Fire high above heaven lights everything below: great holdings gathered around a humble ruler. The text ties success to virtue, restraint and honoring the good.
Heaven ☰, whose quality is strength, lies below fire ☲, bright and clinging. Fire in the sky shines on everything, and a single soft line in the ruler's seat is answered by all five firm lines. Zhu Xi reads da you as possessing much, and sees a way that goes through when strength and brightness meet in a humble ruler who is in step with heaven.
Judgment (卦辭)
The text attached to the whole hexagram, read when no line is changing.
大有，元亨。
Da You. Supremely good, and things go through.
Da you means that what one holds is great. Fire stands above heaven, so its light reaches everywhere, and the single yin line in the ruler's seat, central and soft, is answered by all five yang lines. With strength below and brightness above, holding the place of honor and in step with heaven, Zhu Xi sees a way that goes through. Here he reads yuan as great goodness: for one whose virtue matches, the outcome is greatly good and things go through. Abundance, in this reading, rests on character as much as on possession.
Image (大象)
The Image commentary (象傳) reads the whole hexagram from its two trigrams.
火在天上，大有。君子以遏惡揚善，順天休命。
Fire above heaven: Da You. The noble person, accordingly, curbs evil and raises up good, in keeping with heaven's gracious mandate.
Fire high in the sky lights a wide area, the image of great holdings. Zhu Xi warns that when holdings are vast and nothing orders them, discord and wrongdoing sprout among them. Heaven's mandate holds good and no evil, so curbing the bad and lifting the good is how one follows it; the same applies, he adds, when one turns to oneself.
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, yang (初九)changing line in the shared reading
无交害，匪咎，艱則无咎。
Not yet touched by harm, so there is no fault. Treat things as hard, and there is no blame.
Even in a time of plenty, the first line is a yang line at the bottom with no ties above, at the very start of things, and not yet caught up in anything harmful. Zhu Xi asks what blame there could be. Still, he says, it must keep a sense of difficulty to stay blameless, and he reads the line as that caution. Ease at the start is no reason to treat things lightly.
Line 2, yang (九二)changing line in the shared reading
大車以載，有攸往，无咎。
A large cart for carrying. There is somewhere to go. No blame.
Firm and central in the lower trigram, the second line is answered by the soft ruler above. Zhu Xi sees a large cart able to bear a heavy load: with that capacity it can set off somewhere and incur no blame. As often, he says the prognosis fits only one who has the virtue it pictures. The image measures a person by what they can carry.
Line 3, yang (九三)changing line in the shared reading
公用亨于天子，小人弗克。
The duke presents offerings to the Son of Heaven. The petty person is not capable of it.
Following the Chunqiu zhuan, Zhu Xi reads heng here as presenting tribute at court; in early writing, he explains, the words for going through, for offering, and for cooking were all written with this one character. Firm and correct at the top of the lower trigram, the third line is a feudal lord, and the humble ruler above welcomes the worthy. A petty person, lacking firmness and correctness, cannot fill this role even if the line is drawn.
Line 4, yang (九四)changing line in the shared reading
匪其彭，无咎。
Holding back from its full abundance. No blame.
Zhu Xi admits that the sound and meaning of peng are unclear; he cites Cheng Yi's view that it means abundance and says that is probably right. The fourth line is firm and sits right beside a soft ruler, which puts it under suspicion of overstepping. Because it rests in a soft place, it does not push its abundance to the limit, and so incurs no blame. He reads the line as a caution.
Line 5, yin (六五)changing line in the shared reading
厥孚交如，威如，吉。
Its sincerity passes both ways. With dignity: good fortune.
In a time of great holdings, the fifth line is soft, yielding and central in the seat of honor; it opens itself to the worthy second line, and those above and below turn to it, so trust passes in both directions. Yet a ruler's way calls for firmness, Zhu Xi says, and too much softness lets things go slack, so dignity must balance it. This, too, he calls a warning.
Top line, yang (上九)changing line in the shared reading
自天祐之，吉，无不利。
Help comes from heaven. Good fortune; there is nothing that is not favorable.
Firm at the very top, this line nonetheless defers to the soft ruler below. Zhu Xi describes it as walking in good faith, keeping to compliance and honoring the worthy: full without spilling over. That, in his reading, is why the text speaks of heaven's help and finds nothing unfavorable. The highest place is held here by one who knows how to bow.
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.