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I Ching Hexagrams

Before Completion

way JEE
Wei Ji

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Origin 1000 BCE to 350 BCE

King Wen hexagram 64, Before Completion (Wei Ji), places Fire above Water: fire rising and water sinking, the two failing to interact, and the young fox almost across the stream, an image of a transition not yet finished. It describes the final passage from disorder toward order, a hopeful but delicate moment when the goal is near but not yet reached and everything still hangs in the balance. Its Judgment says that success is coming, but warns that if the little fox, nearly across, gets its tail wet, nothing furthers: care is needed to the very end. Its Image counsels the superior person to be careful in the differentiation of things, so that each finds its proper place. As a reading it marks the threshold before completion, teaching deliberate, well-ordered effort and vigilance in the last stretch, when premature relaxation could still spoil all.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1000 BCE to 350 BCE 1Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Origin Period
1924 to 1950 2Tradition: Wilhelm-Baynes I Ching (1950)
Origin Period
400 BCE to 100 BCE 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Origin Period
This hexagram's dating spans three distinct historical layers: the divinatory judgment text of the Zhouyi core, composed in the early Western Zhou around 1000 BCE and recovered in the Mawangdui silk manuscripts; the Ten Wings commentary tradition that gave the hexagrams their later philosophical reading, compiled across the Warring States and Han periods by around 400 BCE; and the English title used here, coined in Richard Wilhelm's 1924 German translation and carried into English by Cary Baynes. 2
Attributed Author / Compiler
By tradition: the hexagram statements to King Wen of Zhou, the line statements to the Duke of Zhou, and the Ten Wings to Confucius. 3Tradition: Zhou Yi and the Ten Wings
Attributed Author / Compiler
No named author. The core is a Western Zhou compilation with no compiler on record, and the ascription of the Ten Wings to Confucius was already being questioned inside the Chinese tradition by the eleventh century and is defended by no current scholarship. 3
Language
Classical Chinese 4
Attributions
Trigram Pairing
Fire over Water 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Wei Ji read plainly is not yet across. The little fox has nearly crossed and gets its tail wet; the line texts are a wet tail, a braked carriage, a three-year campaign against a demon country, and at the last somebody at a celebration who has had too much of it. 4Tradition: Zhou Yi, the Western Zhou divination core
Identity
King Wen Number
64 1
Native Name
Wei Ji 1
Order
Position in the Sequence
43 2Tradition: Xiantian (Earlier Heaven) arrangement of Shao Yong
Position in the Sequence
64 2Tradition: King Wen sequence, the received order
Learn More
The Book Ends Before the Crossing Is Finished

The King Wen sequence ends on hexagram 64, Wei Ji, Before Completion or Not Yet Across, and that is one of the most deliberate-looking decisions in the entire text.

The obvious arrangement would put completion last. Instead completion is hexagram 63 and the book closes with the crossing unfinished: fire above water, every line in the wrong position by the commentarial scheme, and a judgement that promises success and then warns that the little fox, having nearly crossed, gets its tail wet, nothing furthers.

Whether this ordering carries an intention is not answerable from the text. The Mawangdui manuscript, recovered in 1973, arranges the hexagrams in a completely different order grouped by upper trigram, which means the received sequence is not the only ancient one and its ending may be less pointed than it looks. Whether the Mawangdui order is older than King Wen's, or a regional variant, is genuinely disputed among scholars and should not be stated either way.

What is uncontroversial is how the received sequence reads. It ends without arriving, and the tradition has consistently taken that as a statement: the process does not terminate, the situation after completion is another situation, and a book of changes that ended in a settled state would be contradicting itself.

The line texts are practical rather than philosophical, a wet tail, a braked carriage, a three-year campaign, drinking wine and getting one's head wet. Nothing in them announces that this is the end of anything, which is a further reason to be careful about how much intention the ordering is made to carry.

Almost, and the Discipline of Not Rushing

Hexagram 64 describes a situation that is nearly resolved and is not resolved yet, and its counsel is consistently about the danger of the last stretch.

The fox image carries it. In the judgement the little fox has almost completed the crossing when it gets its tail wet, and nothing furthers. The first line repeats it: the tail in the water, humiliating. What is being described is failure at the point where success seemed assured, caused by relaxing before the end.

The middle lines are more encouraging. The second brakes the wheels, and perseverance brings good fortune. The fourth has perseverance bringing good fortune and remorse disappearing, with a three-year campaign against a demon country and rewards from a great realm, one of the book's several references to a long military expedition, and a sign of the material the compilers were working from. The fifth is unambiguously good: the light of the superior person is true, and there is good fortune with no remorse.

The sixth line closes both the hexagram and the sequence with a scene: drinking wine in genuine confidence is blameless, but wetting the head is another matter, and one loses what is right. The book's last image is somebody at a celebration who has had too much of it.

Read against hexagram 63, the pair states the book's basic position on process, and reading either without the other misses the argument they were placed together to make. Completion is provisional; incompletion is workable; and the book declines to end on either note by ending on both.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Corresponds To

Channel of Abstraction, Human Design Channels

Channel of Abstraction bridges Hexagram 47, Oppression, and Hexagram 64, Before Completion, per its own iching-correspondence fact; this edge names the 64 side.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)
Confusion Seeking Clarity, Human Design Gates

Human Design Gate 64, Confusion Seeking Clarity, corresponds to Hexagram 64, Before Completion, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source The Human Design SystemRa Uru Hu (Alan Robert Krakower)
From Confusion to Illumination, Gene Keys

Gene Key 64, From Confusion to Illumination, corresponds to Hexagram 64, Before Completion, per its own iching-correspondence fact.

Source Gene Keys: Embracing Your Higher PurposeRichard Rudd

Disciplines That Use This

I Ching, Disciplines

The sixty four hexagrams of the Zhou Yi.

Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Originates in Language

Classical Chinese, Languages
Source Zhouyi: The Book of ChangesRichard Rutt (trans.)

Reached by Changing Lines

Conflict, Line 5, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Deliverance, Line 6, Hexagram Lines
Opposition, Line 1, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
Progress, Line 2, Hexagram Lines
Source The Sacred Books of the East, Volume XVI: The Yi KingJames Legge (trans.)
The Cauldron, Line 3, Hexagram Lines
Youthful Folly, Line 4, Hexagram Lines
Sources
1. I Ching: The Classic of Changes, translated with an introduction and commentary, the first English translation of the newly discovered second-century BC Mawangdui texts
Edward L. Shaughnessy (trans.), Ballantine Books, 1996On the relation between the Mawangdui and King Wen orders
2. Fathoming the Cosmos and Ordering the World: The Yijing (I Ching, or Classic of Changes) and Its Evolution in China
Richard J. Smith, University of Virginia Press, 2008On Shao Yong's xiantian ordering of the sixty-four hexagramsView the Source
3. The Five "Confucian" Classics
Michael Nylan, Yale University Press, 2001On the authorship question and the critique of the traditional ascriptionsView the Source
4. Zhouyi: The Book of Changes
Richard Rutt (trans.), Curzon Press, 1996Hexagram 64, on the name and the line textsView the Source
The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Richard Wilhelm (trans.); Cary F. Baynes (English trans.), Princeton University Press, 1980Hexagram 64, the Judgement and the line textsView the Source
Mawangdui silk manuscript of the Zhou Yi
AnonymousOn the manuscript's order, in which the received sequence's ending does not occur

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