Gathering Together, Line 1

The first line of Gathering Together (King Wen 45) is drawn as yin, the numeral six in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as a sincere desire for union that is interrupted partway, so that if he cries out, one grasp of the hand brings a smile, and there is no need for anxious fear. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns union and being collected, docile obedience leading on to satisfaction; the king approaches his temple, and firm correctness brings advantage, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the lowest place of the lower trigram Kun, earth in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the upper trigram of the hexagram is Dui, lake in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads a marsh raised above the earth; the superior man keeps his weapons of war in good repair against contingencies not yet foreseen, and the first line takes its place inside that combined picture of Kun below and Dui above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Kun is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, The Sincere Desire for Union That is Interrupted, as the concrete case through which the hexagram's abstract judgment becomes visible in a single situation rather than a general principle.

As a divinatory line, six at the first place of Gathering Together reads within the hexagram's overall concern with union and being collected, docile obedience leading on to satisfaction; the king approaches his temple, and firm correctness brings advantage. The line occupies a place that does not match its own nature in the classical doctrine that odd places favour a firm, yang line and even places favour a yielding, yin line. Its own text, that a sincere desire for union that is interrupted partway, so that if he cries out, one grasp of the hand brings a smile, and there is no need for anxious fear, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The first line corresponds by classical convention with the fourth line, and the two correspond here, since one line is yin and the other yang. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Kun in the lower position of the figure, the line marks the opening of the situation, before the trigram above it has any part in the reading, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.

A change at this line, from yin to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the first line of Gathering Together turns Kun into Zhen while the other trigram, Dui, stays as it is, which yields Gathering Together's changing partner, Following (King Wen 17), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.