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Hexagram 48: The Well
井 · Jǐng
The Well. A town may change, but the well cannot be changed. It neither decreases nor increases. They come and go and draw from the well. If one gets down almost to the water and the rope does not reach, or the jug breaks, it brings misfortune.Judgment 卦辭
Water over wood: the image of The Well. The superior man encourages the people at their work and exhorts them to help one another.Image 象辭
Core Meaning of Hexagram 48
Hexagram 48 is the well — the deep, inexhaustible source a town is built around. Towns change; the well remains. It stands for everything real and replenishable beneath changing surface life: true skills, core values, the shared resource, your own depth. The one failure named is not the water but the apparatus: the rope too short, the jug broken — reaching the source badly.
Hexagram 48 in a Reading
In a reading, return to the source — the fundamental skill, the core relationship, the community commons, your own ground water. Stop trading surface; draw from depth. Check the rope and jug: if the good isn’t reaching your life, the defect is in method or container, not in the water. And as the image says, be a well for others — help them draw. Wells grow richer by use.
Common Questions
What does hexagram 48 mean?
Hexagram 48 is the well — the deep, inexhaustible source a town is built around. Read the full meaning above, or cast your own reading with our free online I Ching coins.
What is the structure of hexagram 48?
Hexagram 48 is built from the trigram Water above and Wind below — binary 011010 read from the bottom line to the top. The Well is King Wen number 48 of the 64 hexagrams.
Related Hexagrams
Other Hexagrams with Trigram Water Above
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