The Clinging, Line 2

The second line is the most straightforwardly fortunate in the hexagram and it says almost nothing. Legge's translation places the subject in his place in yellow and gives great good fortune, while the commentary attributes that fortune to his having attained the central course. Yellow is the colour of earth and, in the colour scheme the classic works with, the colour of the mean, so the single image is not decoration. It names the quality that produces the result.

Position accounts for the whole of it. This is a yielding stroke in an even seat, correct by the ordinary rule, holding the middle of the lower trigram Li. In the trigram itself the yielding line is the middle one, held between two firm strokes, which is the classical picture of brightness with something to cling to on either side. A soft line at the centre of fire is fire behaving as fire should, attached and contained and therefore steady.

Set against the other lines the restraint is the point. The first moves before it can see, the third laments the sun going down, the fourth burns itself up on arrival. The second neither flares nor flickers, occupies the middle, and is described in one colour word. In a figure about dependent brightness the text treats holding the centre as the whole of what needs saying, and adds nothing to it.

Six in the second place is a reading a querent should resist improving on. Great good fortune is promised, the promise carries no qualification, and the only condition attached is one of position rather than of action: the subject is in his place, in yellow, which the commentary reads as having attained the central course. Nothing is asked for. The line describes a person already standing where they ought to stand.

The counsel that follows is therefore about restraint rather than initiative. In a hexagram whose subject is light with no substance of its own, the fortunate position is the one that has found a proper attachment and holds it without fuss. Somebody drawing this line usually has less need of a new plan than they believe, and the real risk in the reading is that a person shown great good fortune will go looking for something to do with it.

When the line changes, the lower trigram Li becomes Qian and the figure becomes Great Possession, King Wen 14, a single yielding line in the ruling seat with strong lines gathered beneath it. That reads as a consequence rather than a warning. What the second line already has, the centre held modestly while attached to something firm, is the disposition by which a person comes to hold a great deal without having grasped at any of it.