1. The Creative

The first hexa­gram is made up of six un­bro­ken lines. These un­bro­ken lines stand for the pri­mal power, which is light-giv­ing, ac­tive, strong, and of the spir­it. The hexa­gram is con­sis­tent­ly strong in char­ac­ter, and since it is with­out weak­ness, its essence is power or en­er­gy. Its image is heav­en. Its en­er­gy is rep­re­sent­ed as un­re­strict­ed by any fixed con­di­tions in space and is there­fore con­ceived of as mo­tion. Time is re­gard­ed as the basis of this mo­tion. Thus the hexa­gram in­cludes also the power of time and the power of per­sist­ing in time, that is, du­ra­tion.

The power rep­re­sent­ed by the hexa­gram is to be in­ter­pret­ed in a dual sense—in terms of its ac­tion on the uni­verse and of its ac­tion on the world of men. In re­la­tion to the uni­verse, the hexa­gram ex­press­es the strong, cre­ative ac­tion of the Deity. In re­la­tion to the human world, it de­notes the cre­ative ac­tion of the holy man or sage, of the ruler or leader of men, who through his power awak­ens and de­vel­ops their high­er na­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to the orig­i­nal mean­ing, the at­trib­ut­es [sub­lim­i­ty, po­ten­tial­i­ty of suc­cess, power to fur­ther, per­se­ver­ance] are paired. When an in­di­vid­ual draws this or­a­cle, it means that suc­cess will come to him from the pri­mal depths of the uni­verse and that every­thing de­pends upon his seek­ing his hap­pi­ness and that of oth­ers in one way only, that is, by per­se­ver­ance in what is right.

The spe­cif­ic mean­ings of the four at­trib­ut­es be­came the sub­ject of spec­u­la­tion at an early date. The Chi­nese word here ren­dered by “sub­lime” means lit­er­al­ly “head,” “ori­gin,” “great.” This is why Con­fu­cius says in ex­plain­ing it: “Great in­deed is the gen­er­at­ing power of the Cre­ative; all be­ings owe their be­gin­ning to it. This power per­me­ates all heav­en.” For this at­tribute in­heres in the other three as well.

The be­gin­ning of all things lies still in the be­yond in the form of ideas that have yet to be­come real. But the Cre­ative fur­ther­more has power to lend form to these ar­che­types of ideas. This is in­di­cat­ed in the word suc­cess, and the process is rep­re­sent­ed by an image from na­ture: “The clouds pass and the rain does its work, and all in­di­vid­ual be­ings flow into their forms.”

Ap­plied to the human world, these at­trib­ut­es show the great man the way to no­table suc­cess: “Be­cause he sees with great clar­i­ty caus­es and ef­fects, he com­pletes the six steps at the right time and mounts to­ward heav­en on them at the right time, as though on six drag­ons.” The six steps are the six dif­fer­ent po­si­tions given in the hexa­gram, which are rep­re­sent­ed later by the drag­on sym­bol. Here it is shown that the way to suc­cess lies in ap­pre­hend­ing and giv­ing ac­tu­al­i­ty to the way of the uni­verse [tao], which, as a law run­ning through end and be­gin­ning, brings about all phe­nom­e­na in time. Thus each step at­tained forth­with be­comes a prepa­ra­tion for the next. Time is no longer a hin­drance but the means of mak­ing ac­tu­al what is po­ten­tial.

The act of cre­ation hav­ing found ex­pres­sion in the two at­trib­ut­es sub­lim­i­ty and suc­cess, the work of con­ser­va­tion is shown to be a con­tin­u­ous ac­tu­al­iza­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of form. This is ex­pressed in the two terms “fur­ther­ing” (lit­er­al­ly, “cre­at­ing that which ac­cords with the na­ture of a given being”) and “per­se­ver­ing” (lit­er­al­ly, “cor­rect and firm”). “The course of the Cre­ative al­ters and shapes be­ings until each at­tains its true, spe­cif­ic na­ture, then it keeps them in con­for­mi­ty with the Great Har­mo­ny. Thus does it show it­self to fur­ther through per­se­ver­ance.”

In re­la­tion to the human sphere, this shows how the great man brings peace and se­cu­ri­ty to the world through his ac­tiv­i­ty in cre­at­ing order: “He tow­ers high above the mul­ti­tude of be­ings, and all lands are unit­ed in peace.”

An­oth­er line of spec­u­la­tion goes still fur­ther in sep­a­rat­ing the words “sub­lime,” “suc­cess,” “fur­ther­ing,” “per­se­ver­ance,” and par­al­lels them with the four car­di­nal virtues in hu­man­i­ty. To sub­lim­i­ty, which, as the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple, em­braces all the other at­trib­ut­es, it links love. To the at­tribute suc­cess are linked the mores, which reg­u­late and or­ga­nize the ex­pres­sions of love and there­by make them suc­cess­ful. The at­tribute fur­ther­ing is cor­re­lat­ed with jus­tice, which cre­ates the con­di­tions in which each re­ceives that which ac­cords with his being, that which is due him and which con­sti­tutes his hap­pi­ness. The at­tribute per­se­ver­ance is cor­re­lat­ed with wis­dom, which dis­cerns the im­mutable laws of all that hap­pens and can there­fore bring about en­dur­ing con­di­tions. These spec­u­la­tions, al­ready broached in the com­men­tary called Wen Yen, later formed the bridge con­nect­ing the phi­los­o­phy of the “five stages (el­e­ments) of change,” as laid down in the Book of His­to­ry (Shu Ching) with the phi­los­o­phy of the Book of Changes, which is based sole­ly on the po­lar­i­ty of pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive prin­ci­ples. In the course of time this com­bi­na­tion of the two sys­tems of thought opened the way for an in­creas­ing­ly in­tri­cate num­ber sym­bol­ism.

Since there is only one heav­en, the dou­bling of the tri­gram Ch’ien, of which heav­en is the image, in­di­cates the move­ment of heav­en. One com­plete rev­o­lu­tion of heav­en makes a day, and the rep­e­ti­tion of the tri­gram means that each day is fol­lowed by an­oth­er. This cre­ates the idea of time. Since it is the same heav­en mov­ing with un­tir­ing power, there is also cre­at­ed the idea of du­ra­tion both in and be­yond time, a move­ment that never stops nor slack­ens, just as one day fol­lows an­oth­er in an un­end­ing course. This du­ra­tion in time is the image of the power in­her­ent in the Cre­ative.

With this image as a model, the sage learns how best to de­vel­op him­self so that his in­flu­ence may en­dure. He must make him­self strong in every way, by con­scious­ly cast­ing out all that is in­fe­ri­or and de­grad­ing. Thus he at­tains that tire­less­ness which de­pends upon con­scious­ly lim­it­ing the fields of his ac­tiv­i­ty.

When all the lines are nines, it means that the whole hexa­gram is in mo­tion and changes into the hexa­gram K’un, the re­cep­tive, whose char­ac­ter is de­vo­tion. The strength of the Cre­ative and the mild­ness of the Re­cep­tive unite. Strength is in­di­cat­ed by the flight of drag­ons, mild­ness by the fact that their heads are hid­den. This means that mild­ness in ac­tion joined to strength of de­ci­sion brings good for­tune.