同人 → 屯
Hexagram 13: Fellowship → Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 6).
Line 3
九三 伏戎于莽。升其高陵。三歲不興。
Nine in the third place means: He hides weapons in the thicket; He climbs the high hill in front of it. For three years he does not rise up.
Line 4
九四 乘其墉。弗克攻。吉。
Nine in the fourth place means: He climbs up on his wall; he cannot attack. Good fortune.
Line 6
上九 同人于郊。无悔。
Nine at the top means: Fellowship with men in the meadow. No remorse.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
鴻魚逆流，至人潛渚；蓬蒿代柱，大屋顛倒。
Great fish leap against the current; the worthy man hides at the sandbar. Mugwort replaces the pillars; the great hall topples upside down.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven and fire form Fellowship, but here everything runs against its nature. Great fish swim upstream against the current while the wise man submerges himself at a river bend, hiding from chaos. Wormwood and mugwort replace the pillars of a great house, and the structure topples. The imagery is systematic inversion: what should flow downward fights upward; what should support a roof is flimsy brush. From Fellowship to Difficulty at the Beginning, the transformation captures a world where natural order has collapsed. Cloud and thunder churn together as the noble man weaves order from confusion — but here, before that weaving begins, the old structure has already fallen, its supports rotted from within.
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