大壯 → 睽
Hexagram 34: Great Power → Hexagram 38: Opposition
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 3, 6).
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
原缺
The strong ram butts the fence; its horns catch in the thorns. Great strength with no right target — the herd turns on itself. East and west they graze apart, no longer recognizing one another.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder above heaven sends a mighty ram charging into a thorn fence — its horns catch fast in the brambles. This echoes Dazhuang's own line text: 'The ram butts the hedge and entangles its horns.' Strength without direction becomes self-imprisonment. The original verse is lost, but the reconstructed imagery extends the metaphor: the herd splits apart, east and west graze separately, no longer recognizing each other. From Great Power to Opposition, fire above and lake below in Kui move in contrary directions, the essence of estrangement. The transformation is seamless: the ram's entanglement causes the flock to fracture, and what was a unified group becomes strangers. Power misapplied does not merely fail — it severs the bonds that once held the community together.
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