EN (English)
䷇
Hexagram 8 of 64
Holding Together
比 · Bǐ
Water lying on the earth, following every contour without a gap. The hexagram is about union: who gathers around whom, on what basis, and how long the opportunity stays open.
alliance
belonging
loyalty
timing
- King Wen number
- 8 of 64
- Above
- ☵ Kǎn · Water
- Below
- ☷ Kūn · Earth
- Composition
- Water over Earth
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · broken · broken · broken · solid · broken
- Chinese
- 比 · Bǐ
The Judgment
Good fortune. Consult the oracle again: if the answer is originating, lasting and steadfast, there is no blame. The uneasy come. Whoever comes late meets misfortune.
Union is offered and it has a closing date. The unusual instruction to ask a second time makes joining a decision worth examining before you make it.
The Image
Water over the earth: Holding Together. So the ancient kings founded the many states and kept the lords close.
Alliance is treated as maintenance rather than an event. The relationships were established and then continually tended.
What it means
Bi is hexagram 7 turned upside down, and the change is instructive. The same one-among-many structure now has its single yang line in the fifth place, the ruler's seat, and what held the group together stops being discipline and becomes attraction.
The Judgment does something the book almost never does: it tells you to consult again before committing. Union is good, and the hexagram still wants you to check that what you are joining is founded on something durable before you attach yourself to it. The third line then delivers the shortest and bleakest text in this part of the classic, four characters saying you have allied yourself with the wrong people.
The fifth line supplies the model. A king hunting drives the game from three sides and deliberately leaves the fourth open, so whatever stays does so by choice. Loyalty that cannot leave is not loyalty, and the classic thinks a leader who understands this does not need to threaten anybody.
The warning that runs through the hexagram is timing. Alliances form, close, and stop having room. Whoever comes late finds the centre already occupied.
In a reading
Holding Together as an answer favours joining, allying, or committing to a group, and it attaches two conditions to that.
The first is scrutiny: look hard at what is at the centre before you attach yourself to it, because the hexagram's worst outcome is a sincere commitment to the wrong people. The second is speed. The opening does not stay open, and the top line is about arriving to find the matter already settled.
The six lines
Read a line's text only when the cast made it a moving line. They are listed from the top of the figure down, the way the hexagram is drawn.
-
Six at the top
Holding together with no head. Misfortune.
Union with nothing at its centre, or arriving after the centre has formed. Either way there is nothing to join.
-
Nine in the fifth place
Manifest holding together. The king drives the game on three sides and lets those in front escape. The townspeople need no warning. Good fortune.
Leadership that leaves an exit. Loyalty is worth more when staying is voluntary.
-
Six in the fourth place
Hold together outwardly. Steadfastness brings good fortune.
Open, declared allegiance. Once the alliance is right, the line says stop being discreet about it.
-
Six in the third place
You hold together with the wrong people.
The classic's shortest line text, and it does not soften it. No misfortune is named because the association is the misfortune.
-
Six in the second place
Hold together from within. Steadfastness brings good fortune.
Joining from your own centre rather than from need. The line insists the impulse be genuine.
-
Six at the beginning
Hold together in good faith. No blame. Sincerity like a full earthen bowl brings unlooked-for good fortune in the end.
Plain, unstrategic honesty at the start. The bowl is common pottery, not a treasure: the point is that it is full.
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