Prisoners chained in a cave, watching shadows on a wall, mistaking projections for reality. One prisoner is unchained, turned toward the fire, dragged up into sunlight — blinded, disoriented, then slowly able to see. Hex 36 (Darkening of the Light) is life in the cave: the light is there but buried, the intelligence intact but imprisoned. The fire is below the earth. Hex 35 (Progress) is the ascent: fire over earth, the sun rising above the horizon, the freed prisoner blinking in real light. The allegory's cruelest detail — that the freed prisoner, returning to the cave, would be mocked and threatened by those still chained — is Hex 36's social dimension: 'It furthers one to be persevering in times of difficulty.' The one who has seen must endure the darkness of those who have not.