Cui: three gatherers, two centers, one outsider

A lake above the earth: Kun below, Dui above

Cui (萃) is Dui (lake) above and Kun (earth) below. Counting from the bottom, the lowest three lines are yin, which is Kun; lines four and five are yang and line six is yin, which together are Dui. The Shuo Gua gives Kun the word “yielding” and Dui the word “gladness”, and it adds that Kun stands for the multitude. Many things, yielding and glad, come toward one place: that is gathering.

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Cui and its reversed hexagram Sheng: the three yin lines at the bottom of Cui end up at the top of Sheng.

The judgment and the Commentary: why the gathering holds, and around what

The judgment of Cui is long and lists several matters in a row: the king comes to the temple; it is fitting to see a great person; success; fitting to stay on course; a great sacrifice brings good fortune; it is fitting to have somewhere to go. Ancestral rites, an audience with a great person, a large offering: each is an occasion on which people gather in one place.

Cui means gathering. Yielding and glad, with the firm at the center and answered: therefore they gather. “The king comes to the temple”: he brings filial offerings to their fullest. “Fitting to see a great person, success”: the gathering is upright. “A great sacrifice brings good fortune; fitting to have somewhere to go”: this follows the mandate of heaven. Look at what they gather around, and what heaven, earth and all things truly are will show itself.

The Commentary first explains why the gathering holds. The lower trigram, Kun, yields and the upper one, Dui, rejoices: “yielding and glad”. Line 5 is a yang line in the central place, and line 2 below it answers it: “the firm at the center and answered”. Then it goes back and gives each of the three matters in the judgment a phrase: filial offerings, an upright gathering, the mandate of heaven.

The last sentence reads: “look at what they gather around, and what heaven, earth and all things truly are will show itself.” What a crowd gathers around shows how things really stand. One way to read it: the sentence is about where things gather, not how many gather.

The Great Image: clear the weapons, guard against the unforeseen

The Great Image (大象) of Cui reads: a lake above the earth, Cui; the noble person clears the weapons and guards against the unforeseen.

For a hexagram of gathering, an Image that ends on guarding does not quite match the word “gather”. The word for “clear” in “clear the weapons” is traditionally read as “put in order, repair”, and “the unforeseen” is whatever was not expected. The Image gives no reason; it simply puts gathering and guarding in the same sentence. One way to read it: the more that has gathered, the more there is to be wary of.

Six lines: three gatherers, two centers, one outsider

Sorting the six lines by the shape of the figure is one possible reading: the three yin lines at the bottom are those who gather upward, the two yang lines in the middle are the center of the gathering, and the yin line at the top stands outside it.

Line 1: “there is sincerity but not to the end; so there is confusion, so there is gathering”. Sincerity that was not kept to the end brings confusion first and gathering afterward, and the Small Image says: the will is confused. The sentence that follows reads: if one calls out, a single grasp turns to laughter; do not worry, going is blameless. Readings of “a single grasp” differ, and only the turn from worry to laughter is kept here.

Line 2: “being drawn: good fortune, no blame”. This line is pulled along into the gathering. “With sincerity, even the simple offering is fitting”: where there is sincerity, a modest rite will do. The Small Image says the center has not changed, meaning the heart at the center stays as it was.

Line 3: “gathering, sighing; nothing is favorable”, then “going is blameless; slight regret”. The Small Image says “above, there is yielding”, where the word translated “yielding” is traditionally read as “compliant”.

Read together, the three lower lines run from confusion to being drawn along to sighing. The gatherers do not arrive in high spirits all the way.

Line 4: “great good fortune; no blame”. Four characters in the original, the shortest line in the hexagram. Yet the Small Image adds: the position is not proper. Line 4 puts a yang line in the fourth place, and that place belongs to yin. “No blame” still follows “great good fortune”, which can be taken to mean that within the good fortune one still has to watch for mistakes.

Line 5: “gathering with a position: no blame”. Then comes “where there is no trust”, and so “a primal and lasting steadfastness” is needed before regret vanishes. The Small Image says: the will is not yet bright.

Both centers carry a reservation: the position is not proper at line 4, the will is not yet bright at line 5. The Small Images place their reservations on the center of the gathering.

Line 6: “sighing and weeping, tears and mucus: no blame”. The Small Image says “not at ease at the top”: it is at the top and yet uneasy.

Sheng, Daxu and Jian: the neighbors and the Xu Gua

Turn Cui upside down and you get Sheng (升), so Sheng is its reversed hexagram (综卦): the three yin lines move from the bottom to the top. The inverse hexagram (错卦) is Daxu (大畜), which changes every line of Cui to the opposite polarity. The nuclear hexagram (互卦) is Jian (渐), made from the middle four lines of Cui: the lower three of them (yin, yin, yang) form Gen, the upper three (yin, yang, yang) form Xun, and Gen below Xun is Jian.

Here is how the Xu Gua fits Cui into the order: Gou is meeting, and only after meeting do things gather, so Cui follows Gou; and when what has gathered then goes upward, that is Sheng. Cui and Sheng are each other’s reversed hexagram, one gathered in one place and the other growing upward, standing side by side.