I Ching Hexagram 31
Hexagram 31: Xian (咸)
Composed of 艮 (Gen) below and 兑 (Dui) above · influence · courtship · mutual-attraction · feeling
The Judgment
咸：亨，利贞，取女吉。
Xian (xián), Influence: the lake above the mountain - the two images that have always drawn each other. It succeeds, correct conduct is favourable, and taking the girl as your wife is auspicious. The classical picture is courtship, and the point is that something in you moves before the argument has even started.
Translation notes
- 咸: Wilhelm renders "Influence" — 咸 in the Book of Songs means all or everything, and the classical gloss for this hexagram is 感 - to move, to be moved, to affect. The name is the name of a feeling, not of a technique. Influence is a fair English label because it sounds like persuasion, but the Great Image removes any doubt with 无心, no heart, no calculation: the mountain does not decide to feel the lake.
- 取女吉: Wilhelm renders "It is favorable to take a wife" — This is not advice about marriage. It is the traditional courtship image - the young man who follows the girl down to the lake, marries her, and the pairing proves auspicious - and it is included to establish that this hexagram describes desire working as it should, between two people, before anything has been formalised. Read that way it is a description of attraction, not a permission slip.
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 31 (Xian) good or bad?
Good. It is one of the few hexagrams whose judgment ends with 吉 and attaches no condition to it - it succeeds, correct conduct is favourable, courtship is auspicious. The only soft spot is in how you handle the feeling once you have it: 九3 punishes the person who simply follows every impulse, and the top line ends in talk, which the text declines to recommend.
What does hexagram 31 (Xian) mean in love?
It means the attraction is real and it will not be improved by technique. The hexagram walks the feeling from the toe to the tongue, and the message is that it moves before you decide anything. Practically it favours going toward people you are drawn to rather than waiting for a sign, and it warns against 九3, following whatever moves you last.
What happens when line 6 of hexagram 31 (Xian) changes?
上六 turning yang gives Hexagram 33 (Dun, Retreat). The present line is influence that has run all the way to the tongue, so the feeling now exists mostly as conversation. The changed picture is timely withdrawal, which is a clean answer: the conversation about the feeling is the point at which pulling back says more than continuing. It fits a situation where you have been talking about it for weeks, nothing has happened, and the next move is to stop talking.
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.
初六
咸其拇。The feeling moves the great toe. Changes into Hexagram 49 (Ge) if this line is the changing line.
Influence begins in the foot, the lowest and least expressive part of you. The first stir of attraction is physical and wordless, which means it is not yet a declaration - what moves the toe is real, and it is also not ready to be a decision.
六二
咸其腓，凶，居吉。The feeling moves the calf; bad, but staying quiet is good. Changes into Hexagram 28 (Da Guo) if this line is the changing line.
The calf is the muscle that tenses for movement and cannot move on its own. So the feeling is strong here and cannot be acted on directly, which is why the line separates the impulse from the instruction: notice the pull, do not launch on it.
九三
咸其股，执其随，往吝。The feeling moves the thigh, and it holds on to whatever follows it; going out brings embarrassment. Changes into Hexagram 45 (Cui) if this line is the changing line.
The thigh is where the leg attaches, so it cannot step without the rest of the body. Here you are caught following whatever reacts to you rather than choosing, and the verdict for going ahead is 吝 - regret and embarrassment. Watch for the moment you stop leading your own impulse and start being dragged by it.
九四
贞吉悔亡，憧憧往来，朋从尔思。Correct and good, remorse gone; if you go back and forth restless in mind, friends follow your thinking. Changes into Hexagram 39 (Jian) if this line is the changing line.
The best line in the hexagram, and it is built on a contrast: steady conduct with no regret, set against a mind shuttling in circles that then recruits other people. Keep your footing still and the social consequences of the overthinking stop. That is the practical content of this line and it is unusually useful.
九五
咸其脢，无悔。The feeling moves the flesh of the back, where there is no muscle; no remorse. Changes into Hexagram 62 (Xiao Guo) if this line is the changing line.
The 脢 is the soft part of the back with no muscle in it, so it can only receive contact, never initiate it. This is the ruler's position here: the influence has travelled all the way up and is now being met rather than expressed, and the result is no remorse. Influence at its best is what you receive, not what you project.
上六
咸其辅、颊、舌。The feeling moves the teeth, the cheeks, the tongue. Changes into Hexagram 33 (Dun) if this line is the changing line.
The hexagram ends in the mouth. The feeling has finished its journey through the body and arrives as talk, and the line stops without comment - the traditional way of saying that at this stage it is only talk. It also names what talking does to a face, which is a fair warning about the conversation you are about to have.
Hexagram 31 in Love, Career & Decisions
Love & Relationships
Judgment: yes - this is the hexagram of attraction, and it reads well both for starting something and for what you are already in. Single: 初六 and 六2 describe the early stages honestly, an impulse that shows in the body before it can be spoken, so the hexagram does not expect you to have this under control at all. Partnered: 九4 is the line to aim at, steady conduct that does not let a restless mind loop pull your partner into it, while 九3 is the trap of following every impulse that comes at you without selecting any. 九5 says the good things arrive through receiving rather than persuading.
Wait for the conversation to come to you instead of sending the message first, and check how many times you have already replayed the exchange.
Career & Work
Judgment: leverage through relationships, not through force. Lake over mountain in a workplace is the client who likes you, the sponsor who believes you, the collaboration that starts because two people find each other interesting - and the hexagram is explicit that this is not engineered, since the image says 无心, without any heart for it. Signal: 九5 is the career line to read, the feeling arriving at the soft part of the back, which is being chosen for rather than campaigning for. The risk is the top line, where attraction turns into office politics, and 九4's warning about restless thinking is how that happens.
Pick one person whose opinion would actually change your options, give them a genuine reason to be on your side, then let the relationship do its work over months.
Making a Decision
Yes, when the decision involves other people and the case is emotional rather than arithmetic. The judgment says it succeeds and that a courtship is auspicious, which is a description of a decision made on feeling and made correctly - so if your case is genuinely about attraction, trust it. Hold when you are choosing on a comparison of measured advantages, because that is a different hexagram's job. Watch 六2, which says the impulse is strong and must not be acted on yet, and 九3, which warns against being pulled by whatever moved last.
Proceed on your read of the person, and only once you have stopped revising the decision in your head every day.
Health & Wellbeing
Tone: warm and slightly restless. Xian is about attraction, and read as a wellbeing picture it describes energy that responds to other people - it lifts around someone you like and drops around people who drain you, which is real and worth treating as information rather than as a flaw in your stability. The text's advice is oddly restrained: 九4 says hold still and let other people stop following your thoughts, and the top line says beware the talk, which for wellbeing usually means the loop you get into at night. For entertainment and reflection only, not medical advice.
Notice which specific people reliably drain you and which restore you, and remove one draining arrangement from your week.
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