Daily Archive
Representative illustrated story image for I-Ching Hexagram 24, Return.

Daily I-Ching · Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Hexagram 24: Return

The solstice: a single yang returns from below. After long decline, the movement has reversed, but the new impulse is tender.

Reflect today: Where in the day does the pattern of return already show itself, and what single act would answer it well?

Upper Kūn · Earth
Lower Zhèn · Thunder

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Today's Meaning

The solstice: a single yang returns from below. After long decline, the movement has reversed, but the new impulse is tender. The counsel is to protect it — rest, close the borders of attention, do not over-extend — and to trust that growth has begun.

Practice

  1. Name Return. Look for the place where return is already shaping the day: The solstice: a single yang returns from below.
  2. Practice the Image. Let the Image become conduct: the kings of old closed the passes at the time of solstice.
  3. Answer Hexagram 24. Before the day ends, make one visible choice that fits Return instead of forcing the day to answer your preference.

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The Illustrated Story

After the solstice, a gardener walked out before sunrise and looked at the bare black earth. The world smelled of winter. But near the stump of last year's peony, a single red tip had broken through. He did not dig around it; he did not water it; he simply marked the spot with a stone so that no one would step there. For weeks the shoot grew slowly. By spring it was a flourishing plant. Return begins as almost nothing. Protect it. Do not force it. The first shoot cannot yet bear the weight of all the hope you would load on it.

After Solstice
Single Red Tip
No Digging
Stone Marker
Weeks Of Slow Growth
Return Flourishes

Continue to the full Hexagram 24 page for Judgment, Image, trigrams, and line commentary.

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