復 → 歸妹
Hexagram 24: Return → Hexagram 54: The Marrying Maiden
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 2, 4).
Line 2
六二 休復。吉。
Six in the second place means: Quiet return. Good fortune.
Line 4
六四 中行獨復。
Six in the fourth place means: Walking in the midst of others, One returns alone.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
東行破車，遠反室家。天命訖終，無所禱凶。
Traveling east, the cart breaks down; far from returning home. Heaven's mandate reaches its end; there is nothing to pray against the misfortune.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder returns beneath the earth, but the eastbound wagon breaks down yet again — the third repetition of this motif in the batch — and the traveler is thrown far from home. Worse still, heaven's mandate has reached its end, and no amount of prayer can avert the approaching calamity. This is not merely personal misfortune but cosmic finality: the protective order has expired, and supplication to the gods yields nothing. From Return to the Marrying Maiden, thunder above lake, the younger daughter given in an arrangement she did not choose. The transformation suggests that when the mandate is exhausted, all returns become departures. The maiden goes to a household that is not her own — return has become exile.
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