山天大畜 & decision

Read 山天大畜 (Great Taming) as a mirror, not an answer key. It does not foretell how a decision turns out; it offers a set of angles for looking at where you actually stand right now.

The judgment reads "利贞。不家食吉，利涉大川". 山天大畜 is built from a mountain above (艮) over heaven below (乾) — 天在山中，大畜；君子以多识前言往行，以畜其德. In everyday terms it sketches a kind of situational "weather" rather than a verdict. The questions below are drawn straight from that imagery — they are for you to answer, about a decision.

Turn the imagery of 山天大畜 into questions you ask yourself

1. 1The upper trigram of 山天大畜 is a mountain, the lower is heaven. In your decision right now, which part is like the "a mountain" above — outward-facing, responding to the world? And which is like the "heaven" below — your quieter, underlying ground?
2. 2If the judgment "利贞。不家食吉，利涉大川" were describing the thing you are weighing, which word would you reach for first, and why that one?
3. 3山天大畜 describes the "timing" of a situation. Is the choice in front of you one to move with — or one to pause on until you can see it clearly?
4. 4Read 山天大畜's line 3 as the "stepping-over" line. Looking back from three months out, would you want this decision to have rested on ground as steady as the heaven below — or to have been a rush to resolve it?
5. 5Is there one small thing in this choice you keep avoiding — like the a mountain standing above and outside in 山天大畜, the part you will have to answer to sooner or later?

山天大畜 gives you an angle on a decision, not a should-or-shouldn't. The real work is to carry these questions back into your own situation — the answer is in you, not in the hexagram. The classical line text above is quoted in Chinese; the real work sits in the everyday choices only you can see.

Yarrow Yi casts hexagrams deterministically (by time, by hand, or by coin) and treats the I Ching as a tool for self-awareness — not for predicting fortune.