臨 → 謙
Hexagram 19: Approach → Hexagram 15: Modesty
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 3).
Line 1
初九 咸臨貞吉。
Nine at the beginning means: Joint approach. Perseverance brings good fortune.
Line 2
九二 咸臨吉。无不利。
Nine in the second place means: Joint approach. Good fortune. Everything furthers.
Line 3
六三 甘臨。无攸利。既憂之。无咎。
Six in the third place means: Comfortable approach. Nothing that would further. If one is induced to grieve over it, One becomes free of blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
散渙水長，風吹我鄉。火滅無光，墮敗桓公。
Waters scatter far and wide; the wind blows toward my village. The fire goes out and there is no light -- Duke Huan brought to ruin.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Earth above the lake descends to the mountain hidden within earth — Modesty's quiet containment. Waters scatter and lengthen as the wind blows toward home. The fire goes out, leaving no light, and Duke Huan falls into ruin. The verse traces entropy from flood to windstorm to darkness to political collapse. Duke Huan of Qi, once the foremost hegemon, died miserably in 643 BC — his corpse unburied for sixty-seven days while his sons fought for succession, so neglected that maggots crawled from his chamber. From Approach to Modesty, the transformation warns that even the mightiest must yield. The mountain hidden within earth embodies the lesson Huan never learned: true authority rests in restraint, not in the blaze of power that inevitably gutters out.
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