Gou: from the tied brake to the horns

Wind beneath heaven: one yin line under five yang

Gou (姤) is Qian (heaven) above and Xun (wind) below. Counting from the bottom, the first line is yin and the other five are yang: the whole figure has one yin line, with five yang lines standing over it. In the Shuo Gua Qian stands for strength and Xun for entering, and Xun is also named the eldest daughter, since the lowest of Xun’s three lines is the yin one. So the figure can be read as one eldest daughter at the foot of five yang lines.

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Gou and its reversed hexagram Guai: the single yin line at the bottom of Gou ends up at the top of Guai.

The judgment and the Commentary: a narrow meeting, then a wide one

The judgment is only a handful of words: the woman is strong; do not marry the woman. The Commentary on the Judgments treats it in two halves.

Gou means meeting: the yielding meets the firm. “Do not marry the woman”: one cannot stay with her for long. Heaven and earth meet, and all the kinds of things become manifest. The firm meets what is central and upright, and the world is greatly carried out. The meaning of the time of meeting is great indeed!

The first half sticks to the case: the yielding meets the firm, which is one encounter, and “cannot stay for long” says that such an encounter does not last. The second half pulls the camera back. When heaven and earth meet, the kinds of things each show their form (the word is “manifest”), and when the firm meets a central, upright place, matters under heaven are carried out. The same word “meeting” covers a brief encounter that should not be prolonged at one end and the joining of heaven and earth that gives things their shapes at the other. The closing exclamation praises the meaning of the time of meeting.

The Great Image: wind goes everywhere, and the sovereign sends out commands

The Great Image (大象) of Gou reads: beneath heaven there is wind, Gou; the sovereign issues commands and proclaims them to the four quarters. Here the subject is the sovereign; Great Images say “noble person”, “ancient kings” or “sovereign” depending on the hexagram, and the text decides which.

The Shuo Gua says wind is what disperses things, which sends them everywhere. The Image can be read against that: wind beneath heaven slips into every place, so a command should go out like wind and be proclaimed in all directions. It says nothing about a woman or about meeting, and takes only the way the wind travels.

Six lines: tied, wrapped, pulled, horns

The statements and Small Images of Gou share a small family of actions: tying down, wrapping up (three times in the statements), pulling along (only in the Small Images).

Line 1 is at the bottom and is the only yin line. “Tied to a metal brake” is traditionally read as fastened to a metal block of the kind that stops a cart wheel; the statement goes on, “steadfastness is fortunate”, while going somewhere “sees misfortune”. The next phrase is vivid: a lean pig will surely paw the ground in restlessness. The Small Image says: the way of the yielding pulls.

Line 2 sits right on top of line 1: “wrapped, there is a fish”, no blame, but “not fitting for guests”. The Small Image explains that by right it does not reach the guests. Line 4 is farther away: “wrapped, no fish; rising brings misfortune”, which the Small Image calls being distant from the people. The text does not say what the fish is; tradition usually matches it with line 1.

Line 3 is caught in the middle: no skin on the buttocks, a halting walk, danger but no great blame. Its Small Image is “his going is not yet pulled”. The word “pull” appears once in the comment on line 1 and once in the comment on line 3: in the first the way of the yielding is to pull, in the second this line has not been pulled along.

At line 5 the wrapped thing becomes a melon: wrapped with willow, “holding brilliance”, and “something falls from heaven”. The Chinese word behind “brilliance” here is the one the Commentary renders as “manifest”: the Commentary says the kinds of things all become manifest, while line 5 holds it inside.

At the top there is no more wrapping or tying: “meeting with the horns”, the horns being the last thing at the top, and the Small Image says: at the top, exhausted, hence regret. From tying and wrapping to horns, the way of holding on can be read as getting harder, and at the very top the meeting is made with horns.

Guai, Fu and Qian: the neighbors and the Xu Gua

The reversed hexagram (综卦) of Gou is Guai (夬): five yang lines below and one yin line at the very top. Turn Guai over and you get Gou. The inverse hexagram (错卦) is Fu (复): one yang line at the bottom with five yin lines above it, the opposite of Gou in every line. The nuclear hexagram (互卦) is Qian: lines 2 to 4 and lines 3 to 5 of Gou are all yang, and stacked they give Qian.

The Xu Gua places Gou after Guai: Guai means resolving, and once something has been broken open one is bound to meet something, so Gou comes next; after Gou comes Cui (萃), since things gather only after they have met. In Guai five yang lines push out one yin line; in Gou that same yin line reappears from the bottom. The two neighbors can be seen as the two ends of one yin line.