# Hexagram 27: Nourishment

Canonical page: https://thefreeiching.com/library/27
Last updated: 2026-10-07

```
━━━━━━━
━━━  ━━━
━━━  ━━━
━━━  ━━━
━━━  ━━━
━━━━━━━
```

- **Upper trigram:** [Gen 艮](https://thefreeiching.com/trigrams/gen), Mountain, keeping still
- **Lower trigram:** [Zhen 震](https://thefreeiching.com/trigrams/zhen), Thunder, the arousing, movement
- **Lines, bottom to top:** 100001 (1 = solid yang, 0 = broken yin)

## Contemporary judgment

Nourishment. Attend to what you are taking in: food, company, thought, media, attention. You become what you feed upon; what enters you shapes what emerges from you. This is a time to be discerning about the substance of your daily intake, both outer and inner.

## Image

Thunder at the foot of the mountain. The open mouth. The superior person is careful with their words and careful with what they take into their body.

## Counsel

Review what you consume. Reduce what does not nourish; increase what does. Speak less and more truly; listen more widely but more selectively. The gate of the mouth, what goes in and what comes out, is the gate of your whole life right now.

## The six lines

*Numbered from the bottom upward. These line texts are read when that line is changing in a cast.*

### Line 1

> A nine at the beginning means:
> You let your magic tortoise go
> and look at me with drooping corners of the mouth.
> Misfortune!

### Line 2

> A six in the second place means:
> Turning to the summit for nourishment,
> deviating from the path to seek nourishment from the hill:
> if one continues thus, it brings misfortune.

### Line 3

> A six in the third place means:
> Turning away from nourishment.
> Perseverance brings misfortune.
> For ten years do not act thus. Nothing is furthering.

### Line 4

> A six in the fourth place means:
> Turning to the summit for nourishment brings good fortune.
> Looking about with sharp eyes like a tiger,
> with insatiable desire. No blame.

### Line 5

> A six in the fifth place means:
> Turning away from the path.
> Staying in perseverance brings good fortune.
> One should not cross the great water.

### Line 6

> A nine at the top means:
> The source of nourishment.
> Awareness of danger brings good fortune.
> It is favorable to cross the great water.

## Related hexagrams

- **Nuclear (lines 2 to 5):** [2 The Receptive](https://thefreeiching.com/library/2)
- **Inverse (turned upside down):** itself
- **Opposite (every line flipped):** [28 Great Preponderance](https://thefreeiching.com/library/28)

## If one line changes

| Changing line | Relating hexagram |
| --- | --- |
| Line 1 | [23 Splitting Apart](https://thefreeiching.com/library/23) |
| Line 2 | [41 Decrease](https://thefreeiching.com/library/41) |
| Line 3 | [22 Grace](https://thefreeiching.com/library/22) |
| Line 4 | [21 Biting Through](https://thefreeiching.com/library/21) |
| Line 5 | [42 Increase](https://thefreeiching.com/library/42) |
| Line 6 | [24 Return](https://thefreeiching.com/library/24) |

Previous: [26 Great Taming](https://thefreeiching.com/library/26). Next: [28 Great Preponderance](https://thefreeiching.com/library/28). [All sixty-four hexagrams](https://thefreeiching.com/library).

*The judgment, image and counsel are original contemporary paraphrases written for The Free I Ching. The line text is the CC0 translation from [jesshewitt/i-ching](https://github.com/jesshewitt/i-ching), derived from Richard Wilhelm's 1924 German edition.*

## Cite this page

The Free I Ching. "Hexagram 27: Nourishment." https://thefreeiching.com/library/27 (updated 2026-10-07).

*The I Ching is a tool for reflection, not a prediction. Nothing here forecasts events or replaces professional advice. Short quotations with a link back are welcome. Please do not republish a page in full. The open data files at [/data](https://thefreeiching.com/data) are licensed CC BY 4.0.*

---
Source: The Free I Ching (https://thefreeiching.com/library/27). The I Ching is a tool for reflection, not a prediction. Nothing here forecasts events or replaces professional advice.