Kui to Wei Ji: a proud man who keeps to himself

Date not recorded · A friend of Takashima · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 38 Kuí (Opposition), line 1 moving, changing to Hexagram 64 Wèi Jì (Before Completion).

Original text

友人某來請占運氣。筮得睽之未濟。爻辭曰。初九悔亡。喪馬勿逐。自復。見惡人。无咎。斷曰。此卦火性上升。澤性下降。彼我之情不洽。名之曰睽。睽者違也。今足下占氣運。而得初爻。初爻地位處最下。孤立无應。可知足下夙性孤高寡與。得失勿較。即有素所心惡之人。彼苟有求而來。亦不至拒而不納。以初爻處兌之始。外卦爲離。兌。悅也。離。明也。悅而又明。必能識人善惡。又復和光同塵。不爲過甚。卦象睽不終睽。故得无悔无咎。二爻曰遇主于巷。足下至明年。必有登進之望。

In plain words

A friend of Takashima came to ask about his fortunes. The cast gave Kui with its first line moving, changing into Wei Ji. The line reads: "Nine at the beginning: regret vanishes. If you lose your horse, do not chase it; it will come back by itself. Seeing a bad man, no fault."

Takashima's judgment: in this hexagram fire rises and the lake sinks, so the two sides do not get along; that is why it is called Kui, opposition. Kui means going against. You asked about your fortunes and drew the first line, at the very bottom, standing alone with no line answering it. So you have always been aloof and slow to join with others.

Do not keep score of gains and losses. Even someone you have long disliked, if he comes to you asking for something, should not be turned away. For the first line stands at the start of Dui, with Li as the outer trigram: Dui is gladness and Li is clarity. Glad and clear-sighted, you can surely tell good people from bad, and still blend in with others without going too far. The figure is opposition that does not stay opposition, so there is no regret and no fault.

The second line says "meeting one's lord in a lane": next year you will surely have a chance to rise.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the first line of Kui is read, with the second line's "meeting one's lord in a lane" used to look ahead to next year.
The image is fire above the lake: one rising, one sinking, pulling apart, which is where "opposition" comes from.
The line's place: at the very bottom, and with the fourth also yang, the first has no line answering it, read as a character that is aloof and solitary. Line position is used to read personality.
The trigrams, Dui for gladness and Li for clarity, become someone who can see who is good and bad and still be gracious, which is "seeing a bad man, no fault".

About the outcome

The text does not say whether the friend rose the following year. "Always aloof and solitary" is a character Takashima reads from the line's position, but he knew the man, and his everyday impressions may well have gone into it.

Applying it to your situation

"Lose your horse, do not chase it; it will come back": some things run further the harder you chase them. "Seeing a bad man, no fault": meeting someone you dislike is not necessarily a mistake. Is there someone you have been avoiding whom it would do no harm to see?

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