The Marrying Maiden, Line 5

The fifth line of The Marrying Maiden (King Wen 54) is drawn as yin, the numeral six in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as the marrying of a ruler's younger sister, whose sleeves are not as fine as her attendant's, like the moon almost full, good fortune. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns action taken now will be evil, in no way advantageous, 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 Zhen, thunder in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the lower trigram of the hexagram is Dui, lake in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads thunder over the waters of a marsh; the superior man, with regard to the far distant end, knows the mischief that may be done at the beginning, and the fifth line takes its place inside that combined picture of Dui below and Zhen 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, The Marrying of a Ruler's Younger Sister, 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 fifth place of The Marrying Maiden reads within the hexagram's overall concern with action taken now will be evil, in no way advantageous. The line occupies a place that does not match 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 the marrying of a ruler's younger sister, whose sleeves are not as fine as her attendant's, like the moon almost full, good fortune, 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 correspond here, since one line is yin and the other yang. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Zhen 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 yin to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the fifth line of The Marrying Maiden turns Zhen into Dui while the other trigram, Dui, stays as it is, which yields The Marrying Maiden's changing partner, The Joyous (King Wen 58), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.