坎 → 渙
Hexagram 29: The Abysmal Water → Hexagram 59: Dispersion
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 6).
Line 6
上六 係用徽纆。寘于叢棘。三歲不得。凶。
Six at the top means: Bound with cords and ropes, Shut in between thorn-hedged prison walls: For three years one does not find the way. Misfortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
三足孤烏,靈明督郵,司過罰惡。自賊其家,毀敗為憂。
The three-legged solitary crow, spirit-bright inspector of faults, supervises transgressions and punishes evil. It ravages its own house; ruin and destruction are its worry.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Water upon water, the divine inspector keeps watch. The three-legged crow — the sun-bird dwelling within the solar disc — serves here as a spirit-inspector and cosmic dispatch rider, patrolling for transgression and punishing evil. But the sword turns inward: one plunders one's own household, and ruin becomes the cause for worry. The Sun Crow as moral enforcer is an unusual image: the creature that carries the sun across the sky doubles as heaven's police, tracking offenses that even the perpetrator tries to hide. From The Abysmal to Dispersion, wind scatters over water, dispersing what was gathered. Self-inflicted destruction disperses the household as surely as wind breaks up stagnant pools.
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