噬嗑 → 遯
Hexagram 21: Biting Through → Hexagram 33: Retreat
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 5).
Line 1
初九 履校滅趾。无咎。
Nine at the beginning means: His feet are fastened in the stocks, So that his toes disappear. No blame.
Line 3
六三 噬腊肉。遇毒。小吝。无咎。
Six in the third place means: Bites on old dried meat And strikes on something poisonous. Slight humiliation. No blame.
Line 5
六五 噬乾肉。得黃金。貞厲。无咎。
Six in the fifth place means: Bites on dried lean meat. Receives yellow gold. Perseveringly aware of danger. No blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
內執柔德，止訟以默；宗邑賴德，禍災不作。
Within, one holds to gentle virtue, stilling disputes through silence; the ancestral domain relies on this virtue -- calamity and disaster do not arise.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire and thunder enforce the law, yet this verse resolves conflict through gentleness rather than force. Inwardly holding soft virtue, one halts litigation through silence. The ancestral community benefits from this moral power, and disasters simply fail to arise. The phrase 'stop lawsuits through silence' (止訟以默) directly contrasts with hexagram 21's mandate to bite through — here, stillness achieves what teeth cannot. From Biting Through to Retreat, heaven rests above the mountain as the wise withdraw from contention. The transformation teaches that sometimes the most effective enforcement is non-engagement: by embodying virtue silently, one removes the conditions that generate conflict in the first place.
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