A hexagram about removing something that has to go. Breakthrough is five strong lines pushing out one weak one, and its Judgement spends most of its length forbidding the obvious method.
Forty-third in the King Wen order, and one of the twelve waxing and waning hexagrams, where it marks the third month. The Sequence places it after Increase: what keeps increasing must eventually burst, and guai means a decisive break.
The Judgement: proclaim the matter at the king's court. It must be announced with sincerity. Danger. Notify your own city. It does not further to resort to arms. It furthers to undertake something.
Five clauses, and three of them are constraints. A hexagram named for a decisive break spends most of its Judgement on procedure: say it in public, say it truthfully, warn your own people first, and do not use force. The one permission comes last. What the text describes is a removal carried out through legitimate channels under conditions of real risk, and the explicit prohibition on arms is the part that distinguishes it from what its name suggests.
The Image: the lake has risen to heaven. Breakthrough. The noble person distributes wealth downward and does not rest on his virtue.
Water held above the sky is water that must come down, and when it does it arrives all at once. That is the natural picture of an accumulation that has to break. What the Xiang recommends is the controlled version: release it deliberately, downward, before it goes on its own. The second clause is harder and the phrasing is disputed. The most defensible reading is a warning against treating your own virtue as a position to occupy, which in a hexagram about removing someone is a pointed thing to say.
Breakthrough is five strong lines with one yielding line left at the top, and the reading is that the five are pushing the one out. It is the third month in the calendrical scheme, late spring, with yang nearly complete. Structurally it is the last stage before the figure becomes entirely strong, and the whole hexagram is about how that last removal is carried out.
The answer is almost entirely procedural. The Judgement requires a public proclamation at court, sincerity in the announcement, and a warning to your own people, and then forbids the use of arms outright. That prohibition is the hexagram's most important sentence, because overwhelming superiority is exactly the condition under which force is available and unnecessary. The text notices that and rules it out.
The lines make the same argument in the other direction. Two of them warn against being mighty: mighty in the toes, mighty in the cheekbones, and the second of those gets a verdict of misfortune. Strength displayed is treated as the failure mode throughout. What the question changes is your position in the arrangement. Asked by whoever holds the strength, this is a manual with one instruction repeated. Asked by whoever is being removed, the top line is the answer: no cry, and in the end misfortune. Compare Splitting Apart, which is this figure with every line changed, and where the single survivor at the top is a strong one.
In a relationship question Breakthrough describes something that has to be ended or said, where the person who has to do it holds most of the power. It is not a hexagram about a fight between equals. Five lines against one is the structure, and the text is written for the five.
Everything it recommends follows from that asymmetry. Say it openly rather than through other people. Say it truthfully. Warn the people close to you first. Do not use force, which here means not using the leverage you have. The third line is the honest one about cost: the noble person is resolute, walks alone, is caught in the rain and resented, and the verdict is no blame. Doing this correctly does not make you popular.
At work this is the removal that everybody knows is coming. A dismissal, a contract ended, a practice stopped, a person moved out of a role they have been failing in. The hexagram assumes you have the standing to do it, and it spends all its attention on how.
Three instructions are portable. Do it in the open, rather than in a private conversation that later gets disputed. Tell your own side first, which is the clause about notifying the city. And do not use force, which in an organisation means not reaching for the sanctions available to you when a stated decision would do. The fourth line describes what happens when someone will not accept being led: they hear the words and do not believe them.
In money questions Breakthrough describes ending an arrangement from a position of strength. Cancelling a contract you are entitled to cancel, closing something down, calling in what is owed.
The Image is the part that applies: release the accumulation downward before it releases itself. What the hexagram warns against is the method rather than the decision. Doing it by force where a stated decision would serve is what the Judgement rules out, and in financial terms that usually means the difference between notice and seizure. Nothing here is advice about any specific arrangement. What the figure supplies is the observation that having the power to act is not the same as having to use all of it.
Say it once, in the room where it counts, and do not follow it with pressure. The Judgement's structure is a single proclamation made publicly and truthfully, followed by an explicit prohibition on force, and the sequence is the instruction. Having said the thing, the work is over. Everything you add after it is the arms the text told you not to reach for.
A yang line in the bottom place, a yang position, correctly placed, and the furthest from the line being removed. The text: mighty in the advancing toes. Going and not prevailing brings humiliation.
Strength at the lowest point of the figure, expressed in the part of the body furthest from the head. The line describes setting off vigorously without the reach to finish, and the verdict is not danger but embarrassment. It is the hexagram's first warning about force and the mildest. Changing it gives Hexagram 28, Preponderance of the Great.
A yang line in the second place, a yin position, so it is incorrectly placed, though it holds the centre of the lower trigram. The text: a cry of alarm. Arms in the night. Do not worry.
The one place in the hexagram where weapons appear and are not condemned, because here they are defensive and the line is being warned rather than arming. What the text supplies is the instruction not to be alarmed. Preparedness without anxiety, from a central position, and it is the calmest line in the figure. Changing it gives Hexagram 49, Revolution.
A yang line in the third place, a yang position, correctly placed, and the only strong line corresponding to the top. The text: mighty in the cheekbones. Misfortune. The noble person is resolute; walking alone he meets rain, is drenched, and there is resentment. No blame.
Two verdicts in one line, which is rare. Strength shown in the face brings misfortune. Resolution carried alone and unpleasantly brings none. The correspondence with the top line is why this one gets wet: it is the line with a connection to the thing being removed. Changing it gives Hexagram 58, The Joyous.
A yang line in the fourth place, a yin position, so it is incorrectly placed. The text: no skin on the buttocks, and walking comes hard. If he let himself be led like a sheep, remorse would vanish. But hearing the words, he does not believe them.
The most uncomfortable line in the hexagram and the most recognisable. Someone unable to sit still and unable to move well, offered a remedy that would work, told it plainly, and refusing to accept it. The text does not moralise. It reports the refusal and stops. Changing it gives Hexagram 5, Waiting.
A yang line in the fifth place: correct, central, and the ruling line, sitting directly beneath the line to be removed. The text: in dealing with weeds, resolute resolution. Walking in the middle, no blame.
The ruler's line, and the task it is given is weeding. The doubled word rendered as resolute resolution is the hexagram's own name repeated, and the verdict attached is the minimum: no blame, not good fortune. Even done correctly, from the best position in the figure, removing something earns no praise here. Changing it gives Hexagram 34, The Power of the Great.
A yin line in the top place, a yin position, correctly placed, and it is the line the other five are removing. The text is four characters and a verdict: no cry. In the end, misfortune.
The second line had a cry of alarm and was told not to worry. This one has no cry. Correct placement does not help, and what the text names as the failure is the absence of warning rather than any act. The line does not see it coming and says nothing, and the hexagram ends there. Changing it gives Hexagram 1, The Creative.
Qian, heaven, sits below Dui, the lake. Water standing above the sky is the Image's picture of an accumulation that cannot be held, and the trigram order is doing the work: the strongest figure in the system is underneath, pushing up, and what is above it is a lake with one broken line at its surface.
The figure is the third month in the twelve-month scheme, with yang at five places and one to go. Read as a sequence it is the stage immediately before the hexagram of pure strength.
The nuclear hexagram is Hexagram 1, The Creative, six unbroken lines, which is what the surface figure is one step away from becoming. That is unusually literal for a nuclear reading: the interior is simply the outcome, arrived at early. The inverse is Coming to Meet, where a single yielding line has entered at the bottom instead, and the two figures describe the same lone weak line at the beginning and end of its career.
Guai means to decide, to part, to break through, and in its oldest uses it is physical: the thumb-ring an archer wore to release a bowstring is written with the same element. The word carries the sense of a held tension let go at a chosen moment, which is closer to the hexagram than the English title Breakthrough suggests.
The Judgement is one of the more institutionally specific passages in the oracle layer. Proclaiming at the king's court, announcing with sincerity, notifying one's own city and declining to raise troops are four distinct procedural steps, and they describe how a Zhou polity was supposed to move against someone. The clause about not resorting to arms is the one modern readings most often lose, and it is the only one of the four that is a prohibition.
The Ten Wings supplied the Image and the twelve-month scheme is later Han material. Legge translated the text in 1882 and Wilhelm into German in 1924, and the English title has stayed remarkably stable, which is unusual for a hexagram whose Judgement spends most of its length arguing against the thing the title implies.
Breakthrough is read as permission to force something through, and the Judgement contains an explicit prohibition on exactly that. It does not further to resort to arms is not a hedge or a preference; it is one of five clauses and the only outright refusal among them. A hexagram of overwhelming strength that rules out using it is making a specific argument, and the reading that treats the title as the message has skipped the sentence that qualifies it.
The second misreading is missing who the text is addressed to. Five lines against one, and every instruction is written for the five. Querents draw this about a struggle and identify with the underdog, which inverts it. If you are the single yielding line at the top, this hexagram is not your manual, and its last word to you is misfortune.
The third is the fifth line, which is often reported as the hexagram's triumphant conclusion. It is the ruling line, correctly placed and central, given the task of clearing weeds, and its verdict is no blame. Not good fortune. The best-positioned line in a hexagram about removal earns the minimum passing mark, and any summary that reports this figure as a victory has not read the grade attached to its own ruler.
Put a real question to the coins.