Oppression, Line 5

The fifth 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 nose and feet cut off, straitened by his own ministers, yet leisurely in his movements and content, well served by the sincerity proper to sacrifice. 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 middle 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 fifth 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, The Nose and Feet Cut Off, 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 fifth 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. 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 nose and feet cut off, straitened by his own ministers, yet leisurely in his movements and content, well served by the sincerity proper to sacrifice, 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 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 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 yang to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the fifth line of Oppression turns Dui into Zhen while the other trigram, Kan, stays as it is, which yields Oppression's changing partner, Deliverance (King Wen 40), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.