I is the season of blessing in full flow: progress that lately cost everything now comes with help, a following wind behind every worthy undertaking, great crossings long deferred now open. The Judgment's urgency is the season's — such times do not last, so use the increase while it flows, and on what deserves it, for the same wind that fills good sails fills careless ones. The image compresses the whole ethics of a fortunate hour into one practice: see good, imitate it; find faults, remove them. Increase is for self-improvement and generosity together — sacrificing for others, forgiving the inferior, drawing the best in everyone into devoted action. The inner condition is a steady heart: amid the abundance keep free of the desires that blessing stirs up, and maintain humility as though the hard season had never ended; the help of the higher power attends exactly that steadiness.
Increase in Spirit
Spiritual path
A season of blessing — use it, and pass it downward.
Read this hexagram through spiritual practice, meditation, dreams, signs, and inner guidance.
Hexagram 42 in spirituality means a season of blessing in full flow — what is above sacrifices to what is below, wind and thunder amplifying each other. Use the increase while it flows: undertake, cross, build, and pass it downward as fast as it arrives. The season's one law is circulation — blessing shared keeps flowing; blessing hoarded stops.
Line 5 is the apex: kindness become nature, springing from inner necessity, not calculating returns or seeking recognition — and precisely therefore recognised everywhere. Line 2 is the mirror of Decrease's harvest seen from the receiving side: blessing so aligned with the order of things that no oracle could contradict it, coming to the one who loves the good for its own sake rather than merely seeking relief from a hard fate. Line 3 is the season's strangest gift — even the blows enrich, for adversity met with sincerity and the middle path turns loss into wisdom the way a storm turns to rain. And line 1 carries a commission: help received obliges great undertakings, and in this season even mistakes made in sincere effort correct themselves without harm.
What spoils increase is never the gift but the grip. Carelessness — treating the current as endless and letting the practice melt into it. Appetite — the growth curdling into greed, the windfall funding the ego's enlargement. And withholding: the increased who pass nothing downward, forgetting that the whole season began with the above giving to the below, and ends the moment that giving stops. Line 6 is one of the I Ching's starkest warnings, aimed at precisely this — the flow reverses: isolation first, then the blow from an unexpected quarter.
The six lines on the path
Great deeds are favoured
The increase reaches even the lowest place, and obliges great undertakings. Build large and selflessly; in this season even sincere mistakes self-correct.
The increase none can oppose
Blessing so aligned with the order of things that no oracle could contradict it. It comes to the one who loves the good for its own sake.
Enriched through misfortune
Even the season's blows instruct and strengthen. Stay sincere and centred, and adversity itself joins the increase.
The trusted intermediary
Entrusted, for proven balance, with the weightiest transfers. Serve the transmission impartially, never bending the message toward your own desire.
Kindness that does not ask
Generosity become nature — not calculating returns or checking for recognition, and therefore recognised everywhere. The season's apex.
Increase withheld
Blessing hoarded at the top, passed to no one below, reverses the flow — isolation, then a blow from an unexpected quarter. Steady the heart and resume the giving.
What worthy undertaking belongs in this favourable season, before it turns?
What good, seen in another, could I simply imitate this month?
Does this abundance pass through my hands, or has it started collecting in them?
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.
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 growing circles — build boldly, give generously.
A change with a tailwind — build boldly, and pass it on.
Two free I Ching books
Enter your email and I'll send you a free I Ching companion guide and my visual Tao Te Ching,See · Feel · Tao — both yours to download and keep.
No spam — just the occasional quiet note. Unsubscribe anytime.
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 spirit question
Use the oracle when you want this spirit interpretation to arise from your live situation rather than from study alone.