大壯 → 坎
Hexagram 34: Great Power → Hexagram 29: The Abysmal Water
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 3, 4, 5).
Line 1
初九 壯于趾。征凶有孚。
Nine at the beginning means: Power in the toes. Continuing brings misfortune. This is certainly true.
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 4
九四 貞吉。悔亡。藩決不羸。壯于大輿之輹。
Nine in the fourth place means: Perseverance brings good fortune. Remorse disappears. The hedge opens; there is no entanglement. Power depends upon the axle of a big cart.
Line 5
六五 喪羊于易。无悔。
Six in the fifth place means: Loses the goat with ease. No remorse.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
寒暑不當，軌度失常，一前一後，年歲鮮有。
Cold and heat fall out of season; the orbits lose their regularity. One ahead, one behind; the years yield little harvest.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder above heaven disrupts the cosmic calendar: cold and heat fall out of sequence, the orbital measures lose their regularity. One season arrives before or after its proper time, and harvests dwindle to scarcity. The verse describes a world where the fundamental rhythms governing agriculture and life have broken down — not a human political failure but a cosmological disorder. From Great Power to the Abysmal, water doubles upon water in Kan, peril heaped upon peril. The transformation captures how the misalignment of natural cycles plunges everything into compounding danger. When the thunderous power that should regulate the seasons goes awry, the abyss opens — not as a single crisis but as a cascading failure of the systems that sustain life.
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