大過 → 否
Hexagram 28: Great Exceeding → Hexagram 12: Standstill
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 6).
Line 2
九二 枯楊生稊。老夫得其女妻。无不利。
Nine in the second place means: A dry poplar sprouts at the root. An older man takes a young wife. Everything furthers.
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
無道之君，鬼哭其門。命與下國，絕得不食。
A lord without the Way; ghosts wail at his gate. The mandate passes to lesser states; cut off, he gains no sustenance.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Lake over wind hardens into heaven and earth refusing to communicate — Standstill. A ruler without the Way finds ghosts weeping at his gate. His mandate descends to a lesser state, and his line is cut off from sustenance. The verse echoes the fall of a dynasty: when the sovereign loses moral authority, even the spirit world mourns, and heaven's mandate passes elsewhere. The imagery of severed sacrifice — 'cut off, unable to eat' — recalls the extinction of a royal line's ancestral rites, the ultimate political death in the Chinese tradition. From Great Exceeding to Standstill, the overburdened beam collapses into total blockage. Heaven and earth no longer exchange; the ruler's excess has sealed every channel of communication between above and below.
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