Gu to Ding: an heir who cannot hold the family fortune

Date not recorded · A friend of Takashima, asking about a wealthy family · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 18 Gǔ (Repairing the Spoiled), line 4 moving, changing to Hexagram 50 Dǐng (The Cauldron).

Original text

友人某來。請占富豪某氏之家政。筮得蠱之鼎。爻辭曰。六四裕父之蠱。往見吝。斷曰。此卦山下有風。風者鼓舞萬物而助生育者也。山者止而不動者也。今山下有風。則風入山中而生虫。謂之蠱。以人事見之。則風者過而不留。爲見識不定之人。又山者止而不動。爲精神委靡之人。如此之人。不能振作大事。徒貪目前小利。甚至與親友相殘。是人中之蠱也。四爻以陰居陰。才智鈍而氣力弱。無義無勇者也。當此蠱壞之家。不能奮然用力。扶弊救衰。而猶優柔偸安。坐視蠱敗。雖在豪家。難保資產。謂之裕父之蠱。往見吝。某聞之曰。某富豪之父。雖以勉强興家。因無子。養親族之子爲嗣。此子智識尋常。遠不及父。當承家之初。雖小有負債。本有資產可抵。乃少年子弟。忽爲富豪。愚而自用。不聽人言。遂至破敗其產。占辭切當。眞可感服。

In plain words

A friend of Takashima came and asked him to divine the affairs of a wealthy household. The cast gave Gu with its fourth line moving, changing into Ding. The line reads: "Six in the fourth place: indulging the corruption left by the father; going on, one meets shame."

Takashima's judgment: this hexagram is wind below the mountain. Wind stirs all things and helps them grow; the mountain stays still. With wind beneath the mountain, the wind gets into the mountain and breeds worms, and that is Gu, decay. In human terms, the wind that passes without staying is a person of unsettled judgment; the still mountain is a person without energy. Such a person cannot rise to anything great, only grasps at small gains in front of him, and may even turn on his own family and friends: a worm among people.

The fourth line is yin in a yin place: dull in wit and weak in strength, lacking both principle and courage. In a household already decaying, such a person does not rouse himself to stop the rot, but drifts along in comfort and watches it fall apart; even a great fortune cannot be kept that way. That is "indulging the corruption left by the father; going on, one meets shame".

The friend said: the father of that family built up the fortune through hard work, but having no son, he adopted a relative's child as heir. The boy was ordinary, far short of his father. When he took over there were some debts, but assets enough to cover them; yet a young man suddenly made rich, foolish and headstrong and deaf to advice, ended up losing the whole estate. The reading hit the mark exactly.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the fourth line of Gu is read.
The image is wind below the mountain: wind entering the mountain breeds worms, which is where "decay" comes from; then wind and mountain are read as two kinds of people, the unsettled and the listless.
The line's place is yin in a yin place: soft upon soft, read as weak in talent and spirit, lacking principle and courage, which is exactly "indulging": letting things slide.
The question was about someone else's household. Takashima gave only a portrait of a type of person; it was the friend who fitted the portrait to the adopted heir.

About the outcome

"The reading hit the mark" is the friend's remark afterwards, recorded by Takashima. The match here is really the friend holding what he already knew up against the line: a portrait of a weak heir who squanders an estate fits a good many people. This site does not treat it as evidence; what is worth reading is how the image is read as a character.

Applying it to your situation

"Indulging the corruption" means that when a problem has already appeared, going easy and leaving it alone only lets it grow. Is there something you have been meaning to "leave for now" that is quietly getting worse?

Original: Takashima Kaemon, Takashima Ekidan (expanded edition), recorded by Yanagida Ikusaku, Chinese text by Wang Zhiben, 1901. Translation, notes and reflection by this site.

These are historical records kept by the diviner himself. The outcomes are his own account; this site uses them to study how the lines were read, not as evidence that divination predicts events.

Cast a hexagram · All of Takashima's cases · The 64 hexagrams