明夷 → 大過
Hexagram 36: Darkening of the Light → Hexagram 28: Great Exceeding
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 4 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 4, 5).
Line 1
初九 明夷于飛。垂其翼。君子于行。三日不食。有攸往。主人有言。
Nine at the beginning means: Darkening of the light during flight. He lowers his wings. The superior man does not eat for three days On his wanderings. But he has somewhere to go. The host has occasion to gossip about him.
Line 2
六二 明夷。夷于左股。用拯馬壯吉。
Six in the second place means: Darkening of the light injures him in the left thigh. He gives aid with the strength of a horse. Good fortune.
Line 4
六四 入于左腹。獲明夷之心。于出門庭。
Six in the fourth place means: He penetrates the left side of the belly. One gets at the very heart of the darkening of the light, And leaves gate and courtyard.
Line 5
六五 箕子之明夷。利貞。
Six in the fifth place means: Darkening of the light as with Prince Chi. Perseverance furthers.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
言笑未卒，憂來暴卒。身墨丹索，檻囚裝束。
Laughter and words not yet finished; grief arrives with sudden violence. Body inked, bound in crimson ropes; caged and shackled like a prisoner.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire vanishes beneath the earth while the lake submerges the trees — Great Exceeding, where the structure is strained beyond its capacity. 'Laughter not yet finished, worry arrives in a sudden death.' The shift from joy to catastrophe is instantaneous. 'Body inked and roped, confined in a cage, bound like a prisoner.' The imagery of tattooing (墨刑) and shackling paints a scene of judicial punishment — someone dragged from laughter into chains. From Darkening of the Light to Great Exceeding, the transformation reveals how the suppression of light can tip suddenly into total structural collapse. The lake swallows the trees; the ridgepole breaks. What seemed merely oppressive becomes catastrophic without warning, and the one caught mid-laugh is the one who failed to read the signs.
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