Dispersion, Line 5

The fifth line of Dispersion (King Wen 59) is drawn as yang, the numeral nine in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as dispersion like the exhalation of great sweat, and dispersing the accumulated wealth of a king's granaries, no error. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns progress and success, the king approaching his temple, advantage in crossing the great stream, advantage in being firm and correct, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the middle place of the upper trigram Xun, wind in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the lower trigram of the hexagram is Kan, water in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads wind moving above water; the ancient kings presented offerings to God and established the ancestral temple, and the fifth line takes its place inside that combined picture of Kan below and Xun above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Xun is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, The Dispersion Like the Exhalation of Great Sweat, as the concrete case through which the hexagram's abstract judgment becomes visible in a single situation rather than a general principle.

As a divinatory line, nine at the fifth place of Dispersion reads within the hexagram's overall concern with progress and success, the king approaching his temple, advantage in crossing the great stream, advantage in being firm and correct. The line occupies a place proper to its own nature in the classical doctrine that odd places favour a firm, yang line and even places favour a yielding, yin line. It is also one of the two central lines of the hexagram, the place classical reading treats as the most balanced regardless of the line's own character. Its own text, that dispersion like the exhalation of great sweat, and dispersing the accumulated wealth of a king's granaries, no error, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The fifth line corresponds by classical convention with the second line, and the two do not correspond here, since both lines share the same character. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Xun in the upper position of the figure, the line marks the ruling stage of the hexagram, the place classical reading treats as its centre of authority, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.

A change at this line, from yang to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the fifth line of Dispersion turns Xun into Gen while the other trigram, Kan, stays as it is, which yields Dispersion's changing partner, Youthful Folly (King Wen 4), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.