Fu to Kun: buying a carriage horse

Date not recorded · Takashima himself, buying a horse from Kodama Shōsuke · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 24 Fù (Return), line 1 moving, changing to Hexagram 2 Kūn (The Receptive).

Original text

余欲購驅車之馬。適遇兒玉少介君曰。余客歲求良馬於南部。後無音信。遂別購一馬。頃日南部馬至。厩隘不容。謂余買之。余乃占其良否。筮得復之坤。爻辭曰。初九不遠復。无祗悔。元吉。斷曰。此馬不適長途。朝出夕歸。得其宜耳。爻謂不遠復。无祗悔。元吉。可以見矣。初爻變則爲坤。坤曰利牝馬之貞。知此馬必牝。無暴逸之虞者也。後購得其馬。果如此占。性柔順。最適駕車。

In plain words

Takashima wanted a horse to draw his carriage, and happened to meet Kodama Shōsuke, who said: last year I asked for a good horse to be found for me in the Nanbu region; I heard nothing, so I bought another. A few days ago the Nanbu horse arrived, and my stable is too small for it; would you buy it? So Takashima cast on whether it was a good horse. The cast gave Fu with its first line moving, changing into Kun. The line reads: "Nine at the beginning: returning from not far; no great regret; supreme good fortune."

Takashima's judgment: this horse is not suited to long journeys; out in the morning and back by evening is just right for it. The line's "returning from not far; no great regret; supreme good fortune" shows as much. When the first line changes the hexagram becomes Kun, whose judgment speaks of "the steadfastness of a mare", so the horse must be a mare, with no fear of it bolting.

He bought the horse, and it was as the reading said: gentle by nature, and ideal for drawing a carriage.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the first line of Fu is read, together with the judgment of the changed hexagram.
The line is taken literally: "returning from not far", going a short way and coming back, becomes a horse for short trips, out in the morning and back by evening.
The changed hexagram's judgment is used: the first line turns Fu into Kun, whose judgment speaks of "the steadfastness of a mare", giving a gentle mare. This pairs the original line with the changed hexagram's judgment.
The question is small and concrete, and both texts are applied straight to the horse with almost no stretching.

About the outcome

This is Takashima's record of his own purchase, and "gentle, ideal for a carriage" is his verdict after buying. Whether a horse is a mare and how it behaves are things one can see when buying; the hexagram here looks more like help in making up his mind. This site does not treat it as evidence.

Applying it to your situation

"Returning from not far" is about the right scale: not everything needs to go the distance, only to do the job. For what you are choosing now, what do you actually need it to do?

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.

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