Hexagram 27 The Corners of the Mouth — In love & relationships

The reading

The Corners of the Mouth is the hexagram of nourishment, shaped like a mouth: firm lines at the lips, yielding lines within. Everything about intake is in question. What do you eat: does it sustain you or merely stimulate you? What do you consume: does it nourish your judgment or rot it? What words leave you: do they feed others or poison them? The mouth is the gate, and this hexagram stands guard at it.

Nourishment also means what nourishes you from others: the mentor you learn from, the company you keep, the work you depend on. Choose your sources the way you choose your food, because you become what you take in. And turn the question outward: whom do you nourish? The superior person feeds others rightly, offering substance instead of flattery. Watch the mouth in both directions, and the whole person stays sound.

The image

Thunder stirs below the mountain, hunger moving under stillness. The wise are careful with their words and measured in their appetites, because the mouth is the gate of the whole person.

You become what you chew on, in food and in thought.

When you cast this hexagram

• A hard look at what you eat and crave daily.
• Time to audit your mind's diet of news and gossip.
• The work of feeding and caring for those who depend on you.
• Wishing you could unsay the careless words that left your mouth.

In love and relationships

In love, this hexagram asks what feeds the bond and what starves it. Do your words nourish your partner or merely fill silence? Do you feed the relationship with attention, or only with appetite? Watch the mouth in both directions: the criticisms you voice and the complaints you swallow. A bond starved of honest speech withers; one fed on constant complaint sickens. Nourish deliberately. Speak the true thing kindly, listen the way you would want to be heard, and feed the love itself.

In work and career

At work, Nourishment concerns what sustains your career and what merely fills the hours. Are you feeding your real skills or just your inbox? Choose your inputs deliberately: the mentors worth learning from, the projects that actually teach, the information that sharpens judgment. And watch what comes out of your mouth: in meetings, in emails, in reviews. Professionals are nourished or starved by their words. Feed others substance rather than flattery, and your own standing gets fed in return.

When you have a decision to make

When a real decision is on the table, this hexagram says: check your inputs before you choose. What have you been feeding your mind about this decision: solid evidence or anxious gossip, real counsel or loud feeds? A starved mind decides from craving, and a poisoned mind decides from fear. Nourish yourself first with clean information and honest advice. Then decide, and let your words about the decision nourish others rather than merely justifying you.

The six changing lines

Read only the lines that came up moving in your own cast. If none did, stay with the hexagram as a whole. Each line below links to the hexagram that line turns into.

How it relates to the other hexagrams

These links are derived from the line structure, not from editorial opinion. Flip a line, reverse the stack, or read the inner lines, and you land on a specific neighbour.

If one line changes

Same upper or lower trigram

Scholar's details

Number	27 of 64
Binary (bottom → top)	100001  (1 = yang, 0 = yin)
Upper trigram	☶ 艮 Gèn — Mountain, Earth, Youngest Son
Lower trigram	☳ 震 Zhèn — Thunder, Wood, Eldest Son
Key ideas	nourishment, intake, speech, appetite, sustenance, mindfulness