The Marrying Maiden, Line 1

The first line of The Marrying Maiden (King Wen 54) is drawn as yang, the numeral nine in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as the younger sister married off in a secondary position, lame on one leg yet still able to walk, good fortune in going forward. 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 lowest place of the lower trigram Dui, lake in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the upper trigram of the hexagram is Zhen, thunder 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 first 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 Dui is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, Married Off in a Secondary Position, 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 first 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 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. Its own text, that the younger sister married off in a secondary position, lame on one leg yet still able to walk, good fortune in going forward, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The first line corresponds by classical convention with the fourth 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 lower position of the figure, the line marks the opening of the situation, before the trigram above it has any part in the reading, 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 first line of The Marrying Maiden turns Dui into Kan while the other trigram, Zhen, stays as it is, which yields The Marrying Maiden's changing partner, Deliverance (King Wen 40), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.