否 → 謙
Hexagram 12: Standstill → Hexagram 15: Modesty
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 5, 6).
Line 3
六三 包羞。
Six in the third place means: They bear shame.
Line 4
九四 有命无咎。疇離祉。
Nine in the fourth place means: He who acts at the command of the highest Remains without blame. Those of like mind partake of the blessing.
Line 5
九五 休否。大人吉。其亡其亡。繫于苞桑。
Nine in the fifth place means: Standstill is giving way. Good fortune for the great man. "What if it should fail, what if it should fail?" In this way he ties it to a cluster of mulberry shoots.
Line 6
上九 傾否。先否後喜。
Nine at the top means: The standstill comes to an end. First standstill, then good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
人面鬼口，長舌為斧；斲破瑚璉，殷商絕祀。
A human face, a demon's mouth; the long tongue serves as axe. It hacks apart the sacrificial vessels; the Yin-Shang line is cut off.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven and earth stand apart as a creature with a human face and a demon's mouth wields its long tongue like an axe. It hacks apart the precious ritual vessel — the hulian — and the Shang dynasty's sacrificial line is severed forever. The hulian was a jade-adorned ancestral vessel, its destruction symbolizing the end of a lineage's connection to heaven. The 'long tongue as axe' evokes slander so powerful it can fell a dynasty. From Standstill to Modesty, Pi's sealed stagnation yields to earth containing a mountain within — hidden greatness. Yet the verse shows what happens before modesty can operate: a slanderer destroys what generations built. Modesty's hidden mountain survives only if the axe-tongue is recognized and stopped in time.
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