Overview
The Well — 水风井 (Jing) — the wellspring.
The Hexagram
- Upper Trigram: Kan Water
- Lower Trigram: Xun Wind
- Chinese Name: 水风井 (Jing)
- English Name: The Well
- Key Meanings: The wellspring. Water over wood — unchanging depth that nourishes all.
The Judgment (Guà Cí)
The Well. The town may be changed, but the well cannot be changed. It neither decreases nor increases.
The Image (Xiàng Cí)
Water over wood: the image of the Well. Thus the superior man encourages the people at their work and exhorts them to help one another.
Symbolism Deep Dive
Water over Wind/Wood. Water (Kan, depth, the source) rises over Wood/Wind (Xun, the bucket, the mechanism). The well is the I Ching’s metaphor for infrastructure — the unchanging source that serves changing needs. ‘The town may be changed’ — populations shift, administrations come and go — ‘but the well cannot be changed.’ The water level is constant: ’neither decreases nor increases.’ The superior man ’encourages the people at their work’ — maintain the infrastructure (the well rope, the bucket) so that the source remains accessible.
Modern Application
Jing addresses foundational resources: your core skills, your health, your key relationships, your values. These are your well. External circumstances (the town) change constantly. But if the well is maintained, you always have water. Modern application: identify your irreducible foundation. What skills, relationships, and practices sustain you regardless of job title or market conditions? Invest in maintaining these. A well with a broken rope is as useless as no well at all. The infrastructure matters as much as the source.
Key Themes
- Each theme here extracted from the hexagram’s core teaching
“The I Ching Decoded” video series — Day 52.