This is one of the most popular (or most popularly thought of as "good") hexagrams in the I Ching -- "Possession in Great Measure."

It's the flip-side of the previous hexagram, tong ren, which was all about getting along with people. (If you're interested, the proper term for "flip-side" is "zonggua," the gua (change) that could be zong (woven together), and it's traditionally pretty important. I'm sort of more curious about cuogua lately, though. The complementary hexagrams -- the opposite lines that come around to mean the same kind of thing, in a different or unexpected way.)

OK, whoah. I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself there.

Anyway, this is the zonggua of the last hexagram. Like that one, it's also made of the trigrams for fire (radiance) and heaven (expansiveness) -- only this time, the fire is located *in* heaven, rather than under it.

The Judgement is simply, "Supreme success." Oh. OK.

The Image verse explains a little more:

Fire in heaven above:
The image of POSSESSION IN GREAT MEASURE.
Thus the superior man curbs evil and furthers good,
And thereby obeys the benevolent will of heaven.

It's the Lines that are where the action is for this one. Notice, if you will, how all the lines are solid, yang lines -- except the one in the fifth position. That's the ruling line. When the hexagrams are used for modeling the body in martial arts, that's the "head" line, and it's often the position described as the "king" or "emperor" line. (There are other lines said to "rule" their hexagrams, as in being the line verse containing the essential lesson of the hexagram, but that's a different, more complicated thing. Besides, in this case, the fifth line is also that kind of ruler.)

(As it is in this hexagram's cuogua, hexagram 8 - bi, if you remember that one. All about alliances under a strong leader. But again, I'm getting away from myself here.)

The Wilhelm/Baynes translation acknowledges the importance of this yin-line-as-ruler from the start, saying in the introduction:

The weak fifth line occupies the place of honor and all the strong lines are in accord with it. All things come to the man who is modest and kind in a high position.

And in the Judgement:

How is it possible that the weak line has power to hold the strong lines fast and to possess them? It is done by virtue of unselfish modesty.

The lines here are about objects, sort of -- really, it's about being surrounded by things you can use. Usually, for most of us, these are objects (cue Donovan singing "I Love My Shirt"), but from what I can tell, by the time you progress from the first line (owning nothing, connected to nothing) to the sixth line, you have become a full-scale sage, able to treat everything as a personal possession because nothing is a personal possession.

The biggest window into this idea is in the fifth line, the ruling line, which says:

Six in the fifth place means:
He whose truth is accessible, yet dignified,
Has good fortune.

In other words, the traits of modesty and openness (being accessible) lead to sageliness - but only with the guiding principle of dignity.

As Wilhelm explains:

People are being won not by coercion but by unaffected sincerity.... However.... insolence might begin to spread. Insolence must be kept in bounds by dignity; then good fortune is assured.

Dignity doesn't have much to do with what you own and use, but plenty to do with the way you own things and how you use them... or what owning and using might actually mean in the big picture.

--------------------------------------

_{I'm using the Wilhelm/Baynes translation from the comprehensive Wengu collection or the user-friendly Eclectic Energies site. Feel like going deeper? Check out Hong Kong's Taoist Culture & Information Centre's I Ching page, and the essays & reviews on Ma Xia's Yijing Page}