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I Ching Hexagrams

Coming to Meet

GOH
Gou

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Origin 1000 BCE to 350 BCE

King Wen hexagram 44, Coming to Meet (Gou), places Heaven above Wind: the wind blows everywhere under heaven, meeting all things, an image of a bold encounter. In its structure a single dark yin line has entered at the bottom beneath five strong yang lines, so it also warns of the return of an inferior or seductive power that seems small but will grow. Its Judgment says the maiden is powerful and one should not marry such a maiden: do not let the tempting but dangerous influence gain a footing. Its Image counsels the ruler to disseminate commands to the four quarters, meeting the world openly. As a reading it marks a fateful encounter or temptation, advising alertness and firm early action to prevent something small and insinuating from taking hold and spreading.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1000 BCE to 350 BCE 1Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Origin Period
1924 to 1950 2Tradition: Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching (1950)
Origin Period
400 BCE to 100 BCE 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Origin Period
This hexagram's dating spans three distinct historical layers: the divinatory judgment text of the Zhouyi core, composed in the early Western Zhou around 1000 BCE and recovered in the Mawangdui silk manuscripts; the Ten Wings commentary tradition that gave the hexagrams their later philosophical reading, compiled across the Warring States and Han periods by around 400 BCE; and the English title used here, coined in Richard Wilhelm's 1924 German translation and carried into English by Cary Baynes. 2
Attributed Author / Compiler
By tradition: the hexagram statements to King Wen of Zhou, the line statements to the Duke of Zhou, and the Ten Wings to Confucius. 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Attributed Author / Compiler
No named author. The core is a Western Zhou compilation with no compiler on record, and the ascription of the Ten Wings to Confucius was already being questioned inside the Chinese tradition by the eleventh century and is defended by no current scholarship. 3
Language
Classical Chinese 4
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Gou carries senses of meeting, encountering and coupling, and the judgement reads as an omen about an encounter of uncertain benefit, the marriage language being the concrete instance a Zhou diviner would have recorded. The structure supports it: one small thing has entered beneath five large ones. 4Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The maiden is powerful; one should not marry such a maiden. Read this way the hexagram is a warning about a woman who is too strong, and generations of English commentary have taken it as exactly that. 5Tradition: Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching (1950)
Identity
King Wen Number
44 1
Native Name
Gou 1
Attributions
Trigram Pairing
Heaven over Wind 1
Order
Position in the Sequence
33 2Tradition: Xiantian (Earlier Heaven) arrangement of Shao Yong
Position in the Sequence
44 2Tradition: King Wen sequence, the received order
Learn More
The Judgement Translators Cannot Agree About

Hexagram 44 contains the passage that best demonstrates why naming a translation matters, and the disagreement is not technical but substantive.

Wilhelm's judgement, in the standard English version, reads that the maiden is powerful and that one should not marry such a maiden. Legge's 1882 rendering is comparable in effect. Read that way the hexagram is a warning about a woman who is too strong, and generations of English-language commentary have taken it as exactly that, with results that range from the awkward to the indefensible.

Translators working from the Bronze Age stratum read it very differently. The name Gou carries senses of meeting, encountering and coupling, and the judgement can be read as an omen about an encounter, something met unexpectedly, of uncertain benefit, with the marriage language functioning as the concrete instance that a Zhou diviner would have used to record it. Rutt's 1996 version and other manuscript-informed translations take this route.

The structural reading supports the second. The figure is five yang lines with a single yin entering at the bottom: something small has arrived beneath something large and will grow. That is a statement about the beginning of an infiltration, and it is the exact counterpart of hexagram 24, where a single yang enters at the bottom of five yin.

The point to hold is that a great deal of what English readers take to be the I Ching's view of women is a translation decision made in the 1920s, transmitted through a single dominant English edition, and not obviously required by the Chinese.

Something Small That Has Just Arrived

Read structurally rather than through the marriage imagery, hexagram 44 has a clear and useful sense: an encounter with something that seems minor and is not.

The single broken line at the base is the whole content. It is one small thing under five large ones, and the hexagram's counsel throughout is that it should not be allowed to develop unattended. The Image tells the ruler to issue commands to the four quarters, which is an instruction about early and wide communication rather than about suppression.

The line texts sustain the theme. The first has the situation checked with a brake of bronze, and warns that letting it take its course brings misfortune, a lean pig that will certainly rage about. The second and fourth concern a fish in a container: contained, it is manageable; let out, it is not. The fifth has a melon covered with willow leaves, hidden lines, and something falling from heaven.

In practice the figure reads for the arrival of an influence, a person, an idea or a habit that is currently small and is going to matter. Whether that is welcome depends entirely on context, and the hexagram itself is more neutral than most commentaries make it.

The counterpart figure is hexagram 43, five yang lines with a single yin at the top: the same intrusion at the point of being expelled rather than at the point of entry. The two are inversions and the pairing is deliberate. Reading them together gives the full account: how such a thing enters, and what it takes to remove it once it has.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Corresponds To

Channel of Surrender, Human Design Channels

Channel of Surrender bridges Hexagram 26, Great Taming, and Hexagram 44, Coming to Meet, per its own iching-correspondence fact; this edge names the 44 side.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)
From Interference to Synarchy, Gene Keys

Gene Key 44, From Interference to Synarchy, corresponds to Hexagram 44, Coming to Meet, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source Gene Keys: Embracing Your Higher PurposeRichard Rudd
Instinctive Enterprise, Human Design Gates

Human Design Gate 44, Instinctive Enterprise, corresponds to Hexagram 44, Coming to Meet, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)

Disciplines That Use This

I Ching, Disciplines

The sixty four hexagrams of the Zhou Yi.

Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Originates in Language

Classical Chinese, Languages
Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Reached by Changing Lines

Conflict, Line 3, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Great Preponderance, Line 6, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Retreat, Line 2, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
The Cauldron, Line 5, Hexagram Lines
The Creative, Line 1, Hexagram Lines
The Gentle, Line 4, Hexagram Lines
Sources
1. I Ching: The Classic of Changes, translated with an introduction and commentary, the first English translation of the newly discovered second-century BC Mawangdui texts
Edward L. Shaughnessy (trans.), Ballantine Books, 1996On the dating and composition of the Zhou Yi core
2. Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China
Richard J. Smith, University of Virginia Press, 2008On Shao Yong's xiantian ordering of the sixty-four hexagramsView the Source
3. The Five "Confucian" Classics
Michael Nylan, Yale University Press, 2001On the authorship question and the critique of the traditional ascriptionsView the Source
4. Zhouyi: The Book of Changes
Richard Rutt (trans.), Curzon Press, 1996On Gou read as encounter, against the received marriage renderingView the Source
5. The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), Princeton University Press, 1980Hexagram 44, the Judgement and the line textsView the Source

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