Oppression, Line 6

The sixth line of Oppression (King Wen 47) is drawn as yin, the numeral six in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as straitened as if bound by creepers, in a high and dangerous seat, saying to himself that movement will bring cause for repentance, yet if he does repent there will be good fortune in going forward. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns one in straits may yet find progress and success; for the firm and correct, the truly great man, there is good fortune and no error, though his words will not be believed, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the topmost place of the upper trigram Dui, lake 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 a marsh with no water in it, drained dry by the pit beneath; the superior man will sacrifice his life to carry out his purpose, and the sixth line takes its place inside that combined picture of Kan below and Dui above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Dui is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, Being Straitened as If Bound by Creepers, 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, six at the sixth place of Oppression reads within the hexagram's overall concern with one in straits may yet find progress and success; for the firm and correct, the truly great man, there is good fortune and no error, though his words will not be believed. 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 straitened as if bound by creepers, in a high and dangerous seat, saying to himself that movement will bring cause for repentance, yet if he does repent there will be good fortune in going forward, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The sixth line corresponds by classical convention with the third line, and the two do not correspond here, since both lines share the same character. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Dui in the upper position of the figure, the line marks the far edge of the hexagram, past the point the ruling fifth line governs, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.

A change at this line, from yin to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the sixth line of Oppression turns Dui into Qian while the other trigram, Kan, stays as it is, which yields Oppression's changing partner, Conflict (King Wen 6), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.