Heaven and earth fail to meet and nothing flows between them. The text counsels the noble person to keep integrity quietly until the blockage can be turned over.
Earth ☷, whose quality is yielding, lies below heaven ☰, whose quality is strength, and the two do not meet. Zhu Xi reads pi as closed and blocked, the exact reverse of Hexagram 11, Tai, and calls it the hexagram of the seventh month. The time does not favor the noble person's upright course, yet the later lines see the blockage ease and finally overturn.
Judgment (卦辭)
The text attached to the whole hexagram, read when no line is changing.
否之匪人，不利君子貞，大往小來。
Pi. Blockage is not the way of humankind. It does not favor the noble person's correct firmness. The great goes, the small comes.
Pi means closed off and blocked. Being the exact reverse of Tai, Zhu Xi explains, it runs counter to the human way, and the time does not favor the noble person's upright course. Heaven has gone out to the outer place and earth has come in; he also derives the figure from Hexagram 53, Jian, with a yang line moving up to the fourth place and a yin line down to the third. He records a doubt too: some think the words “not the way of humankind” slipped in by mistake from the third line of Hexagram 8, Bi, and the fact that the Tuan commentary does not explain them seems to bear this out.
Image (大象)
The Image commentary (象傳) reads the whole hexagram from its two trigrams.
天地不交，否。君子以儉德辟難，不可榮以祿。
Heaven and earth do not meet: Pi. The noble person, accordingly, draws virtue inward to avoid hardship, and is not to be honored with rank and salary.
When heaven and earth do not meet, the noble person pulls inward. Zhu Xi explains: gather one's virtue in and do not let it show, so as to stay clear of the harm petty people can do; then no one can draw one in with offers of office and pay. In a blocked time, being unnoticed is its own protection.
Lines (爻辭)
From the bottom line to the top. In the line names, nine (九) marks a yang line and six (六) a yin line.
Line 1, yin (初六)changing line in the shared reading
拔茅茹，以其彙，貞吉亨。
Pull up cogon grass and the roots come up with it, together with its kind. Correct and firm: good fortune, success.
The picture from the first line of Tai returns, now describing the three yin lines: in a blocked time, petty people move up together with their kind. Zhu Xi notes that at this first line the bad has not yet taken shape, so the text urges correctness, which brings good fortune and success. Holding to that, he says, such a person changes and becomes a noble one.
Line 2, yin (六二)changing line in the shared reading
包承，小人吉，大人否亨。
Embracing and deferring. For the petty person, good fortune. For the great person: blockage, then success.
Soft but central and correct, the second line is a petty person who embraces and defers to the noble, and Zhu Xi calls that the petty person's own way to good fortune. A great person who draws it should do otherwise: calmly accept being blocked, and only then does the way go through. Being flattered and accommodated, he warns, is no reason to give up one's own stand.
Line 3, yin (六三)changing line in the shared reading
包羞。
Embracing shame.
Yin in a yang place, neither central nor correct, the third line is a petty person who means to harm the good but has not yet managed to. Zhu Xi reads “embracing shame” as that intent kept wrapped up inside. Because nothing has been done yet, the text adds no word of misfortune or blame. The line names a disposition before it becomes an act.
Line 4, yang (九四)changing line in the shared reading
有命无咎，疇離祉。
There is a mandate: no blame. Companions share in the blessing.
With the blockage past its midpoint, Zhu Xi sees a time when it is about to be relieved. The fourth line is yang in a yin place and does not press its firmness to the limit, so the text speaks of a mandate and no blame, and its companions, the three yang lines together, all receive blessings. Ming, he notes, means the mandate of heaven.
Line 5, yang (九五)changing line in the shared reading
休否，大人吉。其亡其亡，繫于苞桑。
Bringing the blockage to rest. For the great person, good fortune. “It may be lost, it may be lost!” Tie it to a clump of mulberry.
Firm, central and correct in the ruler's place, the fifth line can halt the blockage of the time, which Zhu Xi calls the work of a great person; a great person who draws it meets good fortune. Yet the text still cries out that all may be lost and ties its hopes to a mulberry thicket. Zhu Xi says caution is required even here and points to the Xici zhuan's remarks. Ending a blocked time is no reason to stop guarding against its return.
Top line, yang (上九)changing line in the shared reading
傾否，先否後喜。
The blockage overturned. First blocked, afterward joy.
At the far end of the blockage stands a firm yang line, and Zhu Xi sees in it the strength to tip the obstruction over. His reading follows the text closely: first the block, then gladness. A closed time does not stay closed forever; at its limit it can be turned over.
If you drew this hexagram
Which text to read depends on how many lines are changing. With none, read the judgment; with one, read that line; with more, follow Zhu Xi's rules in the Yixue qimeng.
Text: Zhu Xi, Yuanben Zhouyi benyi (原本周易本義), Siku Quanshu Wenyuange copy, as transcribed by the Kanseki Repository (KR1a0031), corrected and punctuated by K-magpie. Translation and explanation: written by AI (Claude) from Zhu Xi's commentary and checked against the text and commentary. Sources and the list of corrections are on the Today's Hexagram page.
Characters corrected in this hexagram — Line 1, yin (初六): 拔茅茹以其彙征吉亨 → 拔茅茹以其彙貞吉亨 · image: 禄 → 祿