Care Before Clarity, and the First Movement in a Doubled Brightness

Nine at the beginning counsels a querent to slow down and to treat a beginning as something requiring care rather than confidence. The image of steps crossing one another describes a start made in disorder, and the text withholds any promise of success while still granting that no fault attaches. That combination is unusual in the classic and worth reading exactly: the line does not say things will go well, only that nothing will be spoiled while the person moving is paying proper attention.

Practically it addresses the moment when someone has energy for a new undertaking and no clear picture of it yet. The commentary is explicit that reverence is what prevents the mistake, which puts the whole weight of the reading on conduct rather than on circumstance. Hurry is the specific danger here, because a strong line at the bottom of a bright figure tends to mistake its own eagerness for clarity and to act on the mistake immediately.

When the line changes, the lower trigram Li becomes Gen and the figure becomes The Wanderer, King Wen 56, in which a traveller depends on the goodwill of places that are not his own. The destination is an honest one for a querent standing at a confused beginning. Somebody who does not yet know the ground is in the position of a stranger, and what the classic asks of a stranger is the same care and modesty this line has already required.