Kun (Oppression) to Kan: a loan held up by someone in between

Date not recorded · A friend of Takashima hoping to borrow money · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 47 Kùn (Exhaustion), line 4 moving, changing to Hexagram 29 Kǎn (The Abysmal Water).

Original text

友人某來。請占氣運。筮得困之坎。爻辭曰。九四來徐徐。困于金車。吝。有終。斷曰。君所問在氣運。而君意事在借貸。以借貸論。四下與初應。初爻柔爲貧。四爻剛爲富。當以初爻屬君。四爻屬貸者。在四固有意於初。間爲二爻所阻。致四遲疑。不克速允。四亦未免有吝。爲今之計。二與五應。必須挽五與二說開。則不相阻而相助。斯借貸終得許允也。後挽人向二說之。果得成就。

In plain words

A friend of Takashima came to ask about his fortunes. The cast gave Kun (Oppression) with its fourth line moving, changing into Kan. The line reads: "Nine in the fourth place: coming slowly, slowly, held up in a bronze carriage; shame, but it comes to an end."

Takashima's judgment: you asked about your fortunes, but what is on your mind is borrowing money. Taking it as a loan: the fourth line looks down to the first, its correspondent. The first line is soft, the poorer party; the fourth is firm, the wealthier. The first line is you and the fourth the lender. The fourth is willing to lend to the first, but the second line stands in between, so the fourth hesitates and cannot agree quickly, and is somewhat embarrassed itself.

What to do now: the second line answers the fifth. Get the fifth on your side and have him talk things over with the second; then the second will help rather than hinder, and the loan will be agreed in the end.

The friend later had someone go and talk to the "second line", and the loan did go through.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the fourth line of Kun is read.
First the real question is named: the friend asked about "fortunes", but Takashima says outright that his mind is on a loan. Finding out what the person is really asking comes first.
Correspondence fixes the two parties: the soft first line is poorer, the firm fourth richer, and since they correspond, they are borrower and lender.
The line in between is the obstacle, and another pair of correspondents gives the fix: the second line blocks the way, but it answers the fifth, so the fifth is asked to smooth things over. Line relations yield a concrete plan for dealing with people.

About the outcome

That the loan "went through" is Takashima's own record. Asking someone the other side trusts to smooth the way is a common way of getting things agreed. This site does not treat it as evidence; what is worth reading is how Takashima gets from "held up in a bronze carriage" to who is in the way and who can clear it.

Applying it to your situation

When something is stuck, the problem is often not that the other side is unwilling but that someone in between is blocking it. In what is stuck for you, who is the real obstacle, and who could talk it through for you?

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