屯 → 頤
Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning → Hexagram 27: Nourishment
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 5, 6).
Line 5
九五 屯其膏。小貞吉。大貞凶。
Nine in the fifth place means: Difficulties in blessing. A little perseverance brings good fortune. Great perseverance brings misfortune.
Line 6
上六 乘馬班如。泣血漣如。
Six at the top means: Horse and wagon part. Bloody tears flow.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
冬華不實，國多盜賊。疾病難醫，鬼哭其室。
Flowers bloom in winter but bear no fruit; the land is full of thieves and bandits. Illness is hard to cure; ghosts wail in the household.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Clouds and thunder give way to mountain above thunder: initial difficulty settles into the question of proper nourishment. Trees bloom in winter but bear no fruit, and the state teems with bandits. Illness proves impossible to cure, and ghosts wail within the household. Winter flowering without fruiting is an omen of inverted natural order: energy expended at the wrong time yields nothing. The parallel between unfruitful trees and untreatable disease suggests a system whose nourishing capacity has been corrupted at the root. From Difficulty at the Beginning to Nourishment, the transformation is cautionary. The mountain above thunder should provide stable nourishment, but when what is consumed is tainted and what is produced is hollow, the jaws of Yi chew on nothing. Disorder has poisoned sustenance itself.
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