Wind and thunder strengthen each other — the family is in flood-tide: ease, warmth, and help arriving from all sides. Spend the season deliberately. Undertake the big things now — the move, the repair, the reconciliation too hard in leaner years; blessings like this exist to be built with, and there is even room for error (line 1: mistakes made in sincere effort self-correct in a time of increase). Practise the image's two disciplines as the household's own algorithm: see good in a relative and imitate it; find a fault in yourself and drop it. And keep the current moving — generosity downward, toward each other's weaker moments and outward beyond the walls, is what keeps the tide in. This is no season for a clenched hand at the family table.
Increase in Family
Family and home life
The household's season of increase — build boldly and give downward.
Read this hexagram through home life, close bonds, household dynamics, and care.
Hexagram 42 in family means increase: a season of blessing where the household grows with a tailwind — warmth compounding, generosity returning multiplied. Use it: undertake the big things, cross the great water together. The season's one law is circulation — increase shared keeps flowing; increase hoarded stops the current cold.
A favourable hour is exactly when old rifts can be crossed cheaply. The one who holds the middle position (line 4) is the family bridge — between a parent and a child, between two sides of a quarrel; serve the transmission impartially, never bending the message toward your own preference, and your counsel moves great things. Where a relative brings you their trouble, meet it with line 5's kindness — generosity so natural it never checks for recognition, and is therefore recognised everywhere. But heed line 6, the season's only real danger: the relative who takes the increase and passes none of it down — the heart unsteadied by acquisition — ends isolated, and struck from an unexpected quarter. Resume the giving before the season closes.
The shadow is the tide misused. Carelessness: assuming the good season is permanent, discipline dissolving into it. Appetite: growth converted to greed — for attention, deference, more from everyone. And withholding: the increase received and hoarded, which reverses the whole current through the family. Watch too the ego's credit-taking — this weather was not your achievement; gratitude keeps the sails full where entitlement empties them.
The six lines in family
Great deeds are favoured
The tailwind is real: undertake the big family step now. Sincere effort at scale succeeds — and even its mistakes self-correct.
The increase none can oppose
Love the good for its own sake, and blessing gathers around the home that nothing can block. What was lost is restored by the same law.
Enriched through misfortune
Even the season's blows feed the family — the setback that instructs, the loss that redirects. Stay sincere and centred, and adversity joins the increase.
The trusted intermediary
You're the bridge between relatives, or between two sides of a decision. Serve the transmission impartially, and your counsel moves great things.
Kindness that does not ask
Generosity so natural it never checks for recognition — and is therefore recognised throughout the family. The apex of the season.
Increase withheld
Taking without passing down: the heart unsteadied by acquisition. The flow reverses — resume the giving before the season closes on the wrong side.
What big family step belongs in this favourable season, before it turns?
What good habit of a relative's could I simply imitate this month?
Is the increase flowing through me to the household — or pooling in my hands?
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.
A tailwind season — build boldly, and pass the gains 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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A quiet place to keep returning
Beyond a single reading: True Essence is a daily pause to steady the mind and return to clearer judgement — a seven-day return, free to begin, then a practice that continues day by day.
Begin the 7-day return →Consult the I Ching for your own family question
Use the oracle when you want this family interpretation to arise from your live situation rather than from study alone.