Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

Neither Able to Retreat Nor to Advance

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
Neither Able to Retreat Nor to Advance

The topmost line ends the hexagram jammed. Legge's translation returns to the ram at the fence and finds it able neither to retreat nor to advance as it would wish, with nothing advantageous in any respect, and then attaches a condition: if the subject realises the difficulty there will be good fortune. The commentary on the image traces the whole situation to a want of care, and adds that the error will not be prolonged.

The sixth place is the station of excess, and Great Power has been warning about excess since its first line. The stroke is yielding in an even place, correct by the ordinary rule, at the top of the trigram of thunder and past the ruling fifth line. Correctness saves nothing at the extremity, and the softness of the line is why the position cannot be reversed: no strength remains up here to pull the horns out with, only the memory of the strength that drove them in.

What lifts the verdict is a change of knowledge rather than of circumstance. The text does not say the ram gets free. It says that recognising the difficulty produces good fortune, and the commentary promises only that the error will not last. That is the classic being exact rather than consoling. Nothing in the position moves, and the one thing still capable of changing is whether the person inside it understands what put them there.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.