頤 → 解
Hexagram 27: Nourishment → Hexagram 40: Deliverance
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 4, 6).
Line 1
初九 舍爾靈龜。觀我朶頤。凶。
Nine at the beginning means: You let your magic tortoise go, And look at me with the corners of your mouth drooping. Misfortune.
Line 2
六二 顛頤。拂經于丘。頤征凶。
Six in the second place means: Turning to the summit for nourishment, Deviating from the path To seek nourishment from the hill. Continuing to do this brings misfortune.
Line 4
六四 顛頤。吉。虎視眈眈。其欲逐逐。无咎。
Six in the fourth place means: Turning to the summit For provision of nourishment Brings good fortune. Spying about with sharp eyes Like a tiger with insatiable craving. No blame.
Line 6
上九 由頤。厲吉。利涉大川。
Nine at the top means: The source of nourishment. Awareness of danger brings good fortune. It furthers one to cross the great water.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
飢人入室，政衰弊極。抱其彝器，奔於他國。因禍受福。
A starving man enters the chamber; governance declines to its lowest ebb. Clutching the ritual vessels, he flees to another state. Through calamity, he receives blessing.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Mountain over thunder transforms into thunder above water — Deliverance, the thunderstorm that breaks tension. Starving people force their way into the granary. Governance has decayed to its extreme. One clutches the ancestral bronze vessels and flees to another state, yet through disaster finds blessing. The verse echoes the flight of Viscount Wei, who left the collapsing Shang carrying its ritual vessels to preserve the lineage's sacred continuity. From Nourishment to Deliverance, the transformation liberates through crisis: thunder and rain dissolve the stagnation. When nourishment fails utterly at home — famine, political collapse — the one who saves the sacred vessels and runs achieves deliverance precisely through the act of leaving. Disaster itself becomes the gate to fortune.
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