Already Across?

There’s a deep humour to the last two hexagrams of the Yijing.

63: Already Across. Already Completed. Every line is in what was traditionally said to be its ‘right place’ – that is, the yang lines are in the odd-numbered positions, 1, 3 and 5, and yin lines sit quietly in the even-numbered places, 2, 4 and 6. So each line is in harmonious relationship with its proper correspondent (1 with 4, 2 with 5, 3 with 6). Likewise, the trigrams show things are as they should be: there is fire below water; the pot is on the boil. Everything is in a good place and in good order; everything works.

The End.

Only, of course, not, since then comes Hexagram 64: Not Yet Across, Not Yet Completed. The pattern of lines is the precise opposite of 63, so every line is in exactly the wrong place; the trigrams are inverted, so water is below fire and not much can be done until things are put back in their proper relationships.

And to cap it all, if you look at the nuclear hexagram, the hidden core and latent seed within Already Across, you find Not Yet Across – while the nuclear hexagram hidden in Not Yet Across is Already Across.

The Book of Change would seem to be having a whole lot of fun with our cherished notions of arriving, finishing and completing.

But in addition to the play of structural elements, there is – as so often with Yi – a story to be told.It seems the book was first brought together and written down in early Zhou times, after the Zhou people had Already Crossed the river successfully, overthrown the Shang dynasty and begun to establish their own rule. The great arc of their story is felt throughout the book (as always, see Marshall’s Mandate of Heaven), and now here we reach the culmination, the completion – The End.

Only, of course, not.

The Zhou were telling a great story of how a dynasty could begin its rule in harmony with Heaven and blessed by its Mandate, and yet fall into corruption and lose all of this, and see the Mandate pass to a new power. This had happened to the first dynasty, the Xia, and they had been replaced by the Shang; and now the Shang had been replaced by the Zhou. The Mandate had been received, the river crossed, the new dynasty founded, order restored to the world.

In Song 255 from the Shijing, King Wen warns the Shang (the Yin) of the consequences of their ways, prefiguring their conquest by his people. Here are its final two stanzas:

‘King Wen said, “Come!
Come, you Yin and Shang!
It is not that God on high did not bless you;
It is that Yin does not follow the old ways.
Even if you have no old men ripe in judgement,
At least you have your statutes and laws.
Why is it that you do not listen,
But upset Heaven’s great charge?”

King Wen said, “Come!
Come, you Yin and Shang!
There is a saying among men:
‘When a towering tree crashes,
The branches and leaves are still unharmed;
It is the trunk that first decays.’
A mirror for Yin is not far off;
It is the times of the Lord of Xia.’

(From The Book of Songs, translated by Arthur Waley – the word he translates as ‘charge’ is ming, Mandate.)

The words of the Song are full of confidence: the wise and upright Wen speaks, and there is no doubt of his moral authority to admonish the Shang, or his insight into the passing of the mandate.

But by the time the Zhou had crossed the river, Wen was already dead, and this story of mandate gained and lost had a new resonance.

The first stanza of that Song reads,

‘Mighty is God on high,
Ruler of his people below;
Swift and terrible is God on high,
His charge has many statutes.
Heaven gives birth to the multitudes of the people,
But its charge [ming] cannot be counted upon.
To begin well is common;
To end well is rare indeed.’

And the Oracle of Hexagram 63 reads,

‘Already across, creating small success.
Constancy bears fruit.
Beginnings, good fortune;
Endings, chaos.’

Perhaps these echoes of the song (which uses the same words as the oracle for ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’) suggest that a mirror for Zhou was also not far off. There’s no triumphalism here – more of a creeping unease implied by story and structure alike. Any teleology is part of a context of turning cycles, and incomplete in itself.