否 → 頤
Hexagram 12: Standstill → Hexagram 27: Nourishment
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 4, 5).
Line 1
初六 拔茅茹。以其彙。貞吉。亨。
Six at the beginning means: When ribbon grass is pulled up, the sod comes with it. Each according to his kind. Perseverance brings good fortune and success.
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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
狐鳴苑北，飢無所食；困於空丘，莫與同力。
A fox cries north of the park, starving with nothing to eat. Stranded on an empty mound, none will lend their strength.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven and earth refuse to communicate as a fox cries north of the royal park, hungry with nothing to eat. It wanders the empty hills, finding no one to share its strength. From Standstill to Nourishment, Pi's blocked world meets the mountain above thunder — Yi's image of the open mouth, nourishment sought and given. Yet the verse inverts Yi's promise entirely: the fox finds no food, the hills are barren, and no companion appears. Yi demands careful discrimination about what nourishes and what corrupts, but here the question is moot — there is simply nothing. The fox's cry in the northern waste captures starvation at its starkest: not choosing wrongly but having no choice at all, isolation so complete that even hunger finds no answer.
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