8 Union - The I Ching
Chris Gabriel December 27, 2025
Judgment
Unity. There is luck when the source of divination is pure. Restless ones come too late, they are ill fated.
Lines
1
Unity with faith. Faith fills pots.
2
Unity within.
3
Unity with the wrong people.
4
Unity without.
5
Unity with appearance. The King has three ways, losing the bird in front of him. His people don’t warn him.
6
Unity without a leader.
Qabalah
Yesod to Malkuth: The Path of Tau. The Universe.
Yesod’s energy flows over Malkuth.
The Moon to the Earth.
In this hexagram we have the image of water pooling on the face of the Earth, as a puddle is formed. People are drawn together in the same way the water gathers together. This is Unity, or likeness: people who are alike will unify. When I was a child I loved watching raindrops race down a window pane, gathering others as it went and this is the essence of the hexagram. Unlike water, who we unify with determines a great deal.
1
A Union requires faith, an ideal, a goal which is greater than the sum of its parts. Mere selfishness or utility is not enough to keep people unified. A great group of friends will feed one another, and help each other when they’re down. As Ringo sings: “I get by with a little help from my friends”.
2
The unity we seek without must come from within, an internal resonation with others. Through internal resonance we can attract friends.
3
When you don’t look carefully, it’s easy to fall in with a bad crowd, to make bad friends. This is one of the worst mistakes a person can make. “You are the company you keep”, and if you keep bad company, you can spoil your life. They will drag you down, and leave you if you fall below them.
4
We can unify with what is beyond our limited network. The outside holds great potential; it is how a union grows, through alliances with those outside.
5
When we act in unison with our appearance we do well. Honesty allows more complexity, even at the cost of immediate power through deception. The King wants a more difficult game, so he allows some of the animals to get away.
6
A great union is made of equals, without a clear leader. E pluribus unum, not primus inter pares.
In the last hexagram, we looked at hidden powers and disciplined movements of trained armies. Here we see visible unions, friendships, and alliances. This is diplomacy rather than violence, peace rather than war. Having the right friends will keep us from needing to fight, or at least make our fights much easier. The wrong friends will draw us into many more fights than we would have had on our own.
We can think of Aesop’s Fable of the Bundle of Sticks, the Fasci. The father of three sons shows them a bundle of sticks and has each attempt to break it, none of them can. When they undo the bundle, they easily break the sticks one by one, the moral being “United we stand, divided we fall.” or “Unity gives strength.” .
