| Chapter 2: | Spirits of the Zhou yi—An Essay on Wine |
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hexagram’s ruling line. In contrast, the negative episode, where one seems overly fed or rendered a helpless victim by being plied overly with drink, in Hexagram #47 is located in the bottom trigram, at line two, the hexagram’s supporting, ministerial line.
In other words, these two lines would be in “mutual correspondence” (xiang ying 
) were they found within the same hexagram. The second-fifth line relation is often like a dominant overtone in an interaction field, such as are postulated by traditional interpretations of Yi jing hexagrams. At least in this case, it would seem possible lines can “mutually correspond” across long regions of text. Their relative siting in the hexagrams gives a key to interpreting the lines: a higher site makes a good episode, in the mode of anticipation, whereas a lower site gives a bad episode, in perfective mode.2
If this is so, why are images of the wine goblet and grain tureen found in the fourth (yin) line of the doubled water hexagram at #29, Kan? The set of differential features forms a primary opposition at the lowest level of its structure: positive and negative episodes facing each other the way the second and fifth lines normally do in mutual correspondence. Then how does the container image mediate this opposition?
Figure 5. Transforming lines in the “wine” system.
Structurally, it does so by a simple device: when #29.4 changes, from yin toward yang, the resulting new hexagram is #47. This gives a sense of resolution or mediation as the antithesis (#47) gives rise to the next