咸 → 蹇
Hexagram 31: Influence → Hexagram 39: Obstruction
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 4).
Line 4
九四 貞吉悔亡。憧憧往來。朋從爾思。
Nine in the fourth place means: Perseverance brings good fortune. Remorse disappears. If a man is agitated in mind, And his thoughts go hither and thither, Only those friends On whom he fixes his conscious thoughts Will follow.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
天厭周德，命與南國，以禮靜民，兵革休息。
Heaven wearies of Zhou's virtue; the mandate passes to the southern kingdom. With ritual they calm the people; weapons and war find rest.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
A lake upon a mountain, and heaven's mandate shifts. Heaven wearies of Zhou's virtue and bestows its charge upon the southern kingdom — an allusion to the rise of Chu, or more broadly the transfer of legitimacy southward. Yet the new power rules not by force but through ritual: pacifying the people with propriety, and letting weapons of war fall silent. The phrase 'heaven wearies of Zhou's virtue' (天厭周德) echoes the language of dynastic transition in the Zuozhuan and the Documents. From Influence to Obstruction, the mountain's receptive feeling becomes water upon the mountain — difficulty piled upon height. Yet the verse resolves positively: obstruction is overcome not through military conquest but through moral governance. The new mandate holder, facing the mountain of transition, chooses ritual stillness over the sword.
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