晉 → 震
Hexagram 35: Progress → Hexagram 51: The Arousing Thunder
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 6).
Line 1
初六 晉如摧如。貞吉。罔孚。裕无咎。
Six at the beginning means: Progressing, but turned back. Perseverance brings good fortune. If one meets with no confidence, one should remain calm. No mistake.
Line 6
上九 晉其角。維用伐邑。厲吉无咎。貞吝。
Nine at the top means: Making progress with the horns is permissible Only for the purpose of punishing one's own city. To be conscious of danger brings good fortune. No blame. Perseverance brings humiliation.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
白鳥衘餌，鳴呼其子，施技張翅，來從其母。
The white bird carries food in its beak; it calls out to its young. Spreading their skill, stretching their wings; they come to follow their mother.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire rises above the earth, and a white bird carries food in its beak, calling out to its young. It spreads its wings and demonstrates its skills, and the fledglings come flocking to their mother. The verse is a pure domestic idyll: the mother bird teaching her young to fly and feed, the family unit functioning in natural harmony. Every gesture — the call, the offering, the display of technique — serves the next generation. From Progress to the Arousing, the transformation adds sudden energy to this gentle scene. Doubled thunder shakes the ground: the moment the fledglings leave the nest and take their first terrified, exhilarating flight. The mother's patient teaching culminates in the thunderclap of independent action. Nurture prepares; the Arousing ignites.
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