The Dragon
Appears in two chapters
Where the image appears
The dragon is the Book of Changes' image of the electrically charged, dynamic, arousing force that manifests itself in the thunderstorm: creative energy in its purest form, withdrawing into the earth in winter and rising into the sky in early summer. It belongs almost entirely to 01 Ch'ien - The Creative, where the six lines trace the complete arc of the great man's career as a sequence of dragon stations. The arc begins underground:
Hidden dragon. Do not act.
The great man who is still unrecognized "bides his time," and the counsel is not to expend one's powers prematurely "in an attempt to obtain by force something for which the time is not yet ripe." Then the energy surfaces, "Dragon appearing in the field. It furthers one to see the great man," passes through the exposed uncertainty of "Wavering flight over the depths. No blame," and culminates at the fifth place:
Flying dragon in the heavens.
It furthers one to see the great man.
Here Confucius adds the famous gloss: "Clouds (the breath of heaven) follow the dragon, wind (the breath of earth) follows the tiger. Thus the sage arises, and all creatures follow him with their eyes." But the arc does not end at the zenith. "Arrogant dragon will have cause to repent" warns against titanic aspirations that exceed one's power, and when all lines move, "There appears a flight of dragons without heads. Good fortune," strength joined to hidden mildness as the Creative passes over into the Receptive.
The dragon's one appearance outside hexagram 1 is a battle. At the top of 02 K'un - The Receptive, when the dark principle presumes to rule instead of serving, "Dragons fight in the meadow. Their blood is black and yellow": the true dragon of heaven against the false dragon of inflated earth, and both primal powers are injured in the unnatural contest.
Chinese tradition made the dragon, glimpsed only in parts, an emblem of the Tao itself, and the hidden dragon that does not act until the time ripens is the book's most famous image of timely non-action, the seed of Wu Wei.