Yi (Increase) to Yi (Nourishment): adopting an heir

Date not recorded · A friend of Takashima planning to adopt an heir · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 42 Yì (Increase), line 5 moving, changing to Hexagram 27 Yí (Nourishment).

Original text

友人某來曰。欲以某氏子爲養嗣。占前途吉凶。筮得益之頤。爻辭曰。九五有孚惠心。勿問元吉。有孚惠我德。斷曰。九五坎爻。坎爲孚。爲心。爲美。亦爲後。故爻辭曰有孚惠心。美。即吉也。爲後者。適合足下養嗣之占也。卦以損上益下爲益。就養嗣論。益在損父益子。有孚惠心。是父以誠實之心。受惠于子。子必樂爲其子。不待問而知其吉也。子既受父之惠。當必有以報父之德。將承父之業。繼父之緒。必興父之宗。故曰有孚惠我德。詩所云爲他人子。爲他人子。可不必咏也。

In plain words

A friend of Takashima came and said: I want to adopt a boy from another family as my heir; please divine how it will go. The cast gave Yi (Increase) with its fifth line moving, changing into Yi (Nourishment). The line reads: "Nine in the fifth place: with sincerity and a kind heart, no need to ask; supreme good fortune. Sincerely they will repay my kindness."

Takashima's judgment: the fifth line is a Kan line. Kan stands for sincerity, for the heart, for beauty, and also for descendants. Hence "sincerity and a kind heart"; beauty means good fortune; and "descendants" fits exactly a question about adopting an heir.

Increase is taking from above to add to what is below. For an adoption, the increase lies in the father giving and the son receiving. "Sincerity and a kind heart" is the father giving to the son with an honest heart; the boy will be glad to be his son, and one knows it is good without needing to ask. Having received the father's kindness, the son will surely repay it: carry on his father's work, continue his line and make the family flourish. Hence "sincerely they will repay my kindness". The old lament in the Book of Songs about being "called son by another man" need not be sung here.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the fifth line of Yi (Increase) is read.
The images come from Kan: the fifth line and its neighbours form Kan as an inner trigram, and Takashima takes Kan's associations, sincerity, heart, beauty, descendants, and matches each to the line and the question. "Descendants" fits the heir directly.
The hexagram is read as taking from above to add below: the father gives and the child gains.
The line's second half, "sincerely they will repay my kindness", becomes the son's future repayment. The whole reading rests on sincerity being answered with sincerity.

About the outcome

The text does not say how the adoption turned out. The judgment is almost all good wishes and encouragement: treat the child with sincerity, and sincerity will come back.

Applying it to your situation

"With sincerity and a kind heart, no need to ask": giving that comes from the heart does not need to ask about its fortune. Is what you are giving someone now given sincerely, or in expectation of a return?

Original: Takashima Kaemon, Takashima Ekidan (expanded edition), recorded by Yanagida Ikusaku, Chinese text by Wang Zhiben, 1901. Translation, notes and reflection by this site.

These are historical records kept by the diviner himself. The outcomes are his own account; this site uses them to study how the lines were read, not as evidence that divination predicts events.

Cast a hexagram · All of Takashima's cases · The 64 hexagrams