噬嗑 → 未濟
Hexagram 21: Biting Through → Hexagram 64: Before Completion
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 2).
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 2
六二 噬膚滅鼻。无咎。
Six in the second place means: Bites through tender meat, So that his nose disappears. No blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
徑邪賊田，政惡傷民；夫婦呪詛，太上覆顛。
Crooked paths plunder the fields; corrupt rule harms the people. Husband and wife hurl curses -- the sovereign above is overturned.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire and thunder enforce the law, and here every form of authority has been perverted. Crooked paths steal from the fields, wicked governance wounds the people. Husband and wife hurl curses at each other, and the supreme ruler is toppled and overturned. The verse presents a cascade of corruption moving from land seizure through administrative abuse to domestic hatred to political overthrow — each level of order collapsing into the next. From Biting Through to Before Completion, fire sits above water without meeting, each element straining away from the other. The final hexagram of the Yi is the ultimate image of incompletion: everything is unresolved, every crossing unfinished. The verse's spiral of dysfunction embodies this perfectly — disorder at every scale, with no resolution in sight.
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