大壯 → 比
Hexagram 34: Great Power → Hexagram 8: Holding Together
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 5 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 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 2
九二 貞吉。
Nine in the second place means: Perseverance brings good fortune.
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
明夷兆初，三日為災，以讒後歸，名曰豎牛，剝亂叔孫，餒卒虛丘。
Brightness wounded at its beginning; for three days disaster reigns. By slander he returns at last, named Shu Niu; he undoes the Shusun clan, starving to death at the empty mound.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Thunder over heaven illuminates a tale of domestic treachery. The verse names Shuniu, the illegitimate eldest son of Shusun Bao of Lu, whose machinations form one of the darkest episodes in the Zuo Zhuan. Around 537 BC, Shuniu murdered his half-brother Zhongren, then systematically starved his own father to death to seize control of the Shusun clan. 'Brightness wounded at the beginning' and 'three days of disaster' evoke the Mingyi hexagram's imagery of light driven underground. From Great Power to Holding Together, the transformation is deeply ironic: water rests upon earth in Bi, the image of alliances and mutual trust. Yet Shuniu weaponized precisely these bonds of kinship, corrupting the family's internal cohesion to serve his ambition, until the patriarch perished in desolate solitude.
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