Increase, Line 1

The first line of Increase (King Wen 42) is drawn as yang, the numeral nine in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as advantageous for one in a low place to undertake great affairs, and if greatly fortunate there will be no blame. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns advantage in every movement undertaken, even advantage in crossing the great stream, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the lowest place of the lower trigram Zhen, thunder in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the upper trigram of the hexagram is Xun, wind in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads wind and thunder together; the superior man, seeing what is good, moves toward it, and seeing his errors, turns away from them, and the first line takes its place inside that combined picture of Zhen below and Xun above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Zhen is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, Advantage for One in a Low Place, 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 first place of Increase reads within the hexagram's overall concern with advantage in every movement undertaken, even advantage in crossing the great stream. 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. Its own text, that advantageous for one in a low place to undertake great affairs, and if greatly fortunate there will be no blame, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The first line corresponds by classical convention with the fourth line, and the two correspond here, since one line is yin and the other yang. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Zhen in the lower position of the figure, the line marks the opening of the situation, before the trigram above it has any part in the reading, 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 first line of Increase turns Zhen into Kun while the other trigram, Xun, stays as it is, which yields Increase's changing partner, Contemplation (King Wen 20), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.