Ge to Ji Ji: bad luck going, good luck coming

Date not recorded · A friend of Takashima · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 49 Gé (Revolution), line 4 moving, changing to Hexagram 63 Jì Jì (After Completion).

Original text

友人某來。請占氣運。筮得革之既濟。爻辭曰。九四悔亡。有孚改命吉。斷曰。革者去故取新之卦。在人則衰運去而盛運來也。今占得四爻。知足下之氣運方盛。從前災悔已消。此後事業重新。進而謀事。成就無疑。但不利仍舊。唯利改作。故曰改命。命。命運也。人生命運。五年一換。彖取己日。以土爲用。信亦爲土。如丙子運後。換入己丑。土運正旺。故吉。凡平素不利之事。一經改革。无往不利矣。後果然。

In plain words

A friend of Takashima came to ask about his fortunes. The cast gave Ge with its fourth line moving, changing into Ji Ji. The line reads: "Nine in the fourth place: regret vanishes; with trust, changing the mandate brings good fortune."

Takashima's judgment: Ge is the hexagram of throwing off the old and taking up the new; in a person's life, it is bad luck leaving and good luck arriving. Drawing the fourth line shows that your fortunes are at a high, past troubles and regrets have gone, and your work is about to be renewed; go ahead with your plans and they will surely succeed. Only, carrying on as before will not pay; only change will. Hence "changing the mandate".

The "mandate" is one's fate. A person's fortune changes every five years. The commentary takes "the day ji", which is earth, and trust too belongs to earth. For example, after a period under bing-zi one moves into ji-chou, a time when earth is strong, and so it is good. Whatever has not gone well before will, once changed, go well everywhere.

And so it turned out.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the fourth line of Ge is read.
The hexagram is read as revolution: casting off the old for the new, read as bad luck going and good luck coming.
"Changing the mandate" takes "mandate" as one's fate, urging change rather than staying the course.
Stems, branches and the five elements are brought in: Takashima reads the commentary's day "ji" as the heavenly stem ji, which is earth, and uses five-year cycles and a ji-chou earth period to explain the good fortune. This layer comes from later fate-calculation, not from the Zhouyi text or its commentaries.

About the outcome

"And so it turned out" is all the text says; it does not say what the friend changed or how it went. This site does not treat it as evidence; what is worth reading is how Takashima grafts later stem-and-branch fate-reckoning onto the Zhouyi.

Applying it to your situation

"Changing the mandate" does not mean waiting for luck to turn; it means changing how you do things. Is there something that has kept going badly for you that is due a different approach?

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.

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