屯 → 蒙
Hexagram 3: Difficulty at the Beginning → Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 5, 6).
Line 1
初九 磐桓。利居貞。利建侯。
Nine at the beginning means: Hesitation and hindrance. It furthers one to remain persevering. It furthers one to appoint helpers.
Line 2
六二 屯如邅如。乘馬班如。匪寇婚媾。女子貞不字。十年乃字。
Six in the second place means: Difficulties pile up. Horse and wagon part. He is not a robber; He wants to woo when the time comes. The maiden is chaste, She does not pledge herself. Ten years–then she pledges herself.
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
山崩谷絕，天福盡竭。涇渭失紀，玉厤盡已。
Mountains collapse, valleys are severed; heaven’s blessings are utterly exhausted. The Jing and Wei rivers lose their course; the jade calendar has reached its end.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Clouds and thunder yield to a mountain spring emerging below: initial chaos gives way to untutored youth. Mountains collapse and valleys are severed, heaven's blessings entirely exhausted. The Jing and Wei rivers lose their natural courses, and the jade calendar reaches its end. This imagery of cosmic disintegration, where even the reliable markers of geography and time dissolve, suggests a world stripped of its ordering principles. From Difficulty at the Beginning to Youthful Folly, the transformation reveals that when initial creative struggle fails to find form, the result is not maturity but regression into bewilderment. The spring still flows beneath the mountain, but without guidance it wanders, and the structures that once channeled it lie in ruins.
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