Obstruction, Line 5

The fifth line of Obstruction (King Wen 39) is drawn as yang, the numeral nine in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as in the midst of the greatest difficulties, but friends are coming to help him. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns advantage found in the southwest, and the contrary in the northeast, advantage in seeing the great man, and in being firm and correct, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the middle place of the upper trigram Kan, water in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the lower trigram of the hexagram is Gen, mountain in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads water above a mountain; the superior man turns round to examine himself and cultivates his virtue, and the fifth line takes its place inside that combined picture of Gen below and Kan above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Kan is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, The Greatest Difficulties Where Friends Come to Help, 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, nine at the fifth place of Obstruction reads within the hexagram's overall concern with advantage found in the southwest, and the contrary in the northeast, advantage in seeing the great man, and in being firm and correct. The line occupies a place proper to its own nature in the classical doctrine that odd places favour a firm, yang line and even places favour a yielding, yin line. It is also one of the two central lines of the hexagram, the place classical reading treats as the most balanced regardless of the line's own character. Its own text, that in the midst of the greatest difficulties, but friends are coming to help him, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The fifth line corresponds by classical convention with the second line, and the two correspond here, since one line is yin and the other yang. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Kan in the upper position of the figure, the line marks the ruling stage of the hexagram, the place classical reading treats as its centre of authority, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.

A change at this line, from yang to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the fifth line of Obstruction turns Kan into Kun while the other trigram, Gen, stays as it is, which yields Obstruction's changing partner, Modesty (King Wen 15), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.