Hexagram 42: Increase Changing to Hexagram 48: The Well

I Ching casting meaning · Yi → Jing

Increase is discovering depth — The Well, where the growth stops being about scale metrics and becomes about being a renewable source. The well doesn't move and doesn't run dry: your expanded operation, properly tended, becomes something others draw from sustainably. Maintain the core — the culture, the craft, the practices that made the growth possible. A neglected well silts up regardless of how impressive the surrounding infrastructure became. Also: finish what you start. Growth that never delivers value is a well with a broken rope — deep capacity nobody can access. The whole point of expanding was to draw something up. Now draw.

A casting that moves from Increase into The Well 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, 3 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 Increase into The Well.

The situation: Hexagram 42, Increase

True increase. Wind and thunder multiply each other.

Wind and thunder feeding each other — energy that multiplies instead of canceling out. This is one of the great draws: genuine increase, the kind where resources, opportunities, and momentum all rise together. The classic instruction has a spine to it, though: increase flows to people who use it well. See good, copy it fast. See your own faults, cut them faster. This is also the season to do something significant with the surplus — invest in people, take the meaningful risk, fund the thing that matters. Increase hoarded curdles; increase circulated compounds. You're being given more because the universe expects you to move it.

Structurally, Increase is Thunder below Wind — the inner state meeting the outer condition. That pairing is the lens for everything above.

Where it's heading: Hexagram 48, The Well

The well doesn't move. Deep value serves everyone who draws.

The changed hexagram is the trajectory, not a verdict. As the moving lines settle, the energy of Increase gives way to The Well (Jing) — Wind below Water. The advice that belongs to this outcome: Maintain your deep source — and finish drawing before you celebrate.