Xu: six places of waiting

Heaven below, danger ahead: "Xu means waiting"

Xu (需) is the fifth hexagram: heaven below, water above. Reading up from the base, the six lines are yang, yang, yang, yin, yang, yin. The three yang lines at the bottom make the trigram of heaven; above them one yang line between two yin lines makes water. The Shuo Gua says "heaven is strong" and "water is a pit" (the images behind the eight trigrams are in the eight trigrams). The Commentary on the Judgments (彖传) starts with the name itself.

Xu means waiting: danger lies ahead. Being firm and strong, it does not fall in; its rightness does not run into want or exhaustion.

Open the full-size diagram

Xu and its reversed hexagram Song: the reversed hexagram turns the whole figure over, and heaven and water trade places.

"Waiting" is the plain meaning of the word. What follows can be taken in three layers: danger lies ahead, one is firm and strong, so one does not fall into it, and the reasoning never leads to being cornered.

Set against the figure, the danger ahead is the upper trigram, water, and the strength is below it in the lower trigram, heaven: danger in front, strength behind.

The judgment: trust, bright passage, and crossing the great river

Xu's judgment reads: "Having trust; bright and free-flowing. Steadfast, good fortune. Fitting to cross the great river." Having trust is being sincere, bright and free-flowing is light and open passage, steadfast good fortune is that holding to what is right brings good, and fitting to cross the great river says that fording water is a good thing. The name is waiting, yet the judgment runs from passage to fortune to crossing, and the Commentary on the Judgments answers it clause by clause.

The sentence "it holds the seat of heaven, by being upright and central" is traditionally taken to point at line 5, which holds the central place of the upper trigram; how to check that is shown in the worked example of line positions, so it is not repeated here. On crossing the river the Commentary on the Judgments says only "to go brings achievement". There is danger ahead and the judgment still calls the crossing fitting; nowhere in it is there a sentence that says do not move.

Clouds above heaven: eating and drinking in the Great Image (大象)

The Great Image for Xu reads: "clouds above heaven: Xu. The noble person eats and drinks and feasts in comfort." Clouds have risen into the sky, matching heaven below and water above. What the noble person does comes down to eating, drinking and feasting.

Clouds above heaven: Xu. The noble person eats and drinks and feasts in comfort.

Food and drink show up three times in the text of this hexagram: once in the Xu Gua, once in the Great Image and once in line 5.

Side by side, the three place waiting in this hexagram next to eating and drinking.

Outskirts, sand, mud, blood, wine and food, cave: six places

In the six line statements, waiting is followed by a place: the outskirts, sand, mud, blood, wine and food, while the last line switches to "entering the cave". Each place is followed by a verdict, and the Small Image (小象) adds a remark.

The lower three lines are on the ground: outskirts, sand, mud. Tradition often reads them as drawing steadily nearer the water, since the danger lies ahead. Line 1, "fitting to be constant; no blame", gets "it does not venture into hardship". Line 2, "a little gossip; the end is good fortune", ends well. Line 3, "it brings robbers to come", has the Small Image with the sharpest turn: "the disaster is still outside"; "it is I who bring the robbers"; "with respect and care, there is no defeat".

The upper three lines are exactly the trigram of water. Line 4, "waiting in blood, coming out of the cave", gets only four words from the Small Image: "compliant, and listening". At line 5 it is wine and food, "steadfast, good fortune". Line 6 reads: "Entering the cave. Three uninvited guests arrive. Treat them with respect, and the end is good fortune." In the Shuo Gua water is a pit, and a cave is also a place sunk down, so the two can be read together; line 4 has "coming out of the cave" and line 6 "entering the cave", the same word, once out and once in.

Xu and Song: two trigrams trade places

The reversed hexagram of Xu is Song (訟): turn Xu upside down and the lower trigram of heaven and the upper trigram of water change places, giving water below and heaven above. In Xu the danger is ahead and the strength is below; the Commentary on the Judgments of Song says "firm above, danger below".

The Xu Gua first defines xu as the way of eating and drinking, and goes on to say that with eating and drinking there will be disputes, so the next hexagram is Song. Xu's inverse hexagram is Jin (晉) and its nuclear hexagram is Kui (睽).