Hexagram 6 · Conflict (訟 Sòng)
Heaven ☰ over Water ☵
Forces pulling apart · the wisdom of not winning outright
Conflict is the hexagram of the dispute, and it carries an unusual warning: even when you are in the right, fighting this to the bitter end is a mistake. The figure shows two natures pulling in opposite directions. Heaven rises; Water sinks. They move away from each other, and out of that divergence a quarrel takes shape. The book does not pretend the conflict is imaginary. It simply argues that the way most people handle conflict makes it worse.
Heaven sits above, strong and unbending; Water sits below, dangerous and downward-flowing. There is real friction between them, an inner danger meeting an outer hardness. The classic counsel is striking for an ancient text: do not carry the dispute through to the end. Halfway caution is fortunate; pressing on to total victory is not. The hexagram values a fair settlement over a clean win, and it has a particular respect for the wise third party who can mediate.
What this hexagram counsels in a reading
When Song answers your question, you are probably in or near a clash, and the temptation is to escalate, to make your case airtight, to win. The hexagram steers hard against that. Step back rather than push. Seek a fair outside perspective. Be willing to settle for a sound compromise even when total victory feels within reach, because the cost of that victory tends to be higher than it looks. The deepest advice is in the Image: think carefully about beginnings, so that the conflict is headed off before it ever forms.
The advice arrives too late on purpose
Set the judgment and the Image side by side and Song turns out to be organised around a piece of counsel you cannot act on while you are in it.
訟：有孚，窒，惕，中吉，終凶。利見大人，不利涉大川。
Song: there is trust, stopped up. Wariness. Midway, good fortune; at the end, misfortune. It furthers to see the great person. It does not further to cross the great water.
Judgment text. Source: Chinese Wikisource.
Read that as a description of a lawsuit and it barely works. There is no opponent in it, no claim, no wrong. What it describes is a state: 孚, trust or good faith, followed immediately by 窒, blocked, stopped up, choked — and then 惕, on edge. Two single characters, no sentence around them. The hexagram of conflict opens by locating the conflict in the chest of the person consulting it, before anybody else has appeared.
Then 中吉，終凶, four characters that most translations expand into a paragraph: good fortune in the middle, misfortune at the end. Notice what is missing. There is no clause about being right. The verdict is delivered purely as a function of how far you take it, which means this hexagram never gets round to adjudicating the dispute at all — it rules on your stamina instead.
And the Image, which is where the hexagram says what it actually wants:
天與水違行，訟；君子以作事謀始。
Heaven and water travel contrary ways: Song. The noble one, in undertaking any affair, plans the beginning.
謀始: to plan, to scheme out, the beginning. Every other part of the hexagram is addressed to someone already in a quarrel. This one is addressed to someone who has not started yet, and it is the only remedy on offer. That is not a flaw in the design; it is the argument. Heaven going up and water going down were never going to be reconciled by better arguing, because the divergence was built in from the first move — the terms of the deal, the way the job was set up, the thing nobody wrote down. By the time the hexagram applies to you, its counsel belongs to a version of you six months earlier.
Which leaves the practical residue: 利見大人, go and see someone with standing, and 不利涉大川, do not attempt the big crossing. That second clause is worth holding against Waiting, this hexagram turned upside down, whose judgment ends with exactly the same formula minus the negation. Nothing about the river changed. Only which way up you are standing.
In love and relationships
For relationships, Conflict is the warning hexagram for a fight that is gathering or already underway. The counsel is to resist the urge to win the argument. Being right and being close are often at odds; the partner who has to prove every point usually wins the point and loses the warmth. Look for the fair middle, bring in a calmer view if you need one, and remember that the goal is to stay in relationship, not to triumph in it.
In work and money
In work, Song often points to a disagreement, a dispute over terms, or a rivalry, and it advises against the all-out approach. Negotiate, mediate, find the workable compromise rather than the courtroom. With money, it specifically cautions against legal battles and zero-sum standoffs; the energy and resources poured into winning frequently exceed whatever is won. Settle fairly and move on.
Moving lines and the changing hexagram
The moving lines of Conflict trace different ways a dispute can go, from the wisdom of not pursuing the quarrel, to the hollow honour of a belt won in court that is taken away three times before the day is out. A changing line here usually tells you whether to back off, hold your ground briefly, or accept a settlement. Read it as guidance on how to leave the conflict, not how to win it. The hexagram it becomes shows where the situation lands once the tension is resolved or abandoned.
The man who lost, and the man who won a sash
Two of the six lines are small stories rather than verdicts, and the hexagram puts them at opposite ends. One is a defeat. One is a win. It is the defeat that comes out better, and the text is not subtle about it.
九二：不克訟，歸而逋，其邑人三百戶无眚。
Nine in the second place: he cannot win the dispute. He goes home and hides. The three hundred households of his town take no harm.
The scale is the interesting part. A man drops a case he was going to lose and slips home, and the text immediately widens the frame to 三百戶 — three hundred households — to say what did not happen to them. A quarrel between two people is being costed out at the level of a small town. That is the hexagram's real objection to litigation: not that you might lose, but that the bill is presented to people who were never party to it.
上九：或錫之鞶帶，終朝三褫之。
Nine at the top: perhaps a great sash is bestowed on him. Before the morning is out, it is stripped away three times.
Image: 以訟受服，亦不足敬也 — to receive a robe of office by litigation is not worth respecting either.
The 鞶帶 is a leather court sash, the visible mark of rank; being granted one is the top of the ladder. He gets it, and the same morning it comes off three times. But the Image is doing something sharper than mocking a short-lived promotion. It does not say the honour was insecure. It says 亦不足敬 — it was not worth respecting in the first place. The stripping is not the misfortune; it is the correction of a valuation that was already wrong at the moment of the award.
Between them, the second and top lines settle what this hexagram thinks a win is worth. The man who could not win his case goes home and three hundred households sleep undisturbed. The man who won carries the sash of office and cannot keep it on until lunch. Neither outcome depends on which of them had the better claim, and the book never tells us.
Judgment, line and Image texts follow the copy at Chinese Wikisource, which prints the hexagram in traditional characters. The English is a plain rendering kept close to the Chinese. 窒 and 惕 in the judgment are punctuated differently in different editions, which changes how much of the sentence they govern.
Its Tarot kin
On the deck side of this site, Conflict rhymes with Justice. Both weigh competing claims and ask for fairness over force. Justice holds the scales and the sword but uses them coolly; Song is the same call to settle a dispute by what is balanced and right rather than by who can push hardest.
Cast the coins and you might draw this one — try the I Ching tool, or see all sixty-four on the full hexagram grid. For reflection and insight, not fortune-telling — see our disclaimer.