The Judgment: Returning. Success. Going in and coming out without error. Friends come without blame. To and fro goes the way. On the seventh day comes return. It furthers one to have somewhere to go.

This hexagram is one of the twelve calendar hexagrams based on the coming and going of the light of the sun in the course of the year. Here the single line that has entered the hexagram at the bottom represents the first increase in the altitude of the sun since the winter solstice, hence its name, “Returning.”

The Sage defines the theme of this hexagram as returning to one’s original nature, and to unity with the Cosmic Whole, through splitting apart from the ego.

Returning also indicates the direction in which the path of development leads: back to the person’s original nature. It does not lead forward, through cultivating virtues or becoming something we are not, but is a process of continuous subtraction of what we have falsely added, thus to allow the true self to resume its path toward maturation. Each step on this path leads to increasing light and relief. One takes this path through ceasing to look outward for the solutions to problems, to look inward instead, to the choices that have been made.

I Ching: The Oracle of the Cosmic Way
Carol K. Anthony & Hanna Moog