Also known as: 重兌 · Hexagram 58 · ䷹
Dui Wei Ze (兌為澤 ䷹) is hexagram 58 of the I Ching's 64 hexagrams, formed by doubling the Dui (☱) trigram.
Dui Wei Ze is the 58th hexagram, doubling the Lake trigram (☱ over ☱). Lake stands for pleasure and open expression. The judgement "亨，利貞" promises success that furthers through correctness — joy that stays true rather than sinking into indulgence.
The Great Image reads "麗澤，兌；君子以朋友講習" ("Two lakes joined; the noble person joins with friends to discuss and practise"). In divination Dui points to gladness, persuasion, and mutual learning, while cautioning that genuine joy rests on sincerity.
The classical appendices give Dui a double sense that shapes everything downstream. The Shuogua Zhuan (說卦傳 Shuō Guà Zhuàn) glosses the trigram with a character read both as joy and as speaking, assigns it the lake, and places it in the due west, identifying it with full autumn, when the myriad things reach their gladness. It calls Dui the youngest daughter, obtained at the third seeking, with the sheep among animals and the mouth among body parts. The Xugua Zhuan puts the hexagram after Xun, remarking that having entered, one then takes delight in it; the Za Gua Zhuan pairs the two as the shown and the hidden.
The Tuan commentary supplies the structural reading: firm within and yielding without, delighting in a way that furthers through correctness. Each Dui trigram is two yang lines with one yin above, so the softness that shows on the surface rests on hardness inside. That order is the whole point. Joy with a firm centre is described as carrying people so far that they forget their labour, and forget even death when facing danger together; joy that is only soft outside, with nothing firm beneath, has no such capacity and slides into flattery. The Great Image puts joy to exactly this structural use.
Dui attracts errors from both sides. Read one way it becomes a guarantee of a pleasant outcome, which the judgement will not carry: the words following the term for success make correctness a condition, and the third line shows joy that is actively pursued being judged inauspicious. Read the other way it shrinks to gossip and verbal trouble, on the strength of the trigram corresponding to the mouth. That is equally lopsided, since the Great Image's picture of speech is friends discussing and practising together, language used to test and consolidate understanding. Both errors skip the same step, which is asking where the pleasure came from, and the line statements sort precisely that.
The six line statements sort joy by its source with unusual clarity, and the sorting runs along yang and yin. The yang lines are favourable: harmonious joy at the bottom, and joy grounded in good faith at the second. The yin lines are where the trouble sits. The third, which goes out to solicit delight, is called inauspicious. The top line merely draws joy along and gets no verdict at all. The fourth weighs its pleasures and finds no rest until it cuts off what ails it; the fifth warns against trusting what erodes. Taken together: joy arising from sincerity is safe, joy that is sought out is not.
For reading practice, Dui's mouth imagery gives it a natural range: speech, negotiation, teaching, contracts, testimony, persuasion, food and entertainment, and by extension disputes conducted in words. Its complementary figure is Gen, Mountain Doubled, open expression against stillness, and its inverted figure is Xun, Wind Doubled. The relation to Gen goes further than opposition, since Lake over Mountain forms Hexagram 31 and Mountain over Lake forms Hexagram 41, so the two trigrams together also generate the classical figures of mutual attraction and of deliberate reduction. Timing questions commonly take west as the direction and autumn, or the you month, as the period. Two older divergences remain unsettled. The character at the heart of the hexagram is read both as delight and as speaking, and classical usage supports both; commentators have generally kept both instead of choosing, which is why Dui supplies omens of joy and omens of talk at the same time. The second crux is the top line, which states only that joy is drawn out and attaches no judgement of fortune. Lines left unjudged this way are rare among the sixty-four, and readers have split over whether the silence inherits the third line's misfortune or leaves the situation open to correction.
No. The judgement grants success but immediately makes correctness the condition, and tradition takes that qualifier seriously. The hexagram is about where the pleasure comes from: joy that rests on good faith is called auspicious, while the third line, which goes out actively soliciting delight, is called inauspicious. Whether a reading comes out favourable therefore turns on the querent's own conduct and not on the hexagram's agreeable name.
The Great Image describes joined lakes and draws from them the picture of friends gathering to discuss and practise together. The character traditionally read as joining carries the sense of attaching or adhering, so the image is of two bodies of water in contact, each replenishing the other instead of standing alone. Commentators take the point to be mutual supply: understanding, like water, does not stay fresh in isolation, and exchange between companions is what keeps it from going stagnant.
Partly, and the connection is structural rather than negative. The Shuogua Zhuan assigns the mouth to Dui among the parts of the body, so diviners routinely extend the hexagram to speech, negotiation, teaching, contracts and, by extension, quarrels conducted in words. But the Great Image's own use of speech is friends discussing and practising together, which is constructive. Whether the talk turns to trouble is traditionally judged from the lines and the question asked, and is not assumed from the hexagram's name.
Traditionally it favours matters that move through speech and goodwill: discussion, teaching and study, negotiation, reconciliation, and anything that improves by exchange instead of by force. For matters needing a long-term bond, note that the doubled hexagrams are counted among the “six clashes” figures and are read as scattering more readily than binding, so a favourable answer here is more often about a conversation going well than about an arrangement holding.