噬嗑 → 艮
Hexagram 21: Biting Through → Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 4).
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 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
鬱怏不明，為陰所傷；眾霧集聚，共奪日光。
Stifled and dim, the light obscured -- wounded by the yin. Dense mists gather together, jointly stealing the sun's radiance.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire and thunder should illuminate the law with brilliant clarity, yet here a deep melancholy settles over everything, and perception is wounded by yin forces. Dense fogs mass and gather, collectively stealing the sun's light. The verse describes a world where clarity has been overwhelmed — not by a single dramatic event but by the slow accumulation of obscuring forces. Each wisp of fog is trivial; together they eclipse the sun. From Biting Through to Keeping Still, the doubled mountain stands in immovable silence. The fog-bound stillness is not meditative peace but paralysis: when the judge's vision is stolen by accumulated darkness, even the mountain's firmness becomes mere helpless inertia.
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