Peace, Line 5

Legge's translation of the fifth line invokes a specific precedent, King Di Yi's own rule concerning the marriage of his younger sister, and states that by such a course there is happiness and, in the fuller tradition the line belongs to, great good fortune. The reference is to a known historical arrangement in which royal rank did not demand a match to another equally ranked house, but allowed marriage guided by something other than pride of position.

Six in the fifth place holds the central, ruling place of Kun, the upper trigram, the honored seat from which the hexagram's receptive virtue is ultimately exercised, and it is a yielding line in an odd, normally yang preferred position, which commentary reads as humility genuinely occupying authority rather than merely being granted it. The marriage precedent fits this placement precisely, a ruler's own household choosing a match on terms of suitability and blessing rather than rank alone.

Set within Peace's wider movement, the fifth line shows the hexagram's harmony reaching its most intimate register, the sovereign's own family conducting itself by the same humility the fourth line's light descent already modeled. Legge's citation of a named precedent, rather than a general image, marks this line as resting on remembered example rather than invented figure.

Six in the fifth place, as a changing line, draws on the remembered example of a sovereign's own household choosing marriage by suitability rather than by rank, and promises happiness and great good fortune to a querent who follows the same principle. Holding the central, ruling place of the upper trigram, the line suggests that authority exercised with humility, even in matters as personal as marriage, secures blessing more reliably than authority exercised through pride of position.

Flipping this line changes the upper trigram from Kun to Kan, Water, giving Kan over Qian, the hexagram called Waiting. The settled happiness of a well made match gives way, on the far side of change, to a hexagram of patient anticipation, water gathered above heaven, confidence that what has not yet arrived will still come in its own time. The movement suggests that the blessing secured through humility at this line is not an ending but a readiness, the same trust that allowed a sovereign's household to choose well now extending into patient expectation of what comes next.

Within Peace's arc, the fifth line is where the hexagram's receptive virtue is most fully and personally expressed, humility occupying the seat of highest honor. A reading landing here suggests that present good fortune rests on exactly that willingness to set rank aside, and that it opens naturally into a season of confident waiting rather than closing the matter entirely.