大畜 → 噬嗑
Hexagram 26: Great Taming → Hexagram 21: Biting Through
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 4).
Line 2
九二 輿說輹。
Nine in the second place means: The axletrees are taken from the wagon.
Line 3
九三 良馬逐。利艱貞。曰閑輿衛。利有攸往。
Nine in the third place means. A good horse that follows others. Awareness of danger, With perseverance, furthers. Practice chariot driving and armed defense daily. It furthers one to have somewhere to go.
Line 4
六四 童牛之牿。元吉。
Six in the fourth place means: The headboard of a young bull. Great good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
東山西陵，高峻難升。滅夷掘壘，使道不通。商旅無功，復反其邦。
Eastern mountains and western ridges, lofty and steep, hard to climb. Leveling the land and breaching the ramparts, the road is made impassable. Merchants gain nothing; they turn back to their own lands.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven stored within the mountain gives way to fire and thunder — Biting Through. Mountains loom east and west, their ridges steep and nearly impossible to climb. Earthworks are leveled, ramparts torn down, and the road is utterly blocked. Merchants achieve nothing and must return to their own land. The image is of deliberate military obstruction: mountain passes fortified and then demolished to deny passage. From Great Taming to Biting Through, the mountain's stored power is weaponized — not to accumulate but to obstruct. Biting Through's lightning and thunder represent forceful clearing, but here the clearing is done to destroy routes, not open them. Trade halts; the stored mountain becomes a wall.
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