Completion

Completion is the hexagram of an undertaking brought successfully across a dangerous passage—and of the unfinished work that begins once the crossing is over. Its judgment joins promise to warning: small matters can advance, and firmness and correctness are advantageous, but good fortune at the beginning does not guarantee order at the end. In the commentary, the image becomes political counsel: after a kingdom’s distress has been relieved and its disorders repressed, the ruler must consolidate the new government without noise or clamour, remembering how unstable human affairs remain.

Name, Judgment, and Political Meaning

The name combines a character associated with what is past or completed with one whose primary sense is crossing a stream and whose extended meanings include helping and completing. Together, the characters express the successful accomplishment of an undertaking. The commentary makes the image concrete as a vessel of state carried safely across a great and dangerous stream: the kingdom’s troubles have been relieved, and its disorders restrained. The crossing is successful, but it is not a declaration that all political work is finished.

The judgment therefore narrows its promise to progress in small matters. The new government still has to be consolidated, and its ruler must perfect what has already been achieved through steady, correct action rather than noise or clamour. The warning about a good beginning and a potentially disorderly ending supplies the hexagram’s governing tension: completion is a change of phase, not immunity from change. The commentary reinforces that caution by observing that every line occupies its proper place and has its proper correlate, a structural harmony that accords with the promise of progress without abolishing the danger of decline.

Restraint After Success

The first line presents a driver dragging back a wheel, or a fox that has wet its tail; neither image ends in error. The commentary places the line immediately after the successful achievement of the undertaking. This is the moment to rest and be quiet: for a season, movement should be hushed. The driver’s effort to stop the carriage and the fox’s refusal to tempt the stream again translate political caution into a pause in action. The hexagram’s first instruction is not to turn achievement into an excuse for another immediate advance.

The second line gives the same counsel through the figure of a wife who has lost the screen of her carriage. There is no reason to pursue the missing screen; in seven days she will find it. In the commentary’s reading, this is not a call to recover an object by energetic search. The woman does not advance further so soon after success but remains hidden and retired. The seven days mark the exhaustion of the Completion period as its six lines have been traversed; a new period, in which action will be appropriate, then begins. Waiting is thus part of the sequence, not a refusal of action in perpetuity.

Enterprise, Vigilance, and the Limits of Advance

The third line turns from stillness toward vigorous enterprise. Its commentary associates the line with Wu Ding, one of the able rulers of the Shang dynasty, and his expedition against peoples in the cold northern regions beyond the Middle States. The enterprise may have been good and successful, but it was tedious, and the line’s close carries a caution. Within a hexagram that counsels consolidation after achievement, the example makes a distinction between a worthy undertaking and an undertaking whose difficulty and duration still demand restraint.

The fourth line is interpreted through its position in the trigram for water: its subject is weak and has advanced into danger, so the appropriate response is to prepare against misfortune. The line’s significance lies less in a promised outcome than in the practical change of posture its circumstances require. Success does not remove the need to anticipate what may go wrong; when the figure has entered the region of danger, readiness matters.

The fifth line compares the neighbour in the East with the neighbour in the West, corresponding respectively to the yang and yin quarters. One offers valuable gifts in sacrifice; the other, much poorer ones. Yet the smaller offering excels in sincerity and is more acceptable. The commentary contrasts the strong fifth line with the weak second, observing that weakness is more likely to be patient and cautious than strength. The comparison makes sincerity, rather than material scale, the decisive measure of the offering, and patience a virtue within a period otherwise associated with successful accomplishment.

At the topmost line, the subject is immersed even over the head, and the position is perilous. The commentary locates the line at the outer edge of the trigram of peril and reads the action as violent and dangerous: an attempt to cross a ford ends with the person plunged into the water. This ending gives the opening warning its sharpest form. The successful crossing that defines the hexagram cannot be repeated without limit; at the furthest edge of the sequence, forceful action may undo the security already won.

Divination and the Hexagram’s Use

Completion belongs to a system in which a hexagram’s judgment and individual line statements interpret a figure made from six whole or divided lines. In the account of the text, King Wen gives each hexagram’s overall significance and an indication of whether action in the circumstances it symbolizes will be fortunate; the Duke of Zhou then interprets the lines in order from the bottom upward. Completion’s judgment and line images can consequently be read together: the whole figure frames the political condition of post-crisis consolidation, while the separate lines distinguish when to pause, wait, undertake an effort, prepare, offer sincerely, or avoid a perilous final advance.

The accompanying account of divination describes a particular material procedure, while also limiting what the consultation is supposed to establish. Divination by tortoise shell is traced to early records, and divination by lineal figures is performed with plant stalks. For each hexagram, forty-nine stalks are manipulated three times to determine each of its six lines, making eighteen manipulations in all. Odd and even numbers determine strong, undivided and weak, divided lines; the resulting figure is then interpreted through the judgments and emblematic line statements. Numbers, in this account, help the operator construct the hexagram; they are not treated as independent entities that cause the world’s events.

The stated purpose of consulting the figure is likewise narrower than foreknowledge of everything that will happen. It is to assess whether contemplated plans and conditions are likely to turn out fortunately or unfortunately, not to discover future events absolutely. That boundary suits Completion’s own counsel. Its images do not offer an unconditional guarantee that success will last; they invite judgment about the proper course under changing circumstances. The hexagram’s distinctive force lies in holding accomplishment and vulnerability together: a crossing can be completed, yet good order still depends on how carefully the next phase is managed.