42. Increase
Increase is hexagram 42 of the 64 in the I Ching, also known as the Book of Changes (in Chinese Yì, 益).
Increase is favorable only when what grows truly feeds the right direction.
42. Increase益 · YìIncrease is favorable only when what grows truly feeds the right direction.Hexagram 42 (Increase) often shows up around something is being added, going through growth or investing in something. At its core: Increase is favorable only when what grows truly feeds the right direction.
Where this hexagram often fits.
Situations
- something is being added
- going through growth
- investing in something
- having the wind at your back
- getting more resources
- making the most of a windfall
- receiving a boost
- knowing where to channel growth
Questions people ask
- Where am I letting this growth flow?
- Does this feed what matters or just my own self-importance?
- How do I make good use of a windfall?
- When does growth tip over into greed?
What is often at play
- excitement about growth
- temptation to want more
- drive to expand
- fear of losing the gain
What this asks for
- aim growth at what matters
- receive without smallness
- make it fruitful instead of hoarding
- keep proportion in good times
Also searched as
- Increase
- Gain
- Growth
- Investment
- Boost
- Blessing
- Prosperity
Core image
This hexagram is about gain, reinforcement, a current running in your favor. Something is added: means, influence, footing, sheer vitality. But the question is not only whether more arrives. The question is where that surplus flows, and what it makes possible by flowing there.
Tension
The tension sits in the lure of growth itself. People trust increase easily as long as it confirms something they were already attached to. But this hexagram asks for the right use of gain, not just the having of it. Growth that only feeds the inflated self turns into loss before long.
Distortion
Increase goes wrong when it becomes greed, the urge to expand, the swelling of the self. Then the size grows while the rightness shrinks. What looks like a lot has gone thin on the inside.
Stance
Use the gain to nourish, to mend, to strengthen what truly needs to grow. Don't let the surplus pile up out of fear; let it move toward where it does living work. Good increase does not make you fat — it makes you fruitful.
Closing line
What truly increases enlarges not only what you hold, but what you are able to do.
Plain-language entrances.
Plain-language entrances to this hexagram. They help with search and recognition, while the reading itself remains rooted in the text and your question.
Hexagram 42 - Increase
Hexagram 42 - Increase gives language to a recognisable I Ching pattern. Read the linked hexagram as the source, not as a separate interpretation.
Changing lines of hexagram 42
- Line 1. At the start there is a strong push toward increase. That is favorable as long as the movement stays in service of something larger than your own haste. A good beginning will not carry cheap self-enlargement.
- Line 2. Here increase arrives as something you can barely force, but must receive without smallness. The line asks for trust in a real gain. What is given does not need to be held under suspicion.
- Line 3. At this point something grows under the pressure of circumstance. That can bear fruit, but only with upright use of the surplus. Otherwise the gain goes cloudy again at once.
- Line 4. Here increase is bound to responsibility in the middle of the field. You grow not for yourself alone, but for the sake of order. That gives the expansion weight.
- Line 5. This line shows the widest form of increase: a center that does good and so draws support without extorting it. Here growth works as blessing, not as claim.
- Line 6. When all you still want is more, increase loses its ground. The hunger to receive stays on while the power to use it well drains away. This line warns against growth with no inner measure.
The form beneath hexagram 42
Derived from the structure of the I Ching — not an interpretation, but the shape underneath it. The reading above remains the source.
- Balance. Hexagram 42 is in full balance — 3 yang lines and 3 yin lines.
- Line pattern. From bottom to top: yang, yin, yin, yin, yang, yang.
- Movement. 63 possible paths of change run from this image — every combination of moving lines leads to a different hexagram.
Built from
Hexagram 42 is built from two trigrams, the natural forces of the I Ching.
Related hexagrams
Sources & reading
Our text is our own, ratified reading of the canonical I Ching — source → human → pattern → fitting movement. It is not a reproduction of the translations above, and not prediction, psychology, or new-age. The reference translations serve to calibrate; protected prose is not taken over.
- Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes — The I Ching or Book of Changes. symbolic-philosophical, with the Ten Wings — the most influential Western edition.
- James Legge — The Yî King (Sacred Books of the East). scholarly-philological (public domain).
Read what is in motion in your situation.
A hexagram only takes on meaning in relation to your own question. Ask one and read what appears.