Also known as: 重巽 · Hexagram 57 · ䷸
Xun Wei Feng is the 57th hexagram, doubling the Wind trigram (☴ over ☴). Wind enters everywhere without force. The judgement "小亨，利攸往，利見大人" favours modest progress, having a goal to move toward, and seeking a person of authority.
The Great Image reads "隨風，巽；君子以申命行事" ("Winds following one another; the noble person spreads instructions and carries out affairs"). In divination Xun advises gradual, repeated, gentle influence rather than abrupt action — steady penetration achieves what force cannot.
Xun carries two images at once in the classical appendices, and both matter. The Shuogua Zhuan (說卦傳 Shuō Guà Zhuàn) glosses the trigram as entering, assigns it both wind and wood, places it in the southeast, and calls it the eldest daughter, obtained at the first seeking. It gives Xun the cockerel and the thighs, and includes among its images advance-and-retreat, and irresolution. The Xugua Zhuan puts the hexagram after Lu, the Wanderer, with the remark that a traveller who finds no shelter must find a way in. The Za Gua Zhuan sets it against Dui in four characters: Dui shows itself, Xun keeps hidden.
The trigram is a single yin line lying beneath two yang lines, and that yin is the ruling line; the soft element works from underneath instead of from above, which is why entering, not blowing, is the operative verb. Doubled, the hexagram puts yin at positions one and four, so the same quiet approach is made twice at two different depths. The Tuan commentary names this directly, describing doubled Xun as the repeating of a command. Repetition is the mechanism of the hexagram: an instruction issued once is a gust, while the same instruction issued again at the right level is what actually gets in. What keeps this from becoming a doctrine of mere compliance is that the line statements mark the limit. The first line is simply advance-and-retreat, with the note that a martial person's firmness is what furthers, since too much yielding at the bottom produces dithering. The third line's repeated crouching is called regrettable, a picture of deference that has become a habit instead of a tactic. And the top line, submission carried all the way beneath the bed, is said to lose one's resources and is judged inauspicious even while holding correct.
In practice Xun is usually read as the hexagram of the second approach and not of the first. Where a question concerns persuasion, instruction, negotiation or a request that has already been refused once, the Great Image's counsel to spread instructions and carry out affairs is taken to mean restating the matter in a receivable form, at a lower level and with less force. Its complementary figure is Zhen, Thunder Doubled, the sudden against the gradual, and its inverted figure is Dui, Lake Doubled, the hidden against the shown. In family imagery Xun is the eldest daughter and Zhen the eldest son, and both belong to wood. For timing and direction, practitioners take the southeast as the responsive quarter and late spring into early summer, or the chen and si months, as the window, with the usual variation between schools; Xun also heads its own palace in the eight-palace arrangement.
Two misreadings recur, and they pull in opposite directions. The first treats Xun as weakness, or as having no position of one's own; the text supports the reverse, since wind reaches places force cannot, and the hexagram's whole claim is that entering achieves what pressing does not. The second forgets that Xun is wood as well as wind, which needlessly narrows its imagery in questions about growth, timber, plans taking root, or anything that develops by increments. It is also worth noting that the judgement offers only modest success, in so many words, and declines to promise a large one. Past the misreadings sit two genuine cruxes. The fifth line's formula about three days before and after the seventh heavenly stem has no settled reading: one tradition takes that stem as chosen for its sound, hearing the word for change in it, and reads the line as counsel to prepare a change beforehand and consolidate it after, while another takes it as literal ritual timing, a rule for selecting days, read alongside the parallel formula in Hexagram 18. The other crux sits in the line texts, where the phrase about being beneath the bed appears twice, once auspicious with diviners and invocators in attendance and once inauspicious; why one image is judged in opposite directions has occupied commentators for a very long time.
Traditionally, no. Xun is glossed as entering, not as yielding, and the hexagram's claim is that a gentle, repeated approach reaches places force cannot. The distinction matters at the table, because what softens is the manner while the aim is supposed to hold steady; the line statements mark exactly where that slips, calling habitual deference regrettable and judging total submission inauspicious. Gentleness here is the method, not a surrender of position.
The judgement of Xun Wei Feng opens by granting success in a qualified, modest form, then says it furthers to have somewhere to go and to see a person of standing. Tradition reads the qualification as intrinsic to the hexagram and not as a defect: influence that works by entering accumulates in small increments, so the appropriate expectation is steady partial progress and not a decisive breakthrough. In a consultation it usually suggests the matter can move, but through accumulation and with the help of someone already established.
The traditional answer is to approach a second time in a more receivable form instead of escalating: restate rather than insist, work from below rather than from above, and let the effect accumulate. The judgement adds that it furthers to have a defined destination and to seek out someone of standing, so drifting without a target is read as the main way this hexagram goes wrong.