I Ching/The Moving Line

According to Alfred Huang, who wrote The Complete I Ching, in the case of a Gua (Hexagram) with more than 1 moving line, not all moving lines are to be consulted. The rules for consulting a moving line are:


 * 1) If there are two moving lines - one Yin and the other Yang - consult only the Yin moving line
 * 2) If the two moving lines are both Yin or both Yang, consult the lower one
 * 3) If there are three moving lines, consult only the middle one
 * 4) If there are four moving lines, consult only the upper of the two non-moving lines
 * 5) If there are five moving lines, consult only the other, non-moving line
 * 6) If six lines are all moving, consult the Decision of the new Gua, the approached Gua
 * 7) Since there is a seventh invisible line in the first and second Gua, Qian and Kun, for these Gua consult the seventh Yao Text, called All Nines or All Sixes

Notes: In the table below,

(1) "SC" refers to the name of the Gua in Simplified Chinese (2) "Change in Line 1" means that Line 1 is the Moving Line. Ditto for the other lines. (3) For each Gua, the top line in the "Line Interpretation" column is the binary representation of the Gua. For example, the first Gua is "Qian", and it can be represented by "111111". When the table is sorted by the "Line Interpretation" column, it will also be sorted by the binary representation of the Gua, and the I Ching hexagrams arranged by Shao Yong, in vertical sequence, appears. In other words, Shao Yong arranged the Gua from "000000" (as the first hexagram) to "111111" (as the last hexagram, in strict binary order, about a thousand years ago.

Ref: Yi Ching, translated by James Legge (1815 –1897)

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