大壯 → 歸妹
Hexagram 34: Great Power → Hexagram 54: The Marrying Maiden
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 1 changing line (line 3).
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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
五烏六鴟，相對蹲跂，禮讓不興，虞芮爭訟。
Five crows and six owls crouch facing each other. Ritual and deference do not flourish; Yu and Rui go to litigation.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder above heaven assembles five crows and six kites, squatting face to face in confrontation. Courtesy and deference are extinct, and the verse then invokes the Yu-Rui dispute — two small states whose territorial quarrel was famously resolved by King Wen of Zhou. According to tradition, when the rulers of Yu and Rui entered Zhou territory and saw its people yielding to one another, they were so ashamed that they settled their dispute without needing adjudication. Here the verse inverts the lesson: without such moral authority, birds of prey simply glare at each other in perpetual standoff. From Great Power to the Marrying Maiden, thunder moves above the lake in Guimei, a union governed by impulse rather than proper arrangement. Power without ritual propriety breeds not resolution but endless, undignified confrontation.
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