遯 → 比
Hexagram 33: Retreat → Hexagram 8: Holding Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 6).
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 4
九四 好遯。君子吉。小人否。
Nine in the fourth place means: Voluntary retreat brings good fortune to the superior man And downfall to the inferior man.
Line 6
上九 肥遯无不利。
Nine at the top means: Cheerful retreat. Everything serves to further.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
方內不行，輻摧輪傷，馬楚踶甚，受子閔時。
Within these confines, one cannot travel; spokes shattered, wheel broken. The horse kicks savagely in Chu; suffer, child, in this troubled time.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Heaven above the mountain yields to water upon earth — Holding Together. Yet togetherness fails here: the way forward is blocked, spokes snap and wheels shatter. The horse kicks violently, and one endures grief in a troubled time. Every image is one of broken connection — the vehicle that should carry one forward collapses, the animal that should serve turns hostile. From Retreat to Holding Together, the verse captures the bitter irony of withdrawal that seeks alliance but finds only wreckage. The mountain's heaven descends to earth hoping for water's binding flow, but instead encounters fractured conveyance and a bucking mount. Sometimes retreat leads not to safety but to a worse predicament, where the bonds one hoped to forge prove as fragile as cracked spokes.
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