臨 → 鼎
Hexagram 19: Approach → Hexagram 50: The Cauldron
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 4, 6).
Line 1
初九 咸臨貞吉。
Nine at the beginning means: Joint approach. Perseverance brings good fortune.
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.
Line 4
六四 至臨。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: Complete approach. No blame.
Line 6
上六 敦臨。吉。无咎。
Six at the top means: Greathearted approach. Good fortune. No blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
千歲廟堂，棟橈傾僵；天厭周德，失其寵光。
The temple of a thousand years, its ridgepole bends and collapses; heaven grows weary of Zhou virtue -- it loses its favored brilliance.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Earth above the lake meets fire above wind — the Cauldron's transformative vessel. A thousand-year-old ancestral hall sees its ridgepole sag and its pillars collapse. Heaven has grown weary of Zhou's virtue and withdraws its favor and brilliance. The ridgepole's sagging — the 'dong nao' of Hexagram 28 — signals governance overburdened to the breaking point. The verse identifies this structural failure with the decline of the Zhou dynasty: a millennium of accumulated mandate finally exhausted. From Approach to the Cauldron, the vessel that should refine and transform instead buckles under its own antiquity. When heaven withdraws its endorsement, even the most sacred institution crumbles. The cauldron's fire cannot cook what the vessel can no longer hold.
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