clause is the practical part. A visibly reduced offering is acceptable if what is behind it is genuine, which in working terms means that a smaller deliverable presented honestly does better than a full one presented with padding. The first line adds the constraint that matters in an organisation: consider how much you are decreasing others. Reductions almost always land on someone, and the text asks you to know who before you make them.
In money questions Decrease describes spending less on purpose. Not a shortfall: a decision. Cancelling something, downgrading, choosing a smaller version, releasing a commitment that was affordable and no longer wanted.
The hexagram is favourable about this and its one condition is the sincerity clause, which in practice means the reduction has to be real rather than presentational. Two bowls honestly is approved; the appearance of two bowls while the same amount goes elsewhere is not what the text describes. Nothing here is advice about any particular decision. What the figure supplies is the observation that a chosen reduction and an imposed one are different situations, and that it is only talking about the first.
Take one thing away and tell people you have. The Judgement's example is a reduced offering made openly, not a full one quietly hollowed out, and the difference between those two is the entire condition the hexagram attaches its good fortune to. Pick the commitment you are least able to do properly, withdraw from it explicitly, and say so to whoever was expecting it.
A yang line in the bottom place, a yang position, correctly placed. The text: when your own affairs are finished, go quickly. No blame. But weigh how much you decrease others.
Two instructions and they pull against each other. Move fast, and then think carefully about the cost to somebody else. The line is describing help offered promptly, and the qualification is that promptness is not an excuse for not counting. It is the only line in the hexagram that puts a limit on generosity. Changing it gives Hexagram 4, Youthful Folly.
A yang line in the second place, a yin position, so it is incorrectly placed, though it holds the centre. The text: perseverance furthers. Undertaking something brings misfortune. Without decreasing himself, he increases the other.
The hexagram's central claim. Increase given at no cost to the giver is possible, and the text ranks it above the version that requires sacrifice. The warning against undertaking is attached: this works while you hold still and stops working the moment you go looking for occasions to do it. Changing it gives Hexagram 27, The Corners of the Mouth.
A yin line in the third place, a yang position, so it is incorrectly placed, and it is the line moved from below to above. The text: three journey together and lose one; one journeys alone and finds a companion.
Two sentences and no verdict, which is rare. Both halves arrive at two. The text is not recommending anything; it is reporting a regularity, that groups of three shed a member and solitary people acquire one. Nothing in it says which of the three goes. Changing it gives Hexagram 26, The Taming Power of the Great.
A yin line in the fourth place, a yin position, correctly placed. The text: decrease your affliction; make it quick, and there is joy. No blame.
The word rendered as affliction covers both illness and fault, and the ambiguity is probably in the original rather than introduced by translation. What the line adds to the hexagram is speed. Everywhere else the reduction is weighed and considered; here it is to be done fast, because the thing being reduced is your own and delay is not consideration. Changing it gives Hexagram 38, Opposition.
A yin line in the fifth place, a yang position, so it is incorrectly placed, and the ruling line. The text: someone increases him with ten pairs of tortoises. It cannot be refused. Supreme good fortune.
Tortoise shells were valuables and divining instruments in the Zhou, and ten pairs is a large sum. The line describes a gift arriving unbidden, and the clause that matters is that it cannot be declined. This same sentence appears word for word in the second line of the inverse hexagram. Changing it gives Hexagram 61, Inner Truth.
A yang line in the top place, a yin position, so it is incorrectly placed. The text: without decreasing, he increases. No blame. Perseverance brings good fortune. It furthers to undertake something. He gains servants and no longer has a separate house.
The second line's claim, repeated at the top and now with the undertaking permitted rather than warned against. The last clause is odd and translators differ. The most defensible reading is that his household has expanded to the point where the distinction between his house and everyone else's has stopped applying. Changing it gives Hexagram 19, Approach.
Dui, the lake, sits below Gen, the mountain. Water at the foot of a hill wears it away from underneath, and that is the mechanism the name describes: something is taken from the lower part and it goes to the upper. The commentators read the yielding line at the top of the lower trigram as the piece that has been moved.
The nuclear hexagram is Hexagram 24, Return, and it is the most useful thing in the figure. Return is a single strong line at the very bottom, the turn of the year at the solstice, a recovery that has already begun and is not yet visible. Inside a hexagram about giving something up sits the figure for something coming back. The surface says reduce; the interior says the low point has already passed.
That correspondence is not a coincidence and it is not special to this pair. The nuclear figure of an inverted hexagram is always the inversion of its nuclear figure, so Increase, which is this hexagram turned upside down, has Splitting Apart inside it. The two interiors are the same pair, reversed.
Sun means to diminish, damage or take away, and it is an ordinary word. The hexagram's interest is that it uses it approvingly, which is unusual enough that the Judgement has to explain itself with a worked example.
The two bowls are that example and they are precise. Gui were bronze ritual food vessels, and the number set out at a sacrifice was fixed by the rank of the person offering it, with eight for the highest ceremonies and descending from there. Two is a conspicuous reduction. The text is licensing a visible breach of ritual propriety on the grounds of sincerity, which is a real argument being made in a real institutional context, not a general sentiment about modesty.
The ten pairs of tortoises in the fifth line are equally concrete. Tortoise plastrons were used for divination and shells circulated as valuables, and the phrase appears again, word for word, in the second line of Hexagram 42. The Ten Wings supplied the Image, whose two named restraints, anger and appetite, became one of the most quoted lines in the Chinese moral tradition. Legge translated it in 1882 and Wilhelm into German in 1924.
Decrease is read as a warning about loss, which gets the mood backwards. The Judgement grants supreme good fortune and no blame, permits perseverance, and approves undertaking something. It is one of the more favourable entries in the book, and the name is doing all the work in the opposite direction. What it describes is reduction chosen and carried out well, not reduction suffered.
The second misreading follows from that. Because the title suggests deprivation, the hexagram gets applied to situations where something has been taken from the querent, and it has very little to say about those. Its instructions are all addressed to whoever is doing the decreasing. If the answer to who chose this is nobody, the figure is describing a different situation than the one being asked about.
The third is the third line, which is often quoted as a piece of wisdom about companionship and is not one. It has no verdict attached, which in this book means the text declined to grade it. Three become two and one becomes two, and the observation is arithmetical rather than moral. Reading it as advice to seek a partner, or as consolation for a group that lost someone, adds a judgement the line withholds.
Put a real question to the coins.