Upper trigram
☶
Mountain (Gen) above
Stillness and limit.
FamilyYoungest son
ElementEarth
Hexagram 52 of 64
I Ching hexagram 52 ☶☶ Keeping Still
I Ching hexagram 52, Keeping Still, is mountain above, mountain below. In brief: the mountain doubled — stopping completely. Counting from the bottom, its solid lines sit in places 3 and 6 and its broken lines in 1, 2, 4 and 5.
- Lines, bottom up
- ⚋⚋⚊⚋⚋⚊ 001001 · 1 = solid
- Trigrams
- Mountain over Mountain Gen ☶ / Gen ☶
- Every line changed
- № 58 The Joyous
- In Legge, 1882
- p. 175 Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16
Legge, The Yî King, 1882.
Lower trigram
☶
Mountain (Gen) below
Stillness and limit.
FamilyYoungest son
ElementEarth
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What the text says, in plain terms
The Judgement and the Image of hexagram 52
The Judgement
Keeping still. Stopping when it is time to stop — quieting the body and the restless mind — brings freedom from mistakes.
The Image
Mountain doubled, standing firm. The lesson is to keep your thoughts within the limits of your present situation.
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 52 in James Legge’s translation
“When one’s resting is like that of the back, and he loses all consciousness of self; when he walks in his courtyard, and does not see any (of the persons) in it,—there will be no error.”
“(Two trigrams representing) a mountain, one over the other, form Kăn. The superior man, in”
The lines
- Line 1 · bottom The first line, divided, shows its subject keeping his toes at rest. There will be no error; but it will be advantageous for him to be persistently firm and correct.
- Line 2 The second line, divided, shows its subject keeping the calves of his legs at rest. He cannot help (the subject of the line above) whom he follows, and is dissatisfied in his mind.
- Line 3 The third line, undivided, shows its subject keeping his loins at rest, and separating the ribs (from the body below). The situation is perilous, and the heart glows with suppressed excitement.
- Line 4 The fourth line, divided, shows its subject keeping his trunk at rest. There will be no error.
- Line 5 The fifth line, divided, shows its subject keeping his jawbones at rest, so that his words are (all) orderly. Occasion for repentance will disappear.
- Line 6 · top The sixth line, undivided, shows its subject devotedly maintaining his restfulness. There will be good fortune.
James Legge, trans., The Yî King, The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), p. 175 — 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.
Keeping Still for a decision
Pause. Do not add more action, argument or worry. Stillness now lets clarity return before the next move.
I Ching 52 in love and relationships
A need for space and quiet. Not every moment needs a conversation or a decision.
Hexagram 52 at work
Holding position, meditation and focus. Stop multitasking; do one thing, or nothing, until the situation settles.
The six lines of hexagram 52
Read from the bottom up. This figure runs yin yin yang yin yin yang — what each position means.
2 yang and 4 yin lines. Three of the six stand in their proper place, and none of the three pairs answer each other.
What the two trigrams do to each other
Inner and outer
Mountain below — stillness and limit — is the private, inner side of hexagram 52.
Mountain above — stillness and limit — is the world that side meets.
The five-element relation
Both trigrams are Earth, 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 youngest son sits both above and below. The same figure doubled — the purest form of what the trigram describes.
Calculated from the lines
Hexagrams connected to hexagram 52
Nuclear hexagram
40 · Deliverance
What is happening beneath the surface.
Lines 2–4 give Kan (Water) as the lower trigram, lines 3–5 give Zhen (Thunder) as the upper.
Opposite hexagram
58 · The Joyous
The situation turned inside out.
Change all six lines and Mountain over Mountain becomes Lake over Lake.
Inverse hexagram
51 · The Arousing
The situation seen from the other side.
Turn the figure upside down and Mountain over Mountain becomes Thunder over Thunder.
None of these are assigned by an author — each follows from the arrangement of lines.
The image
Mountain above, Mountain below.
Mountain over Mountain: stillness and limit meeting stillness and limit.
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 52: Keeping Still.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://astrohot.com/i-ching/hexagram/52/
For Wikipedia
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