大過 → 履
Hexagram 28: Great Exceeding → Hexagram 10: Treading
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 6).
Line 1
初六 藉用白茅。无咎。
Six at the beginning means: To spread white rushes underneath. No blame.
Line 3
九三 棟橈。凶。
Nine in the third place means: The ridgepole sags to the breaking point. Misfortune.
Line 6
上六 過涉滅頂。凶。无咎。
Six at the top means: One must go through the water. It goes over one's head. Misfortune. No blame.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
狗吠夜驚，履鬼頭頸。危者弗傾，患滅不成。
Dogs bark, the night is alarmed; treading on ghosts’ heads and necks. The endangered does not topple; the calamity fades, does not take form.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Lake over wind transforms into heaven above the lake — Treading upon the tiger's tail. Dogs bark in the night, startling the sleeper, who treads upon the head and neck of a ghost. Yet what seems perilous does not topple; the calamity dissolves before it forms. The nocturnal scene evokes the terror of stumbling upon the supernatural in darkness, yet the outcome defies expectation: the ghost is harmless, the danger illusory. From Great Exceeding to Treading, the collapsing beam becomes the precarious act of walking atop danger itself. Treading's image — stepping on a tiger's tail without being bitten — perfectly matches this verse: what appears mortally dangerous proves navigable through composure. The dogs warned of nothing real; the ghost had no power to harm.
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