大壯 → 損
Hexagram 34: Great Power → Hexagram 41: Decrease
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 3, 4, 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 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 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
出門望東，伯仲不來，疾病為患，使母憂歎。
Going out the door, gazing east; the elder brothers do not come. Illness brings affliction; it makes the mother grieve and sigh.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder above heaven drives a mother to the eastern gate, watching for sons who do not come. The elder and younger brothers — bo and zhong — fail to appear, and illness fills the household with dread. The mother's sigh carries the weight of all parents waiting for absent children: are they detained, injured, dead? From Great Power to Decrease, the mountain looms above the lake in Sun, diminishing what is below to benefit what is above. The transformation captures the emotional logic exactly: the family's vitality is drained by the sons' absence. Decrease here is not willing sacrifice but involuntary loss — the household's strength leaking away through the gap where the children should stand. Power without its heirs is power hemorrhaging.
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