噬嗑 → 頤
Hexagram 21: Biting Through → Hexagram 27: Nourishment
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 4).
Line 4
九四 噬乾胏。得金矢。利艱貞。吉。
Nine in the fourth place means: Bites on dried gristly meat. Receives metal arrows. It furthers one to be mindful of difficulties And to be persevering. Good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
明滅光息，不能復食；精魄既喪，以夜為室。
Light dims, radiance dies -- one can no longer eat. Vital spirit already lost, night becomes one's dwelling.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire and thunder once illuminated the law, but here the light gutters and dies. Brightness is extinguished, and the ability to eat is lost — the vital spirit has departed, and night becomes the permanent dwelling. The verse reads as an elegy: death itself, or at minimum the complete collapse of vitality. Without light, there is no nourishment; without spirit, only darkness remains. From Biting Through to Nourishment, the mountain rests above thunder — the jaws of sustenance. Yet the verse presents the inverse: the mouth that should nourish can no longer receive food. The transformation warns that when inner light is extinguished, even the capacity for nourishment fails.
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