24. Return (The Turning Point)

The idea of a turn­ing point aris­es from the fact that after the dark lines have pushed all of the light lines up­ward and out of the hexa­gram, an­oth­er light line en­ters the hexa­gram from below. The time of dark­ness is past. The win­ter sol­stice brings the vic­to­ry of light. This hexa­gram is linked with the eleventh month, the month of the sol­stice (De­cem­ber—Jan­u­ary).

After a time of decay comes the turn­ing point. The pow­er­ful light that has been ban­ished re­turns. There is move­ment, but it is not brought about by force. The upper tri­gram K’un is char­ac­ter­ized by de­vo­tion; thus the move­ment is nat­ur­al, aris­ing spon­ta­neous­ly. For this rea­son the trans­for­ma­tion of the old be­comes easy. The old is dis­card­ed and the new is in­tro­duced. Both mea­sures ac­cord with the time; there­fore no harm re­sults. So­ci­eties of peo­ple shar­ing the same views are formed. But since these groups come to­geth­er in full pub­lic knowl­edge and are in har­mo­ny with the time, all self­ish sep­a­ratist ten­den­cies are ex­clud­ed, and no mis­take is made. The idea of RE­TURN is based on the course of na­ture. The move­ment is cyclic, and the course com­pletes it­self. There­fore it is not nec­es­sary to has­ten any­thing ar­ti­fi­cial­ly. Every­thing comes of it­self at the ap­point­ed time. This is the mean­ing of heav­en and earth.

All move­ments are ac­com­plished in six stages, and the sev­enth brings re­turn. Thus the win­ter sol­stice, with which the de­cline of the year be­gins, comes in the sev­enth month after the sum­mer sol­stice; so too sun­rise comes in the sev­enth dou­ble hour after sun­set. There­fore seven is the num­ber of the young light, and it aris­es when six, the num­ber of the great dark­ness, is in­creased by one. In this way the state of rest gives place to move­ment.

The win­ter sol­stice has al­ways been cel­e­brat­ed in China as the rest­ing time of the year—a cus­tom that sur­vives in the time of rest ob­served at the new year. In win­ter the life en­er­gy, sym­bol­ized by thun­der, the Arous­ing, is still un­der­ground. Move­ment is just at its be­gin­ning; there­fore it must be strength­ened by rest, so that it will not be dis­si­pat­ed by being used pre­ma­ture­ly. This prin­ci­ple, i.e., of al­low­ing en­er­gy that is re­new­ing it­self to be re­in­forced by rest, ap­plies to all sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. The re­turn of health after ill­ness, the re­turn of un­der­stand­ing after an es­trange­ment: every­thing must be treat­ed ten­der­ly and with care at the be­gin­ning, so that the re­turn may lead to a flow­er­ing.