同人 → 歸妹
Hexagram 13: Fellowship → Hexagram 54: The Marrying Maiden
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 5, 6).
Line 2
六二 同人于宗。吝。
Six in the second place means: Fellowship with men in the clan. Humiliation.
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 5
九五 同人先號咷而後笑。大師克相遇。
Nine in the fifth place means: Men bound in fellowship first weep and lament, But afterward they laugh. After great struggles they succeed in meeting.
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
跛踦相隨，日暮牛罷；陵遲後旅，失利亡雌。
Crossing the river, the oar is lost — drifting south with the current. Companions have gone ahead; their calls grow faint.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven and fire form Fellowship, but this verse is rewritten. The original reads: 'The lame walk together; by dusk the ox is spent. Lagging behind the company on declining roads, losing profit and losing the female.' A group of crippled travelers struggles along, their beast of burden exhausted by nightfall. They fall behind their companions on a deteriorating path, suffering losses in goods and kin. From Fellowship to the Marrying Maiden, the transformation traces the cost of ill-matched union. Thunder above the lake in the Marrying Maiden; the noble man understands ruin through lasting consequences. The limping fellowship here is a marriage of weakness to weakness — each partner dragging the other down the slope, arriving nowhere.
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