Hexagram 50 · line 4
The Cauldron
鼎Dǐng
The vessel breaks a leg and spills the duke's stew. The one responsible is flushed with shame. Misfortune.
Line statement
九四
鼎折足，覆公餗，其形渥，凶。
The vessel breaks a leg and spills the duke's stew. The one responsible is flushed with shame. Misfortune.
A broken leg spills food intended for the duke. The line’s shame reading is retained here; Zhu Xi records a variant concerning severe punishment. Changing Line 4 makes Mountain above Wind, Hexagram 18, allowing a comparison with the work of addressing decay.
Computed position
How this place works
- Trigram position
- outer · base
Line 4 is the base of the outer trigram.
- Polarity and place
- yang in an even place: not aligned
Its yang polarity does not match the traditional even-place convention.
- Correspondence
- Line 1: responsive
Its counterpart is Line 1; the two have opposite polarities and can be read as responsive.
One line changes