Coming to Meet — 姤

What Is Hexagram 44?

Hexagram 44, Gòu (姤), Coming to Meet, is Heaven above Wind, ䷫ — five firm lines with a single yielding line entering at the very bottom. The figure is about what arrives before anyone has decided anything: the encounter that was not arranged, the person who turns up.

The name is a verb. 姤 is 遇 — to meet, to come upon, to run into. Kong Yingda's subcommentary states the mechanics without ornament: 此卦一柔而遇五剛，故名為「姤」。施之於人，則是一女而遇五男，為壯至甚 — in this figure one yielding line meets five firm ones, and that is where the name comes from; applied to people it is one woman meeting five men, which is being strong to the extreme. The judgment that follows is the shortest kind of refusal. 女壯，勿用取女 — the woman is in her strength; do not take this woman in marriage. Six characters in the whole declaration, and its engine is a count.

What lifts the figure out of that first reading is what the 彖 does with the same word. Having repeated the warning, it turns and praises the very thing it just forbade: 天地相遇，品物咸章也 — when heaven and earth meet, the kinds of things all become visible. 剛遇中正，天下大行也 — when the firm meets what is central and correct, the way of the world runs through. And then the closing line: 姤之時義大矣哉, great indeed is the meaning of the time of this meeting. The subcommentary notices that the treatise has jumped registers and says so plainly: 卦得遇名，本由一柔與五剛相遇，故遇辭非美 — the figure takes its name from one yielding line meeting five firm ones, which is why its words about meeting are not praise — and then, 故孔子更就天地歎美「遇」之為義不可廢也: Confucius therefore goes over to heaven and earth to praise the meaning of meeting as something that cannot be dispensed with. His reason is stated as a physical one: 天地若各亢所處，不相交遇，則萬品庶物，無由彰顯，必須二氣相遇，乃得化生 — if heaven and earth each held to their own height and never met, nothing of the ten thousand kinds would ever come into view; the two breaths have to meet before anything is born.

The same page of commentary flags the jump as deliberate rather than careless. Wang Bi's note on the closing word 義 defines what happens when the book uses it: 凡言義者，不盡於所見，中有意謂者也 — wherever the text speaks of meaning, it is not exhausted by what can be seen; something further is intended. The subcommentary unpacks that: 就卦以驗名義，只是女遇於男，博尋遇之深旨，乃至道該天地 — read at the level of the figure the name only says that a woman meets a man, and pursued to its depth the same word reaches up to a way that covers heaven and earth. The figure's meaning is declared in advance to be larger than its picture, and the reader is told not to settle for the picture.

The structure underneath all of this is unusually clean. Turn Hexagram 44 upside down and the same six strokes become Hexagram 43, Breakthrough — the figure immediately before this one. Give each line the opposite kind instead and the six strokes come out as Hexagram 24, Return, which is this figure turned inside out at every position: Return is five yielding lines with one firm line at the bottom, and Coming to Meet is five firm lines with one yielding line at the bottom. What the two figures share is where the odd line sits, the first place; in every other respect they are the exact reverse of one another. Both readings of the shape mean the same thing at the level of the book: whatever happens in the figure, happens because of the line in the first place. Return is that line returning; Coming to Meet is that line arriving.

By the count, the judgment and the six line texts are as carefully arranged as the strokes. The character 吉 appears exactly once in them, at the first line, and nowhere in the 彖, the Image or the Small Images either. 凶 appears twice, at the first line and the fourth. 吝 appears once, at the top. 厲 appears once, at the third. The character 悔 never appears at all. The word 咎 appears three times and is negated every time — 无咎 at the second and at the top, 无大咎 at the third — and the Small Images add one further 凶 when they quote the fourth line back. Six lines, five of them firm, and the figure declines to promise anybody anything better than the absence of blame. Where the other member of its pair, Breakthrough, contains no 吉 whatever, this figure contains one, and it is attached to the single yielding line it spends the rest of the page warning about.

Trigram Structure

Gòu is Heaven over Wind — 乾 above 巽. The 說卦 gives each of the eight trigrams a single defining word, and the two here are 乾，健也 and 巽，入也: the firm and the entering. The upper trigram is what the five firm lines stand for; the lower one is the wind that begins at the bottom of the figure and carries the yielding line with it. The 彖's first clause is the whole geometry — 柔遇剛也, the yielding meets the firm — and the subcommentary explains that the direction of travel is what gives the figure its name: 此就爻釋卦名，以初六一柔而上遇五剛，所以名「遇」 — the single yielding line at the bottom goes up to meet five firm ones, and that is where the name comes from. The meeting is hers to make, she is the one who moves, and the subcommentary says that this is exactly why the judgment applies its refusal to her rather than to them.

The 說卦's catalogue of what 巽 stands for is where this figure's problem is described before the figure itself says anything. The list runs 巽為木、為風、為長女、為繩直、為工、為白、為長、為高、為進退、為不果、為臭, and two of those entries — 為進退, given to going back and forth, and 為不果, without a settled outcome — describe a wind that never arrives anywhere and stays. This is the trigram whose nature is entry, and whose own repertoire includes wavering. The 繫辭's list of the nine figures that carry a virtue assigns 巽 a word from the other side: 巽，德之制也, wind as the measure and regulator of virtue, followed by 巽，稱而隱 — it weighs and stays out of sight — and 巽，以行權 — by it one exercises judgment. A trigram that can be either the unregulated drift or the making of limits is a trigram whose first line will need a brake, and the first line duly has one.

Two more chapters of the 說卦 put 巽 in a compass and a family. In the sequence of the eight that begins in spring, it holds the position where things are brought level: 齊乎巽，巽，東南也，齊也者，言萬物之潔齊也 — the southeast, where the trigram is placed, and the work named for it there is the evening-out of everything. The chapter before that one gives the trigram its element of motion, 橈萬物者，莫疾乎風, nothing bends things faster than wind, and the chapter after gives the derivation 巽一索而得女，故謂之長女, the eldest daughter, taken at the first exchange of the primal pair. So the upper trigram, which stands for the five firm lines and is the father, sits above the eldest daughter, and the figure is that meeting before it is anything else.

Its transformations are worth naming because both are already published pages. Invert all six strokes and the figure is 夬, Breakthrough, Hexagram 43 — which is why the subcommentary can explain this figure's third line by pointing straight at the other figure's fourth: 同於夬卦九四之失據, the same loss of footing. Reverse every line's kind and the figure is 復, Return, Hexagram 24. Positions and correspondences finish the picture. Only two of the six places are correct for their occupant, 九三 and 九五, and correspondence runs in only one of the three possible pairs: 九二 and 九五 are both firm and have nothing to exchange, 九三 and 上九 likewise, and the single link in the figure is between 初六 and 九四. In a figure about meeting, only one line is arranged to meet anything, and it is the one line the rest of the figure is written against.

The Judgment

姤：女壯，勿用取女。

Gòu: nǚ zhuàng, wù yòng qǔ nǚ.

Our rendering: The woman is in her strength; do not take this woman in marriage.

Six characters, and the only subject in them is a woman and what is done with her; she is named twice. 壯 is not a moral judgement in the text; it is the word for a thing grown to its full size, and the subcommentary applies it by counting: 一女而遇五男，為壯至甚. The figure hands the more numerous side to the yielding line and the word for strength to it as well, which is the first of several places in this book where a single line is said to outweigh five. The prohibition is about 取, which in this context is 娶, to take a woman in; and the reason given is not a fault in either party but a limit on duration: 女之為體，婉娩貞順，方可期之偕老。淫壯若此，不可與之長久 — what a woman's place asks for is a quiet and steady fidelity that can be counted on to the end of two lives, and a thing this far from that cannot be long joined to anything. The 彖 repeats the reason in five characters: 不可與長也.

Then the 彖 changes floors, and the change is the point of the page. The same verb is a prohibition inside a household and a necessity inside the world. 天地相遇，品物咸章也 — the meeting of heaven and earth is what makes the ten thousand things visible at all. 剛遇中正，天下大行也 — where the firm meets what is central and correct, the way of the world gets through, and the subcommentary's gloss on that clause describes a marriage of a particular kind: 若剛遇中正之柔，男得幽貞之女，則天下人倫之化，乃得大行也 — when the firm meets a yielding that is central and correct, a man who is given a woman of quiet steadiness, then the transformation of human relations goes through the whole world. The figure under discussion does not present that case. Its only yielding line is in the first place, at the bottom, and never reaches the middle; the favorable reading of 遇 is stated as what the word can mean, not as what this page contains. The 彖 closes on the formula 姤之時義大矣哉, which ends only six of the book's sixty-four 彖 — and Wang Bi's note on the word 義 is quoted above: the meaning of a time is never exhausted by what the figure shows.

Jungian reading. What the judgment describes is not a person but a state of being met. The word it uses for the one line doing the meeting is strength, and the thing it refuses is permanence: nothing that arrives this way is to be taken in for good, and the reason given is that it cannot last. Jung's account of what he called the encounter with the unconscious rests on the same distinction between what has been chosen and what has simply arrived: a content that comes up on its own has, in his language, a life of its own, and the mistake is not to meet it but to sign with it. The figure's own image for the mistake is a lean sow pulling at a rope, and the subcommentary's diagnosis of her is exactly a diagnosis of a person in that condition: 得遇而通，散而無主，自縱者也 — she has had an encounter and been opened by it, has no master in herself, and lets herself go.

The Image

象曰：天下有風，姤；后以施命誥四方。

Tiān xià yǒu fēng, gòu; hòu yǐ shī mìng gào sì fāng.

Our rendering: Wind under heaven: Coming to Meet. The sovereign therefore sends out orders and publishes them in every direction.

Wind under heaven is this figure's image for a thing that reaches everywhere without aiming anywhere. The subcommentary makes the equation in nine characters: 風行天下，則無物不遇 — where wind goes through the world, there is nothing it does not meet. Meeting, in this reading, is not something that happens now and then; it is the weather the world is always in.

The subject of the instruction is the first thing to notice, because this figure does not use the usual one. Of the sixty-four Images, fifty-three are given to 君子, the noble one; seven to 先王, the kings of old; one to 大人, the great one, at Radiance; one to 上, the one above, at Decay; and exactly two to 后, the sovereign: this figure and 泰, Peace. There is no way to know whether the choice was deliberate, and there is no need to settle it, because the instruction it carries is unlike the instructions the noble one receives elsewhere. He is usually told what to do with himself — to examine, to store up, to keep still. Here the sovereign is told to send something out: 施命, to issue an order, and 誥四方, to proclaim it in all four directions. The subcommentary supplies the physical link between the image and the act, and it also supplies the reason the order has to travel so far: 風行草偃，天之威令，故人君法此，以施教命，誥於四方也 — when the wind passes, the grass goes down, and that is the awe of heaven's command; the ruler takes his model from it and sends his teaching and his orders out in every direction. Wind can be felt only where it happens to arrive, so an order that is to be present wherever the wind is has to be published everywhere.

The fifth line shows what the alternative looks like when nothing is sent out, and the figure is careful to make the two halves of the page rhyme. There a good thing stays wrapped and uneaten because no one has asked for it and nothing has carried it abroad; the subcommentary says of that line, 命未流行 — the command has not gone anywhere. Between that line and this Image, the figure states its one piece of advice about encountering the world: what arrives will arrive on its own, and what leaves has to be sent.

Jungian reading. The Image asks the person who has just been met to produce something that meets in turn. Jung put the same demand in the language of an exchange, comparing the meeting of two personalities to the contact of two chemical substances, where any reaction changes both. The figure's version is less flattering and more practical: it does not say that the encounter will transform you, it says that you owe the encounter a message. And the message is to be published in all four directions, which is to say that it must be written so that it can travel without you and arrive where you are not. A person who has something good and has told nobody about it is described by this figure as wrapped, uneaten, waiting on heaven.

The Lines

初六：系于金柅，貞吉，有攸往，見凶，羸豕孚蹢躅。 (Xì yú jīn nǐ, zhēn jí, yǒu yōu wǎng, jiàn xiōng, léi shǐ fú zhí zhú.) Tethered to a metal brake: holding firm is good fortune. To set out is to meet misfortune; a lean sow tugs and stumbles.

Sixteen characters, the longest of the six line texts, and the whole instruction is a rope. This is the only yielding line in Gòu, standing where the encounter begins, and Wang Bi's note asks the question the reader should ask: 柔之為物，不可以不牽 — what is yielding cannot be left untethered. He then names what it is to be tied to, and the answer is a position rather than a person: 必系于正應，乃得貞吉 — it must be fastened to its proper correspondence, and only then does holding firm come out as good fortune; 若不牽於一，而有攸往行，則唯凶是見矣 — untie it from the one thing it answers to and go, and nothing but misfortune shows. The one thing it answers to is 九四, the only correspondence in the figure.

The object it is tied to has been argued over for as long as the book has been read. The subcommentary collects the disagreement: 柅之為物，眾說不同。王肅之徒皆為織績之器，婦人所用。惟馬云：「柅者，在車之下，所以止輪令不動者也。」 — some of the old readers took 柅 for a part of a loom, something in a woman's hands, and Ma Rong took it for the block under a cart that keeps the wheel from turning. Wang Bi's own gloss, 制動之主, a thing that governs motion, goes with the cart. Both readings are restraints, and the line does not choose between them; what it does choose is the material, and 金, metal, is named for its firmness rather than for its value.

The failing version of the line is one of the book's unkindest pictures, and it turns on a character that usually means something else. 孚 in most of the I Ching means trust or something that can be credited. Wang Bi reads it here as restlessness: 孚，猶務躁也 — 孚 is like an appetite for motion. His reasoning is about animals rather than persons. First the name: 羸豕，謂牝豕也。群豕之中，豭強而牝弱，故謂之「羸豕」也 — a lean sow, and among pigs the boar is strong while the sow is weak, which is what the word marks. Then the comparison: 夫陰質而躁恣者，羸豕特甚焉, of everything soft that is restless and gives itself its own way, a lean sow does it worst. The Small Image gives the rule the line is built on in four characters, 柔道牽也, and the subcommentary spells the rule out: 陰柔之道，必須有所牽系也 — the way of the yielding is to be fastened to something.

九二：包有魚，无咎，不利賓。 (Bāo yǒu yú, wú jiù, bù lì bīn.) A fish is wrapped up in the kitchen: no blame — but there is nothing here for the guest.

Eight characters. The fish is the first line; the subcommentary gives the reason for the animal: 初六以陰而處下，故稱魚也, a yielding line at the bottom is called a fish. What happens between them is described without blame on either side. 以不正之陰，處遇之始，不能逆於所近，故舍九四之正應，樂充九二之庖廚 — a yielding line that is not in a correct place, at the beginning of an encounter, cannot go against what is near it, and so it leaves behind its proper correspondence with 九四 and gladly fills the second line's kitchen. Note what is being said: the figure's binding rule is proximity, and the proper but distant claim loses. The second line did not take the fish. 初自樂來，為已之廚，非為犯奪，故得「無咎」也 — it came of its own accord to cook in his kitchen and no seizure took place, which is why the line escapes blame.

What the line refuses instead is generosity, and its reasoning is one of those places where the classic sounds like a rule of accountancy raised to a principle: 擅人之物，以為己惠，義所不為，故「不利賓」也 — to take what belongs to someone else and make a gift of it is not what the right will do, and that is why no guest is invited. The Small Image is five characters, 義不及賓也, and the subcommentary's gloss is that the thing in hand is a thing that has an owner elsewhere, 言有他人之物，於義不可及賓也. There is a spelling matter to record as well: the classic's line text writes 包, to wrap, while Wang Bi's note and the subcommentary gloss the same word as 庖, a kitchen, and read 包有魚 as 庖有魚. The reading kept here follows the commentary.

九三：臀无膚，其行次且，厲，无大咎。 (Tún wú fū, qí xíng zī jū, lì, wú dà jiù.) Skin gone from the seat, and a step that will not come out even: peril, and no great blame.

Eleven characters, and they open with the same image used for the fourth line of the preceding figure, which the subcommentary notices and names: 同於夬卦九四之失據 — the same loss of footing as the fourth line of Breakthrough. The mechanics are the figure's geometry turned into discomfort. 陽之所據者，陰也 — what a firm line stands on is a yielding one; in this figure there is exactly one yielding line, and the second line is sitting on it, so the third has nothing beneath it and nothing above it either. 九三處下體之上，為內卦之主，以乘於二，無陰可據，居不獲安，上又無應 — at the top of the lower trigram, riding over the second, with no yielding line to stand on, it cannot settle; and above, it has no correspondence. Sitting and walking are the two things the line text gives it, and the commentary says that it fails at both for the same single reason.

The relief the line is granted is worth reading closely, because the book does not often say this: 然履得其位，非為妄處，不遇其時，故使危厲。災非已招，是以「無大咎」也 — it stands in a place that is correct for it, it is not there through any wrong move of its own, it has merely met the wrong time, and that is what puts it in danger; the trouble was not invited, which is why the blame is not great. The subcommentary's Small Image is four characters, 行未牽也 — the walking has nothing fastened to it — and that phrase closes a loop with the first line, whose Small Image said 柔道牽也, the yielding way is to be fastened. One line in this figure has something to hold on to and is told to keep holding; another has nothing to hold on to and is told that the fault is not his.

九四：包无魚，起凶。 (Bāo wú yú, qǐ xiōng.) Nothing in the kitchen but the empty wrapping: to stir is misfortune.

Five characters, the briefest of the six lines, and the first place where the word 凶 is stated flatly. The cause is a transfer: 二有其魚，故失之也 — the second line has the fish, so the fourth has lost it. Wang Bi's note on the consequence is political rather than domestic, and the subcommentary follows him into it: 庖之無魚，則是無民之義也 — an empty kitchen means having no people; 無民而動，失應而作，是以「凶」也 — to move without a people and to act having lost the correspondence one was entitled to is what the misfortune is made of. The Small Image is 無魚之凶，遠民也, seven characters, and the subcommentary's gloss makes the phrase mean distance rather than desertion: 陰為陽之民，為二所據，故曰「遠民」也 — the yielding is what the firm rules over, the second line has it, and so the fourth line's people are merely far away. Nothing here was taken from it by force and nothing here was ruined; the thing it was answering to came to someone closer.

九五：以杞包瓜，含章，有隕自天。 (Yǐ qǐ bāo guā, hán zhāng, yǒu yǔn zì tiān.) A melon wrapped up in willow: the pattern held inside, and what falls comes down from heaven.

Ten characters, and this is the figure's one steady place: the only line among the six that is both central and correct, and a line with no counterpart to meet. Wang Bi's reading of the two plants is a reading of two ranks of usefulness: 杞之為物，生於肥地者也。包瓜為物，系而不食者也 — 杞 is a thing that grows in rich ground, and the gourd is a thing that hangs and is not eaten. Then the person: 九五履得尊位，而不遇其應，得地而不食，含章而未發，不遇其應，命未流行 — standing in the honored place but not met by what answers to it, holding rich ground and eating nothing from it, with the pattern held in and not yet disclosed, because with no correspondence the command has nowhere to go.

The word 系 in that gloss is the same word with which the figure began. The first line was told 系于金柅, to be tied to a brake; the fifth line is described as a gourd 系而不食, tied and uneaten. One is tied in order not to move, the other is tied by circumstance to a full ground it cannot use, and the figure keeps both.

The one character in the line that four generations of readers disagreed about is 杞. The subcommentary lists the positions: 馬云：「杞，大木也。」《左傳》云：「杞梓皮革自楚注，則為杞梓之杞。」子夏《傳》曰：「作杞匏瓜。」薛虞《記》云：「杞，杞柳也。杞性柔刃，宜屈橈，似匏瓜。」 — Ma Rong's great tree, the catalpa of the Zuo Commentary, the gourd of Zixia's tradition, the supple willow of Xue Yu's record, which bends like a gourd. Wang Bi's own phrase, that the thing grows in rich ground, is taken by the subcommentary to settle on 枸杞, the shrub that grows where the soil is good: 王氏云「生於肥地」，蓋以杞為今之枸杞也. Whatever tree is meant, the picture is the same: something growing well and something hanging uneaten, enclosed together. One phrase in the line is used at only one other place in the sixty-four: 含章 occurs at the third line of Hexagram 2, where it also carries an instruction to hold firm, 含章可貞, and appears nowhere else in the book.

What the line promises is stated in five characters, 志不捨命也, which the Small Image gives as the ground of the last four characters of the line, 有隕自天: 雖命未流行，而居尊當位，「志不捨命」，故曰「不可傾隕」也 — the command has not gone out and the will does not let go of it, and for that reason nothing can bring the line down, and 蓋言惟天能隕之耳, only heaven can do that. This is the only place in the figure where holding something back is not a deprivation, and its condition is stated in the Small Image itself: the pattern stays inside and the will stays on the mandate while nobody comes to ask.

上九：姤其角，吝，无咎。 (Gòu qí jiǎo, lìn, wú jiù.) Meeting at the horn: a sting, and no blame.

Six characters, and the figure ends by meeting nothing. Wang Bi: 進之於極，無所復遇，遇角而已，故曰「姤其角」也 — pushed to the extreme, there is nothing further to meet and the horn is all that is left, which is what the line says. His reading of the verdict is unusually exact about what has and has not happened: 進而無遇，獨恨而已，不與物爭，其道不害，故無凶咎也 — it goes forward and finds no meeting, and that is a private grievance and nothing more; it does not contend with anything, its way does no harm, and so there is no misfortune and no blame. The subcommentary gives the anatomical reason the top of a creature is the wrong place to meet: 角者，最處體上，上九進之於極，無所復遇，遇角而已. Then it separates the two verdicts the line carries. On 吝: 角非所安，與無遇等，故獨恨而鄙吝也 — the horn is where nothing sits well, it amounts to having met nothing, and the most that comes of it is a private shrinking. And on 无咎: 然不與物爭，其道不害，故無凶咎 — since nothing was contended for, no harm was done by its way, and so there is no misfortune in it. This is the figure's last word on encountering anything at all: 吝 is the sting of being diminished, the book's word for a loss that is nobody's fault, and 凶 is withheld because in this book misfortune requires that something have been done.

Daily Life

The figure belongs to the class of events that arrive rather than get decided. The sequence it stands in makes that explicit: 決必有所遇，故受之以姤 — what has been decided will meet something, which is why this figure comes directly after the one about the public decision, and 物相遇而后聚, what meets gathers afterwards, which is why Gathering Together comes after this one. So the pair forms the two halves of a single week in a life: first the thing that had to be settled and said aloud, then the person or the news that turns up because the settling made room for it.

Nothing in the figure suggests the encounter can be prevented. Wind under heaven meets everything; the Image does not propose a shelter; it proposes a publication. What the figure asks for instead is regulation of two kinds, and the first line states both. What is soft must be fastened to something, because the yielding has no shape of its own and will follow whatever is nearest: 不能逆於所近 — it cannot go against what is close. This is not a moral failing in the text; it is a description of how proximity works, and the second and fourth lines are the two outcomes of it. One holds a fish that came of its own accord, keeps it without blame, and is told not to distribute it. The other finds its kitchen empty and is told that to stir from there is misfortune. Neither of them chose the outcome in advance; what differed was only whether what arrived was attached to anything on the far side and whether the one who received it treated it as property or as a gift.

The fifth line is the figure's answer to the reader who is holding something good that nobody has asked about yet. The pattern is held inside, the mandate has not gone anywhere, and the line stays attached to the mandate anyway; and the Image then tells the same person what to do about it, which is to issue the order and proclaim it in the four directions. Held and unpublished is a description of a state, not a recommendation. The sovereign sends; the gourd hangs. Both are in the figure, and the figure is on the side of the sending.

One note on how to read the judgment, since it is the part of this page a reader is most likely to take at face value. The book's language is the language of a household in which women were placed, and its warning 勿用取女 has been read for two thousand years as a statement about women. What the text actually does with it is state a limit on permanence: the reason it gives is 不可與長, that this cannot be lasted with, and the general principle the 彖 extracts from it concerns meetings of every kind, including the meeting of heaven and earth. Applied to a life, the warning is about committing for good to something that arrived by accident. It applies to a person met this way, a job taken this way, a partnership entered this way, and to anything else that was met rather than chosen and is then signed for as though it had been chosen. The figure's own highest line makes the positive case: the one thing that can be waited on is the thing that stays attached to its mandate while nobody is asking for it.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does Hexagram 44 mean in one sentence?

That something has arrived that nobody arranged, and that the whole art of the figure is in what the arrival is fastened to: the judgment refuses permanence in six characters, 女壯，勿用取女, the first line is tied to a metal brake and told that setting out on its own leads only to 凶, the second keeps what came to it while being forbidden to pass it on, the fourth has already lost its counterpart, and the fifth holds its pattern inside with its mandate unspent, 命未流行, and stays attached to the mandate anyway.

Is the judgment's refusal about women?

The text puts it in the language of marriage and of a placed woman, and the reason it gives is a limit on duration rather than a fault in anyone: 女之為體，婉娩貞順，方可期之偕老。淫壯若此，不可與之長久. The 彖 then lifts the same word to another scale and praises what the figure has just forbidden — 天地相遇，品物咸章也 — and the subcommentary notes the jump outright, that the words of meeting in this figure are not praise, so Confucius went over to heaven and earth to praise the meaning of meeting as something not to be done without: 故孔子更就天地歎美「遇」之為義不可廢也. Read for a life rather than a household, the warning is about committing for good to what arrived by chance.

What is the first line's brake, and what is wrong with the pig?

The brake is 柅, and the subcommentary records that the old readers split on it: 王肅之徒皆為織績之器，婦人所用, a loom part in a woman's hands, while 馬云：「柅者，在車之下，所以止輪令不動者也」, the block under a cart that stops the wheel, and Wang Bi's own phrase 制動之主, a thing that governs motion, agrees with the second. Either way it is a restraint on the one yielding line, which must be fastened to its proper correspondence at 九四 — the only correspondence in the figure — or it will follow whatever is closest. The pig is the picture of what happens without the brake. 羸豕，謂牝豕也, and the character 孚, which elsewhere in the book means trust, is read by Wang Bi as restlessness: 孚，猶務躁也。夫陰質而躁恣者，羸豕特甚焉. She counts for this figure because of the single rule her Small Image states in four characters, 柔道牽也.

What falls from heaven in the fifth line, and why does the line wait?

The line is the only one in the figure that is both central and correct, and it has no counterpart to meet. Its two plants make the situation visible: 杞之為物，生於肥地者也。包瓜為物，系而不食者也, one growing in rich ground and one hanging uneaten, and the subcommentary reads the pair as a person standing where the ground is good and getting nothing from it, with the pattern held in and not yet shown because 命未流行, the command has not gone anywhere. What the line refuses to do about that is change its attachment, 志不捨命也, and its Small Image states the consequence: 不可傾隕, nothing can bring it down, 蓋言惟天能隕之耳, only heaven can do that. So 有隕自天 is the line's one outcome and it is not its own work. Its published form is the Image's instruction on the same page: issue the order and proclaim it in the four directions, because a good thing held and never sent stays where the wind happens to leave it.

The I Ching is a mirror for reflection, not a prediction machine.