I Ching Hexagram 26
Hexagram 26: Da Chu (大畜)
Composed of 乾 (Qian) below and 艮 (Gen) above · great-taming · restraint · accumulation · reserve
The Judgment
大畜：利贞，不家食吉，利涉大川。
Da Chu: it is beneficial to hold firm. Eating at home rather than elsewhere is good, and it is favourable to cross the great water. The order matters - store the strength first, then spend it on something large.
Translation notes
- 大畜: Wilhelm renders "Great Taming" — 畜 is one graph for store up, raise, breed, and tame, and the 彖 takes it toward the first of these: 大畜, 大刚健也, 刚健笃实, 日新其德 - great, strong, solid, renewing its virtue daily. The image settles it. Heaven is inside the mountain, so what is held is force in reserve, and the classical instruction is to stock the storehouse with the good words and old conduct of others. English Taming makes a reader think of control, and 六五 explicitly declines that reading - the boar's tusk looks fierce but the boar has been made harmless.
- 利涉大川: Wilhelm renders "favorable to cross the great water" — This is among the strongest approvals of a large undertaking in the judgment sequence, and it appears again in Hexagram 40 and Hexagram 59. It is not a promise that the crossing is safe - it says that prepared, stored capacity is the condition under which a large crossing becomes possible at all. The preceding phrase 不家食吉 is best read the same way, through its image 养贤, nourishing the worthy: the ox raised inside the gate is not yet pasturing, so the point is unused nourishment rather than bad luck in the house.
The judgment above quotes the classical Chinese of the Zhou Yi (public domain); the English gloss and modern reading are our own. Compare with James Legge's The I Ching (Sacred Books of the East, Vol 16) , 1882 (public domain).
Quick Answers
Is hexagram 26 (Da Chu) good or bad?
It is one of the strongest hexagrams for large undertakings, and the approval is genuine - the judgment says twice that it is favourable. What it asks for in exchange is order: hold firm, do not keep the nourishment to yourself, and build before you cross. The bad readings come from the two early lines, where an empty store and a stalled vehicle both look like misfortune and are actually just unfinished preparation.
What does hexagram 26 (Da Chu) mean in love?
It means the relationship benefits from reserves being built and spent, not hoarded. If your romantic life is entirely contained inside the house, the judgment's phrase about not eating at home is a nudge to go out into the world. Inside a relationship, it favours being the steadier and better-resourced partner - and 六4 says interrupt a rising pattern while it is still small enough to hold.
What happens when line 4 of hexagram 26 (Da Chu) changes?
六四 turning yang gives Hexagram 14 (Da You, Great Possession). The present line is the bar across a young calf's horns: a rising impulse or a developing habit gets stopped while it is still cheap to stop, and the text calls that great good. The changed picture is what the restraint was for - the thing you held back turns into a genuine abundance, and the restraint that once looked like refusing to act reads as the reason you still had it later.
The Six Lines
Read your line of interest below. Lines are read from the bottom (line 1) to the top (line 6). A changing line means the hexagram is transforming — see the related hexagrams at the bottom.
初九
有厉，利已。There is danger; it is beneficial to stop. Changing the bottom line turns Da Chu into Hexagram 18 (Gu, Decay).
You are at the start of a large store with nothing yet in it, and the risk is in the first move. This line says stop - not as a failure of nerve but as the correct reading of your position, since the whole hexagram is about acquiring before spending.
九二
舆说輹。The carriage sheds its linchpin. Changing line 2 turns Da Chu into Hexagram 22 (Bi-Grace).
The axle pin comes out and the vehicle stops. Nothing crashes - the journey simply halts, and the missing part is small. When your plans stop moving, look for a small component nobody was tracking rather than assuming the whole design is wrong.
九三
良马逐，利艰贞。曰闲舆卫，利有攸往。A strong horse runs and presses on; it is beneficial to hold firm in difficulty. One may say: guard the vehicle and its escort. It is advantageous to have somewhere to go. Changing line 3 turns Da Chu into Hexagram 41 (Sun, Decrease).
Speed is available to you here, and the line pairs it with the sentence about guarding the chariot and its escort. The strength here is real, and so is the exposure - build the protection around the work before you use the pace.
六四
童牛之牿，元吉。A young calf with a bar across its horns; great good. Changing line 4 turns Da Chu into Hexagram 14 (Da You, Great Possession).
The classical note for this line is simply 制动 - to stop the movement - and it is done on a calf, before the horn is hard. The best time to interrupt a rising impulse or a developing habit is while it is still small and cheap to hold.
六五
豮豕之牙，吉。The tusks of a gelded boar; good. Changing line 5 turns Da Chu into Hexagram 9 (Xiao Chu, Small Accumulation).
The teeth are still there and they look exactly as dangerous as ever, but the boar cannot use them. The line is a warning against frightening yourself with appearances - and against wasting your store on a threat that has already been rendered harmless.
上九
何天之衢，亨。How great the heaven-road! It succeeds. Changing the top line turns Da Chu into Hexagram 11 (Tai, Peace).
After all the storing, the road opens and it is wide enough to be called a road of heaven. The store was not for its own sake; the top line is the moment the reserve is finally put to a use that justifies it.
Hexagram 26 in Love, Career & Decisions
Love & Relationships
Judgment: a build-up phase, where the reserve matters more than the move. Single: the governing instruction is 不家食吉 - if your whole life happens inside the house and the relationship is sustained on your own reserves, that is the sign to go out, because nourishment that is never spent is not accumulating. 六四 is the timing note: interrupt a new attachment or a bad habit while it is still a calf, because the version with the hard horn is not manageable. Partnered: a good phase for being the larger reservoir - time, steadiness, actual resources rather than charm. 初九 is the honest caution: at the beginning, danger, and the correct move is to stop.
Put one thing you have been holding back into the relationship this month, and do not force a decision you have not finished preparing for.
Career & Work
Judgment: strongly favours preparation, restraint, and reserve, and it is a good period for acquiring capability rather than spending it. The reading fits a qualification, a language, a technical stack, a patient build, or a runway. Signal: 九三 pairs real speed with the instruction to guard the vehicle and its escort, which in practice means building a team, a sponsor, or one specific person who answers the phone before you use the pace. 六四 says lock in early - a new hire, a new process, a young habit, held while it is still small. 六五 warns against spending energy on a threat that only looks dangerous.
Pick the one capability you will still be using in five years, fund it properly this quarter, and name the people who will stand behind you when you go.
Making a Decision
Yes - and this is one of the more encouraging judgments for a large undertaking, with two conditions stated in the text itself. Proceed if you can hold firm, which means not re-opening the terms weekly, and if you are genuinely being used rather than kept. The condition behind 利涉大川 is preparation that has already happened, so the test is simple: would you be doing this without the store, and if the answer is no, you are early rather than late. The guardrail is 初九 - danger, and it is beneficial to stop - which applies most often to people who have the capability and not yet the substance. The opposite failure is 九2, a stalled plan whose real problem is one small missing piece.
Proceed on the strength of what you have already built, and before you commit, name the one component whose absence would stop the whole thing.
Health & Wellbeing
Tone: long-horizon and accumulative. Da Chu reads as the body as a reserve being built deliberately - sleep, strength, capacity, the slow construction of something you intend to use later rather than spend tonight. It suits patient routines that hold for years and suits restraint against the impulse to prove something quickly, which is the 初九 warning in physical form. The strain in this hexagram is that a storehouse nobody opens starts to feel like a burden, so the reading favours using the reserve in reasonable amounts and not hoarding it out of anxiety. The great water in the judgment is the crossing after the build, not during it. For entertainment and reflection only, not medical advice.
Keep one long-horizon routine going and do nothing dramatic to it, and use some of whatever you have built instead of storing it all.
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