EN (English)
③
Line position 3 of 6
The third line
三 · Sān
The last line of the lower trigram, pressed against the boundary with the upper one. The classic's line texts are more anxious here than anywhere else.
transition
danger
overreach
the edge
- Position
- 3 from the bottom
- Trigram
- Lower trigram
- Place
- Yang place
- Centrality
- Not central
- Corresponds with
- The top line
- Classical name
- 三 (Sān)
What it means
The third line finishes the lower trigram without belonging to the upper one. It has climbed as far as its half of the figure allows, and the next step is out of its own territory. That structural fact makes it the classic's danger seat: hexagram 1's third line has the noble person active all day and still uneasy at nightfall, and the Great Treatise remarks flatly that the third place gets many misfortunes.
Its trouble is characteristically overreach. The line is high enough to think it is senior and low enough to be badly wrong about that. It is also not central, so it has none of the second line's protection.
The third place is a yang place. A solid line here is correct but strains against the boundary; an open line is incorrect and often reads as someone in the position without the standing for it. Its correspondence is with the top line, which is the other end of the figure and rarely much help.
In a reading
A moving third line asks you to look at a threshold. Something is about to change register: a promotion, a move from private effort to public exposure, a conversation that leaves the room it started in.
Treat its warnings as practical rather than ominous. Most of them amount to the same counsel: you are closer to the edge than you feel, so make the next move a deliberate one.
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