Line Statements

The line statements (yao ci) of the Yijing are the brief oracular texts appended to each of the six lines of each of the sixty-four hexagrams. Each hexagram therefore carries seven texts — one for the hexagram as a whole (the gua ci or judgment) and six for its individual lines — and together they constitute the core oracular material that the consultant reads when the divination is performed and the configuration and its changes are determined.

Each line statement begins with the line’s place in the hexagram (bottom nine, second six, third nine, etc.) and gives a brief image — a crane calling in the shade, a horse that gallops away, a dragon that regrets — together with its auspicious or inauspicious tendency. The line is read most directly when it is a moving line — a line whose numerical value (6 or 9) indicates that it is in transformation from one pole to its opposite. The canonical commentaries on the line statements — the Xiang Zhuan (“Image Commentary”) and the Xiaoxiang Zhuan (“Small Image Commentary”) — are part of the-ten-wings and shape the tradition of interpretation. See i-ching-wilhelm-baynes and moving-lines.

Relationships

• hexagram
• moving-lines
• the-ten-wings