遯 → 歸妹
Hexagram 33: Retreat → Hexagram 54: The Marrying Maiden
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 5 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 3, 5, 6).
Line 1
初六 遯尾厲。勿用有攸往。
Six at the beginning means: At the tail in retreat. This is dangerous. One must not wish to undertake anything.
Line 2
六二 執之用黃牛之革。莫之勝說。
Six in the second place means: he holds him fast with yellow oxhide. No one can tear him loose.
Line 3
九三 係遯。有疾厲。畜臣妾吉。
Nine in the third place means: A halted retreat Is nerve-wracking and dangerous. To retain people as men- and maidservants Brings good fortune.
Line 5
九五 嘉遯貞吉。
Nine in the fifth place means: Friendly retreat. Perseverance brings good fortune.
Line 6
上九 肥遯无不利。
Nine at the top means: Cheerful retreat. Everything serves to further.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
小陬之市，利不足喜，二世積仁，蒙其祖先，匪躬之言，狂悖為患。
The small market of Zou; its profit is not worth celebrating. Two generations of accumulated benevolence; blessed by their ancestors. But reckless words spoken without restraint; wild defiance becomes a calamity.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven above the mountain descends into thunder over lake — the Marrying Maiden, where a subordinate party enters an arrangement with limited agency. A small market in a minor town offers profits not worth celebrating. Two generations accumulate benevolence, sheltered by ancestral merit. But reckless speech — words that defy propriety — brings disaster. The verse contrasts patient multi-generational virtue with the single rash utterance that undoes it all. From Retreat to the Marrying Maiden, the mountain's withdrawal becomes the maiden's constrained entry into a household not her own. The verse warns that inherited virtue, built through decades of careful retreat and accumulation, can be squandered in a moment of unguarded speech. The marrying maiden's position is precarious; one wrong word collapses what ancestors spent lifetimes building.
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