Wind and thunder strengthen each other — this is the moment your product, market, and team amplify one another. Cross the great water now: the expansion, acquisition, or major hire that felt too risky last year is favoured. Line 1 says act on the scale the season permits, boldly and for the general good, and even honest mistakes correct themselves in a time of increase. But the whole season began with what is above giving to what is below — so pass the gains downward. Line 5 is the apex: kindness that does not calculate returns, generosity toward staff and customers become simply how you operate. Hold line 4's discipline too — where you sit between investors and team, stay the impartial, trusted intermediary who never bends the message toward personal gain.
Increase in Business
Business and strategy
A tailwind season — build boldly, and pass the gains downward.
Use this interpretation for business decisions, leadership, risk, and long-range strategy.
Hexagram 42 in business means a season of blessing in full flow — momentum, favourable conditions, help arriving where it once cost everything. It favours undertaking, and crossing the great water: the big expansion, the new market, the long-deferred bet. But the season is short. Use the increase while it flows, and pass the gains downward.
The following wind is behind you: raise now, launch now, sign the partners who are reaching back. Line 3 holds the strange gift — even the early setbacks enrich you if you stay sincere and centred, turning a lost deal or a failed feature into the wisdom that shapes the real product. The conditions are exact: sincerity, the middle path, and action taken as a genuine commission rather than the ego's improvisation. Build large while the season lasts, but keep the heart steady amid the abundance — the same wind that fills a careful sail fills a careless one straight into the rocks.
Increase spoils through how it is held. Carelessness — assuming the flow is permanent, letting discipline dissolve into the good times. Appetite — growth converted to greed, the blessing spent on the founder's expansion rather than the venture's. And withholding — the winners who pass nothing down, forgetting the season began with giving and ends the moment giving stops. Line 6 is the I Ching's starkest warning, aimed exactly here: hoard the increase at the top and isolation comes first, then the blow from an unexpected quarter.
The six lines in business
Great deeds are favoured
Undertake at scale, for the common good. Honest mistakes made in real effort correct themselves in this season.
The increase none can oppose
Backing aligned with the market's own logic — it comes to the venture that loves the work, not just the exit.
Enriched through misfortune
Even a lost deal enriches you if you stay sincere and centred, turning the blow into strategic wisdom.
The trusted intermediary
Between board and team, stay balanced and impartial. Serve the transmission, never your own advantage, and you'll be followed.
Kindness that does not ask
Generosity toward staff and customers that seeks no credit — and precisely so becomes the reputation everyone knows.
Increase withheld
Hoard the gains at the top and the flow reverses: isolation, then a blow from an unexpected quarter. Resume giving fast.
Am I using this season to build, or assuming it will last forever?
Where should the increase flow downward — to staff, customers, suppliers — that it currently isn't?
Is my growth genuine value creation, or appetite dressed as ambition?
Switch the lens
Hexagram 42, Increase, signals growth, support, and expansion that must be handled with generosity, humility, and right use.
Love's season of increase — build boldly and give generously.
A season of increase — build boldly and pass the gains downward.
The household's season of increase — build boldly and give downward.
Money's season of increase — build boldly, keep it flowing.
The wind is with you — imitate good, root out faults, build.
Learning flies with a tailwind now — attempt the hard thing.
A fertile season with a tailwind — build boldly, give freely.
Act now — the wind is with you; cross the great water.
A season of blessing — use it, and pass it downward.
A season of growing circles — build boldly, give generously.
A change with a tailwind — build boldly, and pass it on.
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