Decrease
The Willing Sacrifice
A loss offered in earnest: two small bowls serve, and what is given up strengthens what remains.
Decrease places Gen, Keeping Still, Mountain, above Dui, The Joyous, Lake, and the figure is read as a mountain standing over a lake. The lake at the foot of the mountain is worn away, and what it gives up raises what is above it; the classical account has the lower trigram decreased so that the upper may be increased. The Judgment holds that decrease joined with sincerity brings supreme good fortune, and that two small bowls may serve for the sacrifice, an offering made in earnest needing no display. The Image has the superior man control his anger and restrain his instincts, applying the decrease to himself. It is answered by Increase, the hexagram that follows it.
Light
Signifies simplicity, honest sacrifice and the restraint of appetite; a loss accepted in its season, which strengthens what is essential and is repaid in time.
Shadow
Can represent impoverishment, loss for its own sake, or the weak stripped for the benefit of the strong; austerity that hardens into meanness, or self-denial with no sincerity behind it.
