Bo to Gen: a silver dealer who went against the crowd

Winter 1884 (Meiji 17) · A dealer in foreign silver coin in Yokohama · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 23 Bō (Splitting Apart), line 3 moving, changing to Hexagram 52 Gèn (Keeping Still).

Original text

明治十七年冬。橫濱洋銀商某來。請占運氣。筮得剝之艮。爻辭曰。六三剝之无咎。斷曰。剝者山崩爲地之卦。故曰剝。五陰漸長。將剝滅一陽。剝者。奪也。削也。今占得三爻。三爻陰居陽位。與上一陽相應。是雖與羣陰同黨。獨不與羣陰同志。故无咎。猶是同此賣買。而能獨出心裁。人棄我取。當必獲大利。就剝之一卦言。謂山變爲地。可見今時價高如山。易一時有低落如地之象。占者宜留意焉。後某來謝曰。今回爲朝鮮事。洋銀騰貴。余信易占所云。就高價賣之。一時間得數拾萬圓。易占高妙。不可測度。如此感服感服。

In plain words

In the winter of 1884 a Yokohama dealer in foreign silver coin came and asked about his fortunes. The cast gave Bo with its third line moving, changing into Gen. The line reads: "Six in the third place: stripping away; no fault."

Takashima's judgment: Bo is the hexagram of a mountain collapsing into flat ground, hence "stripping away". Five yin lines are growing and about to strip away the last yang line; to strip is to take away, to pare down. The cast gave the third line, a yin line in a yang place that answers the single yang line at the top. So although it belongs to the crowd of yin lines, it alone does not share their intent, and so there is no fault. It is like being in the same trade as everyone else but thinking for oneself: taking what others discard, one will surely make a large profit.

As for the hexagram as a whole, a mountain becoming flat ground shows that prices, now high as a mountain, can easily drop flat. The dealer should keep this in mind.

Later the dealer came to thank him: this time, because of the trouble in Korea, the price of foreign silver soared. Trusting the reading, I sold at the high price and made several hundred thousand yen in a short time. The reading was beyond fathoming; I am deeply impressed.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the third line of Bo is read.
The line's relation is correspondence: the third is one of the yin crowd, yet it answers the top yang line, read as being in the trade but thinking differently from the rest.
From there to trading: take what others discard, do not follow the herd.
The whole hexagram is a mountain collapsing into flat ground: price as a mountain, with a fall to come after the peak. Takashima gave two hints at once, and the dealer acted on "sell while it is high".

About the outcome

The fortune made is the dealer's own account in thanking him, recorded by Takashima. The judgment included both "take what others discard" and "prices high as a mountain will fall", so there was something to say for either direction; whichever way the market went, it could be matched. This site does not treat it as evidence.

Applying it to your situation

"Stripping away; no fault" says that even in the middle of a crowd one can keep one's own judgment. Is a decision you are about to make one you have thought through yourself, or one you are making because everyone else is?

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