In love
Delicacy of gestures and words is favored: create beautiful occasions, without letting the setting stand in for sincerity.
Hexagram 22
I Ching hexagram 22: Grace (Bi)
Bi, Grace, is the hexagram of beautiful form: what is adorned illuminates, but must not hide the essential.
- adornment
- grace
- simplicity
The essentials
Bi at a glance
For you, Bi invites you to care for form without forgetting substance: the beauty of a gesture counts when it serves what it says.
A strength
A taste for beautiful form and grace, which gives what is simple presence and clarity.
Something to watch
Letting appearance take the place of substance: beautiful wrapping does not replace what is inside.
- What it advises
- Care for form with simplicity, illuminate without masking, and reserve great decisions for more substance.
- Its opposite
- 47. Oppression (Kun)
The situation
Bi speaks of adornment. Fire lights up the mountain: light gives the mass its contours, its grace, its relief. The ancient text says that adornment is effective in small things, but is not enough for great undertakings.
The hexagram invites you to recognize the value of form: a way of speaking, presenting, celebrating makes things more alive. It also asks you not to stop there, for adornment is only a means.
Its lines rise from a light adornment to the most stripped-down one, and the highest, plain white, concludes that the truest beauty is the one that hides nothing.
The image: the Mountain above Fire
- AboveMountain: the stillness that steadies
- BelowFire: clarity that clings
Fire at the foot of the Mountain: a gentle light illuminates without upsetting. For the commentaries, it serves to settle ordinary affairs with clarity, but not to decide great causes.
Consult the I Ching
Throw three coins six times: your hexagram, the lines that change, and the direction they point to.
Free, no account · nothing is sent · no predictions
The six lines
- 1st line (bottom) · solidAdorning your feet: you give up the carriage to go on foot. The choice of simplicity wins out over show.
- 2nd line · brokenAdorning your beard: the adornment follows what it decorates. Finery is only an accompaniment.
- 3rd line · solidAdorned, as if showered with favors: staying firm and upright brings good fortune. Grace is fortunate when it is held.
- 4th line · brokenAdorned, but in plain white, as on a winged white horse: the impulse is sincere, this is not a raider but a suitor.
- 5th line · brokenAdorned by hills and gardens, with a small roll of silk: you seem stingy, but the end is fortunate.
- 6th line (top) · solidPlain white as the only adornment: no blame. Here, simplicity completes form.
Bi in your life
At work
Presentation, image, and care for detail are highlighted, as long as they serve solid content.
The I Ching helps you reflect on how to act: it does not say what is coming.
How is it built?
- Character
- 賁 (bì)
- Number
- 22 in the King Wen sequence
- Trigrams
- Mountain (艮) above, Fire (離) below
- Inner hexagram
- 40. Deliverance (Jie) (lines 2 to 4 and 3 to 5)
- Read upside down
- 21. Biting Through (Shi ke)
- Symbol
- ䷕ (U+4DD5)
The English names are the usual renderings of the Chinese characters; the texts rely on the Chinese and on early public-domain translations (Legge, 1882; Philastre, 1885–1893).
Sources
- Wikipedia (English), “List of hexagrams of the I Ching,” read on October 15, 2026: numbers, characters, pinyin, lower and upper trigrams.
- Wikipedia (English), “Bagua,” read on October 15, 2026: lines of the eight trigrams, from bottom to top.
- James Legge (1815–1897), The Yî King, Sacred Books of the East, vol. XVI, 1882 (Wikisource): public domain.
- Paul-Louis-Félix Philastre (1837–1902), Le Yi King ou Livre des changements de la dynastie des Tsheou, Annales du Musée Guimet, 1885–1893: public domain (the author died more than 70 years ago).
Frequently asked questions about hexagram 22
What does hexagram 22 of the I Ching mean?
Hexagram 22, Bi, means grace: the grace of form that illuminates substance, provided it does not become an end in itself.
What does Bi become upside down?
It is hexagram 21, Shi Ke, Biting Through. It does the opposite: after adornment, you return to the heart of things, to cut through an obstacle.