无妄 → 噬嗑
Hexagram 25: Innocence → Hexagram 21: Biting Through
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 5).
Line 5
九五 无妄之疾。勿藥有喜。
Nine in the fifth place means: Use no medicine in an illness Incurred through no fault of your own. It will pass of itself.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
戴喜抱子，與利為友。天之所命，不憂危殆。荀伯勞苦，未來王母。
Wearing joy, embracing a child; keeping profit as a friend. What heaven has ordained; one need not fear peril. Xun Bo toiled long; the Queen Mother has yet to come.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Wearing joy like a cap and cradling a child, one walks alongside profit as a companion. What heaven has decreed need not fear danger or peril. Then the verse shifts: Lord Xun toils bitterly, but the Queen Mother has not yet arrived — blessings are promised but delayed. From Innocence to Biting Through, the transformation captures the tension between assured fortune and the effort required to realize it. Shike's image of lightning and thunder embodies decisive, clarifying force — obstacles must be bitten through. The first half radiates confidence in heaven's mandate; the second acknowledges that divine timing may lag behind human urgency, and patience must endure until the jaws close on resolution.
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