賁 → 旅
Hexagram 22: Grace → Hexagram 56: The Wanderer
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 4).
Line 1
初九 賁其趾。舍車而徒。
Nine at the beginning means: He lends grace to his toes, leaves the carriage, and walks.
Line 4
六四 賁如皤如。白馬翰如。匪寇婚媾。
Six in the fourth place means: Grace or simplicity? A white horse comes as if on wings. He is not a robber, He will woo at the right time.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
猾醜如誠，前後相違。言如鱉咳，語不可知。
The sly deceiver feigns sincerity; front and back contradict each other. Words are like a turtle's cough; speech cannot be understood.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire beneath the mountain fails to expose the truth. A cunning wretch puts on a show of sincerity, but his words before and behind are contradictory. His speech is like the cough of a soft-shelled turtle — unintelligible and impossible to decipher. The turtle's 'cough' is a vivid image of sounds that mimic speech but carry no genuine meaning. The duplicitous person's front-face and back-face are irreconcilable, and no listener can extract truth from the noise. From Grace to the Wanderer, fire beneath the mountain moves to fire atop the mountain. The Wanderer is the outsider, the stranger who must navigate unfamiliar terrain with care. The verse warns the traveler: in foreign territory, appearances deceive most dangerously, and turtle-cough speech is the hallmark of those who cannot be trusted.
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