Hexagram 31: Influence Changing to Hexagram 26: The Taming Power of the Great

I Ching casting meaning · Xian → Da Chu

Bank the charge. The Taming Power of the Great takes everything Influence attracted — attention, desire, momentum, people — and asks you to hold it in reserve rather than spend it. This feels wrong at first; the pull wants expression. But power stored is power multiplied, and this hexagram favors those who can contain great energy without leaking it. Feed the reserve daily: study, train, deepen the relationship slowly, let the project gather mass behind the scenes. Control the strong impulse instead of obeying it. When the release finally comes — and it comes to those who waited — it lands with the weight of everything you didn't waste.

A casting that moves from Influence into The Taming Power of the Great means the situation you asked about is not static — it begins as one pattern and resolves into another. The first hexagram describes where you stand; the second describes where events are carrying you.

Highlighted in red: lines 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 are moving — counted from the bottom. A moving line is where the change is actually happening: it flips from yang to yin or back, and that flip is what turns Influence into The Taming Power of the Great.

The situation: Hexagram 31, Influence

Mutual attraction. Influence works through openness, not pressure.

A lake resting on a mountain — stillness below, joy above, and between them a pull that needs no force. This is the courtship hexagram, in love and everywhere else: real influence is magnetic, not mechanical. You don't push people toward you; you make yourself open enough that they move on their own. That means dropping the script, the sales technique, the manufactured urgency. Receptivity is doing the work here. Respond genuinely to what approaches you, and approach what genuinely moves you. Connections made this way hold; connections engineered this week dissolve by next month.

Structurally, Influence is Mountain below Lake — the inner state meeting the outer condition. That pairing is the lens for everything above.

Where it's heading: Hexagram 26, The Taming Power of the Great

Great power held in reserve. Store strength for the right release.

The changed hexagram is the trajectory, not a verdict. As the moving lines settle, the energy of Influence gives way to The Taming Power of the Great (Da Chu) — Heaven below Mountain. The advice that belongs to this outcome: Hold your strength back and feed it daily. You're loading, not stalling.