Zhun to Sui: one of Ōkura's men asks about his prospects

Date not recorded · A senior employee of the businessman Ōkura Kihachirō · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 3 Zhūn (Difficulty at the Beginning), line 4 moving, changing to Hexagram 17 Suí (Following).

Original text

大倉喜八郎氏幹人某來。請占氣運。筮得屯之隨。爻辭曰。六四乘馬班如。求婚媾往吉。无不利。斷曰。屯之爲卦。我欲奮進爲事。彼頑愚而妨之。故不能奏功。是屯之義也。今以四爻觀之。四者比五。而在輔翼之位。但以五之不用我策。當變志而應初爻之陽爻。爻辭曰。乘馬班如者。謂欲進而猶未定也。求婚媾往吉者。謂當求陽剛之初爻。以相輔也。後依所聞。彼大倉之幹人。與支配人。共趨廣島。爲鎭臺商務。繼與支配人不合。意氣不平。直辭大倉氏。自行大阪。開店於同鎭臺之側。用從前同業某支配人。蓋即卦中求初爻相助之兆也。

In plain words

An employee of Ōkura Kihachirō came to ask Takashima about his fortunes. The cast gave Zhun with its fourth line moving, changing into Sui. The line reads: "Six in the fourth place: the horses pull apart; seek a marriage match; going on is good, nothing is unfavourable."

Takashima's judgment: Zhun means that I want to press ahead, but the other side is stubborn and blocks me, so nothing gets done. Looking at the fourth line: it sits right next to the fifth, in the position of an aide; but since the fifth will not adopt my plans, I should change course and answer the first line, a yang line. "The horses pull apart" means wanting to go forward but not yet settled; "seek a marriage match; going on is good" means seeking out the firm first line so that each can help the other.

Later, as Takashima heard it, this employee went with Ōkura's manager to Hiroshima to handle trade with the army garrison there. He then fell out with the manager, and, aggrieved, left Ōkura outright, went to Osaka, and opened his own shop beside the garrison there, taking on a manager he had known in the trade. Takashima saw this as the sign in the hexagram: seeking help from the first line.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the fourth line of Zhun is read.
The hexagram is read as difficulty at the start: wanting to advance and being blocked, which Takashima pins on the fact that "the other side will not use me".
The line's relations are adjacency and correspondence: the fourth line sits beside the fifth, the aide next to the ruler; when the fifth will not use it, it turns to the first line, its correspondent. This is a textbook use of the two relations.
The image of a marriage match is widened to finding a partner to work with, and that partner is the firm first line.

About the outcome

The ending is what Takashima heard afterwards, and it is he who matched it to the line: "seeking the first line" becomes "taking on a manager from the trade". A match made after the fact is very elastic; almost any new partnership could be called "seeking the first line". This site does not treat it as evidence; what is worth reading is how adjacency and correspondence are used to analyse a person's situation.

Applying it to your situation

When your ideas keep being turned down above you, this line suggests neither pushing harder nor simply waiting, but looking around for who else actually needs you and wants to work with you. In your situation, who is the "first line" you could answer?

Original: Takashima Kaemon, Takashima Ekidan (expanded edition), recorded by Yanagida Ikusaku, Chinese text by Wang Zhiben, 1901. Translation, notes and reflection by this site.

These are historical records kept by the diviner himself. The outcomes are his own account; this site uses them to study how the lines were read, not as evidence that divination predicts events.

Cast a hexagram · All of Takashima's cases · The 64 hexagrams