咸 → 節
Hexagram 31: Influence → Hexagram 60: Limitation
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 3, 4).
Line 1
初六 咸其拇。
Six at the beginning means: The influence shows itself in the big toe.
Line 2
六二 咸其腓。凶。居吉。
Six in the second place means: The influence shows itself in the calves of the legs. Misfortune. Tarrying brings good fortune.
Line 3
九三 咸其股。執其隨。往吝。
Nine in the third place means: The influence shows itself in the thighs. Holds to that which follows it. To continue is humiliating.
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
豕生魚魴，鼠舞庭堂，雄佞施毒，上下昏荒，君失其邦。
Pigs give birth to bream; rats dance in the hall. The treacherous male spreads his poison; above and below, all is dim and wild. The ruler loses his domain.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
A lake upon a mountain, but the categories of nature collapse into chaos. Pigs give birth to bream fish, rats dance in the courtyard — portents of cosmic disorder made grotesquely physical. A cunning flatterer spreads his poison, and both ruler and court sink into befuddled darkness. The sovereign loses his domain. Pigs producing fish and rats performing in the hall are classical omens of yin-yang inversion: creatures acting against their nature signal that governance has lost its way. From Influence to Limitation, the mountain's openness becomes water upon a lake — proper boundaries that contain excess. The verse depicts the precise failure that Limitation exists to prevent. Without limits on flattery, without boundaries between species of conduct, the court becomes a menagerie of deformity and the state dissolves.
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