Upper trigram
☳
Thunder (Zhen) above
Arousal and shock.
FamilyEldest son
ElementWood
Hexagram 32 of 64
I Ching hexagram 32 ☳☴ Duration
I Ching hexagram 32, Duration, is thunder above, wind below. In brief: endurance through consistency. Counting from the bottom, its solid lines sit in places 2, 3 and 4 and its broken lines in 1, 5 and 6.
- Lines, bottom up
- ⚋⚊⚊⚊⚋⚋ 011100 · 1 = solid
- Trigrams
- Thunder over Wind Zhen ☳ / Xun ☴
- Every line changed
- № 42 Increase
- In Legge, 1882
- p. 125 Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16
Legge, The Yî King, 1882.
Lower trigram
☴
Wind (Xun) below
Gentle penetration.
FamilyEldest daughter
ElementWood
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What the text says, in plain terms
The Judgement and the Image of hexagram 32
The Judgement
Duration: staying the course. Lasting success comes from consistency that still renews itself, not from rigid sameness.
The Image
Thunder and wind, always paired. The lesson is to stand firm in your direction without becoming inflexible.
A summary of meaning written for this site, not a translation — James Legge’s 1882 translation of the full text follows below. How the Judgement and the Image are read, and which translations to use →
Primary source
Hexagram 32 in James Legge’s translation
“Hăng indicates successful progress and no error (in what it denotes). But the advantage will come from being firm and correct; and movement in any direction whatever will be advantageous.”
“(The trigram representing) thunder and that for wind form Hăng. The superior man, in accordance with this, stands firm, and does not change his method (of operation).”
The lines
- Line 1 · bottom The first line, divided, shows its subject deeply (desirous) of long continuance. Even with firm correctness there will be evil; there will be no advantage in any way.
- Line 2 The second line, undivided, shows all occasion for repentance disappearing.
- Line 3 The third line, undivided, shows one who does not continuously maintain his virtue. There are those who will impute this to him as a disgrace. However firm he may be, there will be ground for regret.
- Line 4 The fourth line, undivided, shows a field where there is no game.
- Line 5 The fifth line, divided, shows its subject continuously maintaining the virtue indicated by it. In a wife this will be fortunate; in a husband, evil.
- Line 6 · top The topmost line, divided, shows its subject exciting himself to long continuance. There will be evil.
James Legge, trans., The Yî King, The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), p. 125 — read the original text.
Words in parentheses are Legge’s own: in his preface he explains that they supply what the original writer left unsaid. “Undivided” and “divided” are his terms for yang and yin lines, counted from the bottom. The Image comes from the second appendix of the book, the Treatise on the Symbolism.
Duration for a decision
Choose the option you can keep up over time. Commit, and keep adjusting the details while the direction stays fixed.
I Ching 32 in love and relationships
Long-term commitment and marriage. Endurance works when routines are kept alive rather than simply repeated.
Hexagram 32 at work
Long projects, careers and institutions. Persistence and gradual improvement beat sudden reinventions.
The six lines of hexagram 32
Read from the bottom up. This figure runs yin yang yang yang yin yin — what each position means.
3 yang and 3 yin lines. Two of the six stand in their proper place, and all three pairs answer each other.
What the two trigrams do to each other
Inner and outer
Wind below — gentle penetration — is the private, inner side of hexagram 32.
Thunder above — arousal and shock — is the world that side meets.
The five-element relation
Both trigrams are Wood, so nothing in the figure pulls against anything else. That makes the reading unusually single-minded — and unusually short of internal correction.
Read as a family
The eldest son sits above and the eldest daughter below. A brother and a sister of the same rank in age, which reads as a relationship between equals.
Calculated from the lines
Hexagrams connected to hexagram 32
Nuclear hexagram
43 · Breakthrough
What is happening beneath the surface.
Lines 2–4 give Qian (Heaven) as the lower trigram, lines 3–5 give Dui (Lake) as the upper.
Opposite hexagram
42 · Increase
The situation turned inside out.
Change all six lines and Thunder over Wind becomes Wind over Thunder.
Inverse hexagram
31 · Influence
The situation seen from the other side.
Turn the figure upside down and Thunder over Wind becomes Lake over Mountain.
None of these are assigned by an author — each follows from the arrangement of lines.
The image
Thunder above, Wind below.
Thunder over Wind: arousal and shock meeting gentle penetration.
Sources
Statements of fact on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. How we choose and check sources: editorial policy.
Cite this page
AstroHot. “I Ching Hexagram 32: Duration.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://astrohot.com/i-ching/hexagram/32/
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