EN (English)
④
Line position 4 of 6
The fourth line
四 · Sì
The bottom line of the upper trigram, and the one that sits directly beneath the ruler. Close to power, and answerable for it.
proximity
service
caution
the minister
- Position
- 4 from the bottom
- Trigram
- Upper trigram
- Place
- Yin place
- Centrality
- Not central
- Corresponds with
- The first line
- Classical name
- 四 (Sì)
What it means
Crossing from the third line to the fourth is the hexagram's real boundary. The fourth line has arrived in the upper trigram, the outer or public half of the figure, and it sits immediately below the fifth: the minister at the ruler's elbow.
Its problems are the problems of proximity. It is neither central nor safely obscure, and the classic's advice here tends toward carefulness, discretion, and knowing whose situation you are actually in. Hexagram 1 puts the dragon wavering over the deep, poised to leap and equally free not to.
The fourth is a yin place, so an open line here is correct: pliant service near authority. A solid line is strong in a soft seat, which the texts read variously as an ambitious deputy or an honest one who is going to have a difficult year. Its correspondence is with the first line, the ground it came from.
In a reading
A moving fourth line usually concerns your relationship to someone with more authority than you, or your own conduct once you have entered a room you were previously outside.
Read it for tact rather than strategy. The line's recurring counsel is that at this height the useful skill is judgement about timing and about what not to say.
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