Horse

Horse is a recurring symbolic and practical figure in the book’s explanations of the hexagrams. It can signify strength disciplined for service, assistance when a person cannot face danger alone, or retreat when advance is blocked; in another interpretation, a horse’s absent fellow marks a change in allegiance. These uses do not establish a single meaning for the animal. They show how the commentary makes the horse carry different lessons about dependence, restraint, and action according to its place in each image.

Symbolic Range

In criticizing a late portion of the Treatise on the Trigrams, the commentator notes how extensively its writer associates trigrams with horses. Heaven suggests a good horse, an old horse, a lean horse, and a piebald; thunder suggests a good neigher, a horse with white hind-legs, a prancing horse, and one with a white star on its forehead; water suggests a horse with an elegant spine, one with a high spirit, one with a drooping head, and one with a shambling step. The catalogue’s accumulation of precise types is part of the commentator’s case against the passage: he finds its symbolism excessive and cannot believe that this concluding material and the treatise’s earlier, more elevated sections came from the same author.

The discussion of Khwăn gives the animal a more focused ethical meaning. The hexagram’s six divided lines express subordination and docility, and its ideal of correctness and firmness is compared to a mare, described as both docile and strong and as serving human purposes. The commentator cautions that the point is not principally the animal’s sex: the passage immediately turns to a superior man and his lord. The image instead frames strength as compatible with following rather than taking the initiative. In that account, the subject’s proper course is to serve a ruler and bring like-minded companions into common service; quietness and firmness become sources of strength.

Horses in Withdrawal and Delay

In the account of Kun, difficulty in advancing recurs through the image of a retreating chariot. The second line describes a woman distressed and obliged to return, with the horses of her chariot seeming to retreat as well. The apparent setback is not an attack by a spoiler: the pursuer seeks marriage, and she maintains her correctness by declining the union. The line then places fulfillment at a distance, saying that after ten years she will be united and have children. The retreat therefore belongs to a sequence of delay and discernment, not simply to defeat.

A fourth line presents a contrasting response to the same outward sign. Its subject is again represented as a woman whose chariot horses appear to be retreating, but she seeks the help of the person who seeks her as a spouse. In this case, advancing is declared fortunate and advantageous. Set beside the second line, the episode makes the symbol conditional: retreat does not dictate one decision. The line’s judgment depends on the circumstances and on whether the subject’s next course preserves what is right.

At the top of the hexagram, retreat becomes a more severe sign of blocked progress. The subject is forced to withdraw with the chariot horses, and the text describes him weeping tears of blood. The image closes the sequence at a point where movement has become painful and no favorable advance is offered. Across the three lines, the recurring vehicle traces different outcomes: a refusal followed by later union, an appeal for assistance followed by fortunate advance, and a final compelled retreat.

Strength as Necessary Assistance

In the hexagram of dispersion, the first line’s subject is engaged in rescue from impending danger and has the assistance of a strong horse; the stated outcome is good fortune. The commentary explains why help is necessary: the evil has not yet gained much ground, so it can still be dealt with easily, but the line’s subject is weak and cannot cope with it alone. The strong horse is therefore understood symbolically as the subject of the strong second line. Rather than functioning as an independent rescuer, the animal-image points to a human ally whose strength supplements the first subject’s weakness.

The same commentary interprets the second line as facing danger and seeking shelter in union with the first. Read together, the lines give the horse’s strength a relational function: one subject’s resources are insufficient, but aid and union make action possible. The image thus differs from the mare in Khwăn. There, strength is disciplined into service and following; here, the strong horse represents the assistance required to begin rescuing others from a danger that remains containable.

The Missing Fellow

In the fourth line of Sincere Inner Trust, the subject is compared both to a nearly full moon and to a horse whose fellow disappears. The commentary explains the horse image through the arrangement of an ancient chariot team: four horses drew the vehicle, two on the outside and two on the inside. Lines one and four are treated as a pair; when line one disappears from the team, line four goes forward and joins line five, the ruler’s position. The absent fellow therefore marks a reorientation of trust and association, rather than a general picture of abandonment.

The interpretation connects that change to the line’s position and choice. The fourth line is weak but in its correct place; its subject discards the former correlate in line one and hastens toward the confidence of the ruler in line five. The nearly full moon symbolizes that approach, while the horse image makes it visible as a change in the team. The line’s outcome is no error: the movement away from one bond is presented as a fitting step toward another, more authoritative union.

A Context-Dependent Emblem

Across these passages, the Horse is never merely decorative. Its particular form and circumstance help distinguish service from initiative, help from self-sufficiency, and prudent change from painful withdrawal. The mare’s docility and strength interpret the proper conduct of a subordinate; the strong horse identifies support that a weak subject needs; the retreating chariot registers delay or obstruction; and the missing teammate gives a shift in allegiance a concrete structure.

The book’s varied uses also resist a stable bestiary in which one animal always carries one meaning. The Treatise on the Trigrams’ long catalogue of horse types is, for the commentator, evidence of the very excess that weakens its closing section. Elsewhere, however, a carefully placed horse image clarifies a hexagram line’s human relations and consequences. The contrast is instructive: the emblem gains force not through sheer multiplication, but through its connection to the line’s position, circumstances, and judgment.