天山遁 & decision

Read 天山遁 (Retreat) 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 "亨，小利贞". 天山遁 is built from heaven above (乾) over a mountain below (艮) — 天下有山，遁；君子以远小人，不恶而严. 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 天山遁 into questions you ask yourself

1. 1The upper trigram of 天山遁 is heaven, the lower is a mountain. In your decision right now, which part is like the "heaven" above — outward-facing, responding to the world? And which is like the "a mountain" below — your quieter, underlying ground?
2. 2If the judgment "亨，小利贞" were describing the thing you are weighing, which word would you reach for first, and why that one?
3. 3天山遁 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 天山遁'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 a mountain below — or to have been a rush to resolve it?
5. 5Is there one small thing in this choice you keep avoiding — like the heaven standing above and outside in 天山遁, the part you will have to answer to sooner or later?

天山遁 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.