Oppression, Line 4

The fourth line of Oppression (King Wen 47) is drawn as yang, the numeral nine in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as proceeding very slowly, straitened by a carriage adorned with metal in front, occasion for regret but the end will be good. 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 lowest 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 fourth 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, Proceeding Very Slowly, 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 fourth 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 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. Its own text, that proceeding very slowly, straitened by a carriage adorned with metal in front, occasion for regret but the end will be good, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The fourth line corresponds by classical convention with the first line, and the two correspond here, since one line is yin and the other yang. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Dui in the upper position of the figure, the line marks the first word of the upper trigram, close enough to the ruling fifth line to be shaped by it, 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 fourth line of Oppression turns Dui into Kan while the other trigram, Kan, stays as it is, which yields Oppression's changing partner, The Abysmal (King Wen 29), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.