復 → 蒙
Hexagram 24: Return → Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 6).
Line 1
初九 不遠復。无祗悔。元吉。
Nine at the beginning means: Return from a short distance. No need for remorse. Great good fortune.
Line 2
六二 休復。吉。
Six in the second place means: Quiet return. Good fortune.
Line 6
上六 迷復。凶。有災眚。用行師。終有大敗。以其國君凶。至于十年不克征。
Six at the top means: Missing the return. Misfortune. Misfortune from within and without. If armies are set marching in this way, One will in the end suffer a great defeat, Disastrous for the ruler of the country. For ten years It will not be possible to attack again.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
鷂鴟娶婦，深目窈身。折腰不媚，與伯相背。
The sparrowhawk takes a bride — deep-eyed, slender of form. She bends at the waist but will not flatter; she turns her back on her lord.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder stirs below the earth as a hawk-owl takes a bride — deep-eyed and slender-waisted, striking but uncanny. She refuses to bow in flattery and turns her back on her lord. The imagery is deliberately unsettling: the raptor's marriage produces not harmony but estrangement, a match between creatures whose natures fundamentally clash. The bride's independence reads as defiance rather than virtue. From Return to Youthful Folly, mountain over water, the spring issues from beneath the mountain but cannot yet find its course. The transformation suggests that what appears as willful resistance may simply be immaturity — the young do not yet know how to align their nature with circumstance, and the teacher must meet stubbornness with patience, not force.
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