大壯 → 漸
Hexagram 34: Great Power → Hexagram 53: Development
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 5 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 4, 5, 6).
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 2
九二 貞吉。
Nine in the second place means: Perseverance brings good fortune.
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.
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
陽氏狂惑，季孫亂憒，陪臣執政，平子拘折，我心不快。
The Yang clan is wild and deluded; the Ji Sun house is in turmoil and confusion. The household minister seizes power; Ping Zi is constrained and broken. My heart is not at ease.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder above heaven exposes the chaos of Lu's late Spring and Autumn politics. The 'Yang clan's madness' refers to Yang Hu, the ambitious retainer who seized control of the Jisun family around 504 BC, effectively making himself regent of Lu. 'Jisun in confusion and disorder, a vassal's vassal seizing governance' — this is the Zuo Zhuan's own diagnosis of Lu's constitutional crisis: the duke had lost power to the Three Huan families, and now even the Huan families lost power to their own retainers. 'Pingzi restrained and broken' recalls how Jisun Pingzi was humiliated and constrained. From Great Power to Development, trees grow slowly on the mountain in Jian. The transformation offers remedy through patient, incremental cultivation — the opposite of Yang Hu's violent shortcuts.
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