Follow the Good, Not the Person Who Represents It

Nine in the fifth place is the most straightforwardly favourable line in Following, and a querent who draws it is generally in a position to choose what a group, a team or a household orients itself around. The reading advises attaching to the quality rather than to any individual carrying it: back the better proposal, support the more capable person for as long as they are the more capable one, and let the standard rather than the relationship decide.

This is the ruling seat of the hexagram and the counsel is correspondingly steady. What makes the line work in practice is that it is immune to the problems the other positions run into. An attachment to a person can be lost, outgrown or exploited, which is what the second, third and fourth lines each describe in turn. An attachment to what is excellent survives the departure of whoever happened to embody it, so the querent is never left holding a loyalty that has outlived its object.

The word sincerity carries the practical test. A querent should ask whether they would still support the excellent thing if supporting it brought them no credit, or if it came from someone they dislike, or if it made an earlier judgement of theirs look wrong. Answering yes is the whole of what the line asks. The good fortune it promises follows from the fact that a person known to choose on that basis is trusted with far more than their formal position would otherwise allow.