Influence
Judgment
— I Ching · classical
亨，利贞，取女吉。
Genuine connection brings success, and staying true to it pays off — like a marriage entered into with real feeling, it brings good fortune.
Image
— Great Image
山上有泽，咸，君子以虚受人。
A lake rests on top of a mountain: this is Mutual Sensing. Seeing it, a person of real character stays open enough that others feel drawn to approach on their own.
Six Lines
— Bottom to top
Modern Readings
— Interdisciplinary
Career & Management
User experience research, brand-emotion connection, business negotiation. Persuade with empathy, not metrics. Beware the top line: PR talk without product delivery.
Psychology & Cognition
Stay alert to environmental and others' emotional cues. In love and partnership, attend to genuine emotional flow rather than calculation.
Decision Guidance
Receive with openness (empty heart receives others). Reject the seduction of mere talk — the deepest influence acts through reality, not the tongue.
Integrated Reading
— Structure · timing · relations
Influence places The Joyous / Lake above Keeping Still / Mountain. Read the lower trigram as the emerging ground and the upper trigram as the field, pressure, or constraint it must answer. The core theme is Influence · Empathy · Real feeling versus performative talk. Relations: the opposite hexagram shows the shadow/complement (Decrease); the inverse shows the other-side view (Duration); the nuclear hexagram shows the hidden internal mechanism (Coming to Meet).
Line Path
Line path: Initial Six → Six in the second → Nine in the third → Nine in the fourth → Nine in the fifth → Six at the top. Read from bottom to top to see how the situation emerges, develops, crosses thresholds, and resolves.
Reflection Prompt
Am I acting from the proper position of Influence, or am I being pulled by being moved without holding center? What is the smallest reversible next move that respects the timing?
Western Parallels
— Cross-cultural
Carl Rogers on unconditional positive regard and empathic listening; Martin Buber's 'I and Thou' as the model of true encounter; design thinking's emphasis on empathy mapping; the contrast between Aristotelian 'logos' (substance) and 'pathos' (mere feeling-talk).
· English renderings and modern readings are original editorial writing, cross-checked against public-domain and classical commentary lineages.
· Hexagram Cast does not predict, score, schedule, ward, or recommend rituals.
· Modern inputs are reproducible; traditional casts can be audited line by line from the stored coin/yarrow trace.