Darkening of the Light in Transitions

Some endings are genuinely dark, and this hexagram won't pretend otherwise — the loss that swallows the light, the leaving that wounds. When the dark time strikes at the very start of the effort, lower your wings (line 1): withdraw from visible striving, accept the lean season and even the gossip of onlookers rather than compromise, and keep the destination fixed while the pace stays invisible. Don't strive from bitterness or despair for visible progress; the ego's demand to be seen coping only feeds the dark. And if the injury has landed (line 2), the noble turn is startling: from nursing the wound to helping others through theirs, with a horse's strength. That conversion is exactly the invincible spirit this season crowns.

Beginning inside a dark passage is delicate, and honesty serves you better than false brightness. If the source of the darkness can't be remedied from within — if you've seen its heart (line 4) and know it — then leaving in good order is wisdom, not flight: examine honestly what still holds you, and depart through the gate before the storm breaks. If you can't leave (line 5 — Prince Chi at the dark court), master the veiled way instead: outward yielding total, inner light untouched, the flame tended in the deepest chamber. Either way, take the structural comfort of line 6: darkness at its zenith is the hour before its collapse — it always overreaches and devours itself. Your warmth, kept alive in private, is precisely what the far side of the season is for.