Encounter

Something small arrives unannounced.

The situation

A new element has entered — minor now, structural later. It looks harmless because it's early.

What it asks of you

Assess it honestly rather than dismissing it. Small things set direction.

Where it leads

The six lines

1. initial Braked with a metal chock. Hold there. Set out and it turns. A thin pig is entirely capable of thrashing about. 繫于金柅，貞吉。有攸往，見凶。羸豕孚蹢躅
2. second A fish in the wrapper. Nothing goes wrong. Not for the guests. 包有魚，无咎，不利賓
3. third No skin on the buttocks, walking with difficulty. Dangerous, nothing serious. 臀无膚，其行次且。厲，无大咎
4. fourth No fish in the wrapper. That is where it begins to turn. 包无魚，起凶
5. fifth A melon wrapped in willow leaves. What is fine in it is held inside — and something falls out of the sky. 以杞包瓜，含章，有隕自天
6. top Meeting with the horns out. Humiliating, and nobody is to blame. 姤其角，吝，无咎

The line texts are the oldest layer of the book. They are pictures, not instructions, and they are meant to be held against your own situation rather than decoded.

How this one is built

Written out as six lines, bottom to top, this pattern is 111110 — a solid line is 1, a broken line is 0. Every relationship above is arithmetic on those six digits, not interpretation: reverse the order and you get the other side, flip every digit and you get the opposite reading, take the middle four and you get what sits underneath. Anyone can check the result, which is what separates a structure from a fortune.

The sequence is built the same way. The sixty-four are arranged in thirty-two pairs, and turned upside down it becomes Resolution. The rule holds for all thirty-two pairs without exception — twenty-eight joined by reversal, four by inversion.

In the received order it sits between Resolution and Convergence. The order is not alphabetical or random: the old commentary reads it as a chain, one situation giving rise to the next.