无妄 → 屯
Hexagram 25: Innocence → Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 4, 6).
Line 4
九四 可貞。无咎。
Nine in the fourth place means: He who can be persevering Remains without blame.
Line 6
上九 无妄。行有眚。无攸利。
Nine at the top means: Innocent action brings misfortune. Nothing furthers.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
偽言妄語，傳相詿誤。道左失跡，不知鄉處。
False words, reckless speech; passed along, leading others astray. Losing one's tracks on the roadside; not knowing where one belongs.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder beneath heaven promises honest motion, but here language itself goes astray. False words and reckless speech spread from mouth to mouth, each repetition compounding the error. The traveler loses the road at the crossroads, no longer knowing which direction leads home. From Innocence to Difficulty at the Beginning, Wuwang's spontaneous truthfulness collapses into its opposite — fabricated speech that misleads everyone. Zhun's image of clouds and thunder gathering presages a new beginning, but that beginning must first reckon with confusion. The verse warns: when innocence is corrupted by deceit, even the simplest path becomes a trackless waste, and the first step toward renewal is acknowledging how thoroughly one has been led astray.
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