EN (English)
䷆
Hexagram 7 of 64
The Army
師 · Shī
Water gathered inside the earth, an unseen mass held in one place. The hexagram is about organised collective force, and about who is fit to command it.
discipline
organisation
leadership
collective effort
- King Wen number
- 7 of 64
- Above
- ☷ Kūn · Earth
- Below
- ☵ Kǎn · Water
- Composition
- Earth over Water
- Lines, bottom to top
- Broken · solid · broken · broken · broken · broken
- Chinese
- 師 · Shī
The Judgment
Steadfastness. A seasoned leader brings good fortune. No blame.
The whole hexagram turns on the word for an experienced elder. Mass force is only as good as the judgement of whoever is directing it.
The Image
Water in the middle of the earth: The Army. So the noble person is generous to the people and gathers a following.
The army is drawn from the population and depends on it. Generosity in peacetime is what makes numbers available later.
What it means
Shi is the hexagram of organised force. A single yang line sits in the second place, holding five yin lines the way one commander holds an army, and the structure is the meaning: mass without a centre is a crowd.
The classic is not romantic about warfare. It requires a just cause, it requires discipline before the first march, and it requires a leader with experience rather than enthusiasm. The third and fifth lines both use the same grim image of a wagon coming home loaded with bodies, and both attribute it to the same cause: command given to the wrong people, or split between too many.
Two things distinguish this from a simple manual of command. The Image roots the army in the population, so generosity to ordinary people is treated as a military asset. And the top line looks past the victory to the settlement, warning that whoever is given lasting authority in the aftermath determines whether the win was worth having.
The hexagram is the inverse of hexagram 8, which describes the same many-and-one relationship held together by attraction rather than by discipline.
In a reading
The Army as an answer points to a situation requiring coordinated effort under clear authority. It reads well when someone competent is genuinely in charge and badly when responsibility is shared out vaguely.
Ask who is leading, whether they have done this before, and whether the rules were set at the start or are being improvised. If the question involves a group, the hexagram's advice is to fix the command structure before attempting anything ambitious.
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
The great ruler issues commands: found states, endow families. Do not employ small people.
After the victory. What matters now is who gets rewarded with lasting power, and the answer excludes the opportunists.
-
Six in the fifth place
There is game in the field; it helps to catch it. No blame. Let the eldest lead the army. If the juniors do, they bring corpses home. Steadfastness brings misfortune.
Legitimate cause and clear command. The line insists both are needed, and that divided authority ruins the second.
-
Six in the fourth place
The army camps back. No blame.
An orderly retreat. Withdrawing without loss is treated as a legitimate outcome, not a failure.
-
Six in the third place
The army may come home carrying corpses. Misfortune.
Command in the wrong hands, or too many hands. The classic's image of an operation that has lost its centre.
-
Nine in the second place
In the middle of the army. Good fortune, no blame. The king confers his mandate three times.
The commander in the field, trusted and repeatedly backed. The ruling line.
-
Six at the beginning
An army marches out under discipline. If the discipline is bad, misfortune.
The first condition, stated before anything else. Order at the outset or nothing that follows works.
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