大壯 → 噬嗑
Hexagram 34: Great Power → Hexagram 21: Biting Through
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 2, 3, 6).
Line 2
九二 貞吉。
Nine in the second place means: Perseverance brings good fortune.
Line 3
九三 小人用壯。君子用罔。貞厲。羝羊觸藩。羸其角。
Nine in the third place means: The inferior man works through power. The superior man does not act thus. To continue is dangerous. A goat butts against a hedge And gets its horns entangled.
Line 6
上六 羝羊觸藩。不能退。不能遂。无攸利。艱則吉。
Six at the top means: A goat butts against a hedge. It cannot go backward, it cannot go forward. Nothing serves to further. If one notes the difficulty, this brings good fortune.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
蛇失其公，載麻當喪，哀悲哭泣，送死離鄉。
The serpent loses its lord; hempen cloth is worn in mourning. Sorrow, weeping, and wailing; escorting the dead, departing the homeland.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder above heaven announces a lord's death: the serpent loses its master. 'Loading hemp for mourning' and 'weeping in grief as the dead is sent from home' paint a funeral cortege departing the capital. The serpent losing its 'duke' may reference a specific Spring and Autumn lord whose death left his state leaderless — serpents in the Yilin often symbolize cunning subordinates or ill omens. From Great Power to Biting Through, fire and thunder combine in Shihe to enforce justice and clarify punishments. The transformation suggests that a lord's death, however grievous, triggers the mechanism of legal and institutional reckoning. When power's center falls, the apparatus of judgment must bite through the confusion to restore order.
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