Nourishment, Line 6

The topmost line is where the hexagram's nourishment actually comes from. Legge's translation describes the subject from whom the nourishing of others proceeds, notes the peril attaching to such a position, and gives good fortune together with advantage in crossing the great stream. The Great Symbolism adds that there is great cause for congratulation. After five lines occupied with seeking, refusing or misdirecting nourishment, the sixth is the one that supplies it.

The stroke is strong and stands at the top of the upper trigram Gen, mountain, forming the upper lip of the mouth the whole figure draws. By the ordinary rule a yang line in this even place is incorrect, and the topmost position is usually read as being past the seat of power rather than in it. Neither reading diminishes the line here, because the subject of the hexagram is not authority but supply, and the strong stroke at the summit is what the yielding fifth line beneath draws on in order to provide for everyone below.

The awareness of peril is the condition attached, and it is not decorative. Being the source on which others depend is treated by the text as a dangerous station, because failure at this point is not private. The line receives its good fortune, and its permission to cross the great stream, precisely because it holds that danger in view. The venture forbidden to the fifth line is opened to the sixth for the plain reason that here the resources being staked are genuinely its own.

Nine at the top gives the strongest reading in Nourishment, and it gives it to a querent who is carrying other people. The line describes the position from which the nourishing of others proceeds, states that the position involves peril, and then promises good fortune along with advantage in crossing the great stream. Read as a changing line, it tells somebody who has become the source that a large undertaking is now open to them, on the condition that the danger of their position stays in view rather than being forgotten in the confidence of success.

The reversal from the fifth line is deliberate and instructive. The line below was told not to cross the great stream, because what it distributes is drawn from elsewhere. This line is told to cross, because what it stakes is its own. A querent who has spent a long period supporting others out of resources they genuinely generated is being told that the same resources will bear an ambitious venture, which the hexagram's earlier lines uniformly withhold.

When the line changes, the upper trigram Gen becomes Kun and the figure becomes Return, King Wen 24, the single strong stroke reappearing at the bottom after a period of decline. Read against a line standing at the summit of provision, that destination is a reminder rather than a threat. What is given from the top comes back as a beginning at the bottom, and the peril the text names is what keeps the cycle from ever being taken for granted.