Dun to Pi: cutting losses when a business fails

Date not recorded · A friend of Takashima · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 33 Dùn (Retreat), line 3 moving, changing to Hexagram 12 Pǐ (Standstill).

Original text

友人某來。請占商業之盛衰。筮得遯之否。爻辭曰。九三係遯。有疾厲。畜臣妾吉。斷曰。三爻以陽居陽。留戀二陰。欲遯不决。致有疾厲。今足下占問商業。得此三爻。知爲商業失敗之象。宜速脫貨。則損失猶微。若惜金而躊躇。則品物之價。日益低落。其所損更大也。謂之係遯。有疾厲。畜臣妾吉者。謂葆此餘資。以畜養家人可也。若欲重興商業。則不可也。

In plain words

A friend of Takashima came to ask whether his business would rise or decline. The cast gave Dun with its third line moving, changing into Pi. The line reads: "Nine in the third place: a retreat held back; there is illness and danger. Keeping servants and maids is good."

Takashima's judgment: the third line is yang in a yang place and clings to the two yin lines below it; it wants to withdraw but cannot make up its mind, and so falls ill and into danger. Asking about your business and drawing this line shows that the business is failing.

Sell off your stock quickly and the loss will still be small; if you hesitate because you cannot bear to lose the money, prices will fall day by day and the loss will grow. That is "a retreat held back; illness and danger". "Keeping servants and maids is good" means: keep what money remains and use it to support your household. Trying to revive the business will not do.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the third line of Dun is read.
The hexagram is read as retreat, matching a retreat in business.
The line's adjacency: the third line sits right above the two yin lines and "clings" to them, read as being unable to let go of money already sunk and so unable to commit to withdrawing.
"Keeping servants is good" means only small, household-sized things go well: keep the remaining money for the family rather than attempt anything large.

About the outcome

The text does not say whether the friend took the advice or what happened. The advice itself is what we would now call cutting one's losses: do not sink deeper because you cannot bear to write off what is already spent.

Applying it to your situation

"A retreat held back" is wanting to withdraw but being unable to let go. Is something you are persisting with still worth it because it has a future, or only because you have already put so much into it?

Original: Takashima Kaemon, Takashima Ekidan (expanded edition), recorded by Yanagida Ikusaku, Chinese text by Wang Zhiben, 1901. Translation, notes and reflection by this site.

These are historical records kept by the diviner himself. The outcomes are his own account; this site uses them to study how the lines were read, not as evidence that divination predicts events.

Cast a hexagram · All of Takashima's cases · The 64 hexagrams