Hexagram 63
既濟
Jì Jì
After Completion
Upper Trigram
坎 Kǎn
Water — Abysmal
Lower Trigram
離 Lí
Fire — Clinging
Classical Texts
The Judgment
亨小。利貞。初吉。終亂。
The Image
水在火上，既濟。君子以思患而豫防之。
The Lines
Line 1
初九 曳其輪。濡其尾。无咎。
Line 2
六二 婦喪其茀。勿逐。七日得。
Line 3
九三 高宗伐鬼方。三年克之。小人勿用。
Line 4
六四 繻有衣袽。終日戒。
Line 5
九五 東鄰殺牛。不如西鄰之禴祭。實受其福。
Line 6
上六 濡其首。厲。
The Apotheosis of Homer
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Unknown
After Completion
Homer sits enthroned on temple steps, crowned with laurels, surrounded by history's great artists arranged in perfect symmetry. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painted this in 1827 for a ceiling in the Louvre, creating an idealized hierarchy of cultural achievement. On Homer's right stand the Greek tragedians, on his left the philosophers; below, painters and poets occupy precisely balanced positions. Every element finds its proper place in Ingres' neoclassical vision—order achieved, the cultural canon established, perfection of arrangement realized through careful composition.
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Ingres captures Ji Ji (既濟), After Completion—Water above Fire, Kan over Li. This is one of only two hexagrams where all lines occupy ideal positions: yang in odd-numbered places, yin in even-numbered places. The configuration represents achieved order, every element standing in proper relation to every other. Fire rises while water descends, their opposing movements creating temporary equilibrium. The character 既濟 means "already across," suggesting a river successfully forded, a threshold passed, completion attained. Yet ancient diviners noted the paradox: when all yang lines have risen to proper positions and all yin lines have settled, the dynamic maintaining this balance begins reversing. Ingres' perfect arrangement suggests the same tension—when the canon is complete, what remains? Ingres crowned Homer on the steps of an Ionic temple, surrounded by symmetrically arranged great artists and thinkers. Commissioned for the Louvre, this academic history painting celebrates cultural order achieved. After Completion (Ji Ji) describes a moment when all elements are properly aligned—Ingres presents an idealized hierarchy of artistic achievement in balanced neoclassical composition. The Judgment speaks to Ingres' neoclassical achievement: "After Completion. Success in small matters. Perseverance furthers. At the beginning good fortune, at the end disorder." The painting celebrates cultural order at its zenith, yet the text warns that completion itself contains disorder's seeds. Zhou Dynasty texts counsel vigilance precisely at success's moment. In divination, Ji Ji appeared at crossings completed, projects finished, order established—and always with the reminder that perfection cannot be maintained, only carefully tended. The Image Text addresses the painting's historical moment: "Water over fire: the image of the condition After Completion. Thus the superior one takes thought of misfortune and arms himself against it in advance." Ingres painted his apotheosis during political upheaval—the Bourbon Restoration following Napoleon's fall. His perfectly ordered cultural hierarchy represents an ideal already threatened by Romanticism's emergence. In the I-Ching sequence, Ji Ji occupies the penultimate position, followed immediately by hexagram 64's Before Completion—suggesting that all achieved order already contains the next threshold, all completion already pregnant with new beginning.
Yilin: Forest of Changes
From Jiao Yanshou's Forest of Changes (焦氏易林) — the verse for Hexagram 63 in its unchanging form. A Han dynasty collection of four-character verses interpreting every hexagram transformation.
玄兔指掌，與足相恃。謹訊詰問，誣情自直。冤死誰告，口為身禍。
The black rabbit points with its paw, hand and foot accusing each other. Careful interrogation and questioning; false charges straighten themselves out. Who will tell the wrongly dead? The mouth brings disaster to the body.
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Water sits above fire — After Completion returning to itself. The dark hare points with its paw, relying on its feet for support. Under rigorous interrogation, false accusations are straightened out on their own. Yet the unjustly dead have no one to appeal to, for the mouth that should speak becomes the body's undoing. The verse oscillates between justice and its failure: inquiry can expose falsehood, but sometimes truth arrives too late, after the innocent are already dead. The mouth — instrument of both testimony and self-incrimination — is the pivot. From After Completion to After Completion, the hexagram meets its own mirror. There is no transformation, only the completed order confronting its own internal contradictions: the system that can both vindicate and destroy.
中文注释
水在火上，既濟之象，復歸自身。玄兔指掌——黑兔以前足指示。與足相恃——前後足相互依恃。謹訊詰問——嚴加審訊追問。誣情自直——冤枉之情自然明白。冤死誰告——含冤而死者向誰申訴？口為身禍——能言之口反為自身招禍。正義與其失敗之間擺盪：審訊能辯明誣枉，但有時真相到來已太遲——冤者已死。口既為證詞之器，亦為自取其禍之源。既濟至既濟，卦與自身之鏡像相對。無變化可言，唯完成之秩序直面自身之內在矛盾：能平反亦能殺人之同一體制。
Related Hexagrams
Same upper trigram: Water (坎)