Wind blowing across water: a hexagram of things dispersing, and of the rites, generosity and setting aside of self-interest that gather them together again.
The lower trigram is Kan ☵, water, whose quality is sinking into danger; the upper is Xun ☴, wind and wood, whose quality is entering. Zhu Xi sees wind passing over water, scattering everything apart. The hexagram is about gathering what has dispersed: the king goes to the temple, a boat of wood crosses the river, and correctness is the deep warning beneath it all.
Judgment (卦辭)
The text attached to the whole hexagram, read when no line is changing.
渙，亨。王假有廟，利涉大川，利貞。
Huan: success. The king goes to his ancestral temple. It is favorable to cross the great river. It is fitting to be correct and firm.
渙 means scattering. Zhu Xi explains the success by a change from Hexagram 53, Jian: a yang line comes down to the second place and gains the center, while a yin line goes up to the third and joins the fourth. Because the spirits of the ancestors have scattered, the king should go to the temple to gather them. Wood over water is the image of a boat, so crossing the great river is favorable. “It is fitting to be correct and firm” is, he says, a serious warning to whoever divines.
Image (大象)
The Image commentary (象傳) reads the whole hexagram from its two trigrams.
風行水上，渙。先王以享于帝立廟。
Wind moving over water: Huan. The former kings, accordingly, made offerings to the Lord Above and founded temples.
Zhu Xi's comment is six characters: both acts are ways of bringing together what has scattered. Against the wind that disperses everything over the water, the former kings set rites that unite, honoring the Lord Above and founding temples where the ancestors' spirits could be gathered.
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
用拯馬壯，吉。
Coming to the rescue, the horse is strong. Good fortune.
At the very start of scattering, rescue takes little effort, and here there is a strong horse as well, so the good fortune is clear. Zhu Xi notes that the first line has no power of its own to stem the scattering; it simply defers to the firm second line, and that is what gives it the image and the verdict.
Line 2, yang (九二)changing line in the shared reading
渙奔其机，悔亡。
Amid the scattering, it rushes to the stand it leans on. Regret vanishes.
A yang line in the second place would normally bring regret. But in a time of scattering it has come down into this place and is not left stranded there, so the regret vanishes. Zhu Xi glosses the image: the yang line is the one rushing, and the second place is the leaning stand (机) it reaches.
Line 3, yin (六三)changing line in the shared reading
渙其躬，无悔。
Scattering one's own self. No regret.
Soft and neither central nor correct, the third line has the look of someone wrapped up in themselves. Yet it sits in a yang place and its aim is to help the times, so it can scatter its private concerns and be free of regret. Zhu Xi adds that the four upper lines, from this one on, all use scattering to remedy scattering.
Line 4, yin (六四)changing line in the shared reading
渙其羣，元吉。渙有丘，匪夷所思。
Scattering one's faction: great good fortune. Scattered, it gathers into a hill, beyond what ordinary minds would conceive.
Yin in a yin place and directly below the fifth line, the fourth is the one charged with remedying the scattering. With no correspondent below, it gives the picture of someone who breaks up their own faction, which Zhu Xi calls greatly good. Breaking up small groups to form a large one, so that what was scattered gathers like a hill, is beyond what ordinary people would think of.
Line 5, yang (九五)changing line in the shared reading
渙汗其大號，渙王居，无咎。
Like sweat, his great commands go out. The king's stores are dispersed. No blame.
Firm, central and correct in the seat of honor, the fifth line can, in a time of scattering, send out its commands and distribute its stores, and so remedy the scattering without blame. As part of the wind trigram it carries the image of commands; like sweat, once out they do not return. For dispersing the king's stores, Zhu Xi recalls Lu Zhi (陸贄): disperse small reserves to build a great one.
Top line, yang (上九)changing line in the shared reading
渙其血去，逖出，无咎。
Harm is dispersed and goes; alarm is dispersed and one gets out. No blame.
Yang at the far end of scattering, the top line is able to get clear of it. 血 means harm, and Zhu Xi reads 逖, “distant,” as 惕, “alarm,” as in the fourth line of Hexagram 9, Xiao Xu. So the line says: scatter the harm and it is gone; scatter the alarm and one is out.
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): 用極 → 用拯