Great Havings (Tâ Yû)

Great Havings (Tâ Yû), Hexagram XIV, represents prosperity and abundance—and the discipline that keeps abundance from turning into pride. Its promise of great progress and success rests on a particular balance: humility occupies the place of honor, while strength serves in willing subordination. The figure makes good fortune a matter not of possession alone, but of how authority and resources are held and used.

Meaning and Promise

The hexagram’s name describes a kingdom’s prosperity and abundance, or opulence in a family or individual. Its general judgment is that, under the circumstances it signifies, there will be great progress and success. Yet the same condition carries a danger: prosperity may engender pride. Good fortune therefore depends on the character of the prosperous as much as on their circumstances.

The account of the figure turns that warning into a structure. A weak line occupies the place of honor, making its subject humble, while the other lines are strong and act in obedient sympathy. The balance does not suppress strength; it gives strength a form of service. Abundance is favorable because authority is not simply an expression of force.

The Ruler and the Lines

The fifth line represents the ruler. Its mild sincerity is good and affects ministers and others, but sincerity by itself is not enough: a ruler must also possess an awe-inspiring majesty. The hexagram’s ideal authority thus combines an influence that reaches others with the dignity needed to govern them.

The second line is strong, set low in the figure, and without a correlate above in the account of its initial position. The commentary says that no external influence has yet acted injuriously on its subject; following the line’s direction can preserve that condition. Its strength also has a proper correlate in the fifth line, the ruler. The relationship is significant because the second line uses its power in subordination to the ruler’s humility: strength and authority can cooperate rather than contend.

The topmost line, also strong, takes its character from the fifth. Its strength remains tempered, and Heaven approves it. The movement from the low second line to the honored fifth and the uppermost line presents the same principle at different positions: force can contribute to success when it is kept within a relationship of restraint and legitimate authority.

Interpretation and Significance

The hexagram’s judgment and line explanations belong to a text that organizes meaning across whole figures and their individual lines. In the account of this method, the interpretation of a hexagram as a whole is meant to accord with the combined significance of its six lines; line meanings also vary with the hexagram’s name and the condition it denotes. Great Havings therefore does not offer prosperity as an abstract guarantee. Its meaning depends on the arrangement of the figure and the relations among its subjects.

The figure’s central contrast is between abundance and the pride it can produce. Great progress is possible because the honored position is occupied by a yielding line and the strong lines respond obediently; the same strength, if separated from humility and proper relation, would no longer express the balance on which the favorable judgment rests. Great Havings makes successful abundance a political and ethical condition: authority must be sincere and impressive, strength must remain disciplined, and prosperity must not mistake itself for immunity from error.