Hexagram 18: Work on What Has Been Spoiled

A grandmother, a young mother nursing her infant, and a sleeping boy crowd into a third-class railway carriage. Honoré Daumier painted these working-class Parisians in 1864, documenting the cramped conditions inherited by those without wealth or status. The elderly woman's weathered face and the mother's exhausted posture tell a story of hardship passed from one generation to the next. The child sleeps unaware of what awaits him.

The I-Ching names this situation Gǔ (蠱), a character depicting worms eating grain in a covered bowl—corruption that accumulated while no one was watching. The hexagram shows Mountain (Gèn) above Wind (Xùn): stillness sitting over gentle penetration. Wind works its way into cracks; decay spreads beneath a solid surface. In ancient divination, this configuration appeared when someone inherited a broken system, a family burden, a social wound that predated their birth. The third-class carriage exists before any individual passenger boards it.

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The Judgment text speaks to Daumier's subjects: "Work on what has been spoiled has supreme success. It furthers one to cross the great water. Before the starting point, three days. After the starting point, three days." The text promises that inherited corruption can be addressed, but it requires preparation before action and consolidation after. Ancient practitioners understood that systemic decay cannot be fixed impulsively—it took time to accumulate and will take time to repair. The "three days before, three days after" suggests careful examination of how things became spoiled and vigilant attention to prevent recurrence.

The Image Text offers unexpected counsel: "The wind blows low on the mountain: the image of Decay. Thus the superior man stirs up the people and strengthens their spirit." Repair begins not with blame but with rousing those who have grown dispirited under inherited burdens. Daumier, himself a political satirist, painted this scene to make visible what the wealthy preferred not to see. In the I-Ching sequence, Work on What Has Been Spoiled follows Following—when people follow without understanding, when tradition becomes empty repetition, decay sets in. The next hexagram is Approach, when fresh energy begins to address what has been neglected.