Hexagram 33 · King Wen sequence
Hexagram 33: Retreat
遯 · Dun
Strategic withdrawal can protect strength when direct engagement would waste it.
Upper and lower trigrams
Reflection meaning
Strategic withdrawal can protect strength when direct engagement would waste it.
Create distance without drama, preserve options, and do not spend energy proving you could have stayed.
If this hexagram appears in a changing reading
Changing lines mark the parts of the six-line figure that move from yin to yang or yang to yin. Those changes generate a second hexagram. Oracle Mirror presents the first hexagram as the current symbolic pattern and the transformed hexagram as a second lens on the direction of change; it does not treat the second figure as a guaranteed future event.
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This page gives an original concise reflection rather than reproducing a modern translation of the classic Judgment or line texts. Serious study benefits from comparing reputable scholarly translations and commentaries because terminology, textual history, and interpretive traditions differ.