I-Ching Hexagram 13
同人 Fellowship with People
Also known as Community
A community held together by shared values and open purpose — not a clique. True fellowship is transparent, principled, and capacious; it welcomes difference while keeping its centre.
fellowship · community · shared cause
The Story
An inn at a crossroads kept its door open to travelers of every province. The innkeeper asked no one's name; the food was plain and the table was long. A merchant once brought a scroll of grievances to read aloud; she quietly set it in the fire. "We are strangers here only until we eat," she said. "Keep what divides us for elsewhere." Over the years, soldiers from warring armies had shared her benches and parted without blood. A true fellowship is not a secret circle but a table that makes room — without demanding that anyone stop being who they are.
The Judgment
Fellowship with people in the open. Success. It furthers one to cross the great water. The perseverance of the superior person furthers.
The Image
Heaven together with fire: the image of fellowship. Thus the superior person organises the clans and makes distinctions between things.
Interpretation
A community held together by shared values and open purpose — not a clique. True fellowship is transparent, principled, and capacious; it welcomes difference while keeping its centre. The superior person knows the difference between genuine common cause and convenient allegiance.
Trigrams
The Six Lines
- First (Bottom) Fellowship with men at the gate. No blame. Open association, no secret pacts.
- Second Fellowship with men in the clan. Humiliation. A narrow in-group is not true fellowship.
- Third He hides weapons in the thicket; he climbs the high hill in front of it. For three years he does not rise up. Armed suspicion poisons the bond; no action for a long while.
- Fourth He climbs up on his wall; he cannot attack. Good fortune. Realising the cause is not just, one steps back — and thereby wins.
- Fifth Men bound in fellowship first weep and lament, but afterward laugh. After great struggles they succeed in meeting. Separation and reunion, tears then laughter; the true bond survives the trial.
- Sixth (Top) Fellowship with men in the meadow. No remorse. The bond is still forming; space, not intimacy, is what is asked.