坤 → 蠱
Hexagram 2: The Receptive → Hexagram 18: Work on the Decayed
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 6).
Line 2
六二 直方大。不習无不利。
Six in the second place means: Straight, square, great. Without purpose, Yet nothing remains unfurthered.
Line 3
六三 含章可貞。或從王事。无成有終。
Six in the third place means: Hidden lines. One is able to remain persevering. If by chance you are in the service of a king, Seek not works, but bring to completion.
Line 6
上六 龍戰于野。其血玄黃。
Six at the top means: Dragons fight in the meadow. Their blood is black and yellow.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
賊仁傷德，天怒不福。斬刈宗社，失其邦域。
Harming benevolence, wounding virtue; heaven is angry and withholds blessing. The ancestral altars are cut down; the domain is lost.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Earth upon earth transforms into mountain above wind — Work on the Decayed. One who harms benevolence and damages virtue draws heaven's wrath, forfeiting its blessings. Ancestral altars are cut down, and the state loses its domain. Gu, decay, shows the mountain pressing down on wind — corruption festering beneath a rigid surface. The verse diagnoses the cause: when a ruler actively injures the moral foundations (benevolence and virtue), heaven withdraws its mandate. The destruction of the ancestral shrine signals not mere political defeat but civilizational erasure. From the Receptive to Work on the Decayed, the earth that once nurtured all things is poisoned from above. Kun's receptivity becomes liability when what it receives is corruption that rots the roots.
The Six Lines app includes all 4,096 Yilin verses, each with original ink brush artwork and full commentary. Download on the App Store