‘Above the mountain, there is water. Limping.
Hexagram 39, the Image
Noble one turns himself around to renew his character.’
When the Image authors talked of ‘turning oneself around’ in Hexagram 39, they were picking up on a theme in the older layers of text.
To start with, the Oracle says that the west and south are fruitful, the east and north are not, which implies that a 180 degree turn might be a good idea (especially since the constituent trigrams of this hexagram, mountain and water, are found in the northeast and north of the bagua).
And then there are the moving line texts: four of the six lines contrast ‘going on’ with ‘coming back’, which is always the better idea:
‘Going on, limping; coming back, praise.’
Hexagram 39, lines 1,3,4 and 6
‘Going on, limping; coming back, turnaround.’
‘Going on, limping; coming back, connection.’
‘Going on, limping; coming back, maturity.
Good fortune. Fruitful to see a great person.’
It occurred to me to wonder what happened if you changed all these ‘turnaround’ lines…
…and it turns out that this takes you to Hexagram 25, Without Entanglement. A big theme there is understanding what is not well-founded, not real, or not yours, and freeing your energy from it all. Ceasing to ‘go on limping’, turning yourself around, means disentangling completely from all those responsibilities that aren’t yours, or all the things you can’t actually do.
The two remaining lines, 2 and 5, tell a quite different story.
‘A king, a servant: limping and limping.
Hexagram 39, lines 2 and 5
In no way is he himself the cause.’
‘Greatly limping; partners come.’
These two seem to refer to one another: the servant limping along at line 2, coming to the aid of line 5 in this task that’s bigger than either of them.
Naturally, these two change to the complement of 25: not disentangling, but positive engagement and striving in Hexagram 46, Pushing Upward.