蠱 → 中孚
Hexagram 18: Work on the Decayed → Hexagram 61: Inner Truth
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 5).
Line 1
初六 幹父之蠱。有子。考无咎。厲終吉。
Six in the beginning means: Setting right what has been spoiled by the father. If there is a son, No blame rests upon the departed father. Danger. In the end good fortune.
Line 3
九三 幹父之蠱。小有悔。无大咎。
Nine in the third place means: Setting right what has been spoiled by the father. There will be a little remorse. No great blame.
Line 5
六五 幹父之蠱。用譽。
Six in the fifth place means: Setting right what has been spoiled by the father. One meets with praise.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
商人子孫，資無所有；貪狼逐狐，留連都市。還轅內鄉，嘉喜何咎。
The merchant descendants, their resources exhausted; greedy as wolves, they chase the fox, lingering in the city. Turning the carriage homeward -- what blame in joy?
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wind beneath the mountain scatters a merchant's fortune, and the transformation rises as wind above the lake — the hollow sincerity of Inner Truth. A merchant's descendants have lost all their capital. Greedy as wolves chasing foxes, they linger in the city markets. But turning the carriage toward home, joy returns without blame. The merchant family's decline traces a pattern of dissipation: inherited wealth squandered through predatory greed, frittered away in urban pleasures. Yet the resolution is simple — go home. From Work on the Decayed to Inner Truth, the hollowed-out center must be refilled with genuine feeling. Wind over the lake stirs what lies beneath the surface; the returning merchant discovers that true wealth was never in the marketplace but in the household left behind.
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