Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Strength That Announces Itself Before It Can Carry Anything

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Strength That Announces Itself Before It Can Carry Anything

Nine at the beginning warns against acting on power a querent has but cannot yet apply. The line puts the vigour in the toes, promises misfortune if it is used to advance, and the commentary adds exhaustion rather than defeat, which is the more useful word of the two. Somebody drawing this usually has real capability and is impatient with the delay, and the text does not dispute the capability at all. It disputes the timing.

The position is the reason. A strong stroke correctly placed at the foot of the lower trigram Qian stands at the greatest possible distance from anywhere that strength counts for something, with four more lines of the most forceful figure in the classic above it. The flatness of the verdict is worth noticing too, since the classic more often gives conditions and consequences than plain predictions, and here it gives one and calls it certain.

When the line changes, the lower trigram Qian becomes Xun and the figure becomes Duration, King Wen 32, in which what lasts does so by holding a course rather than by exerting itself. That destination is the correction the line declines to spell out. What premature strength needs is not more strength but time inside a steady arrangement, and the classic files the remedy for the impatient bottom line of Great Power under the figure of persistence.

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