明夷 → 升
Hexagram 36: Darkening of the Light → Hexagram 46: Pushing Upward
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 2).
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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
鳴條之郊，北奔犬胡。左衽為長，國號匈奴。王君旄頭，立尊單于。
At the wilds of Mingtiao; northward they fled to the barbarian lands. Left-lapelled garments became the custom; the state was named Xiongnu. The king raised the yak-tail standard, and established the title Chanyu.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire beneath the earth transforms into wood growing within the earth — Pushing Upward, the slow, steady rise from below. The verse recounts a remarkable origin tradition: 'At the wilderness of Mingtiao, the defeated fled north to the barbarian lands. Wearing left-folded robes as elders, their nation was called Xiongnu. Their king bore the ox-tail standard and was honored as Chanyu.' According to the Shiji's treatise on the Xiongnu, the nomadic confederation descended from Chunwei, a son of the defeated Xia dynasty's last king Jie, who fled north after the Battle of Mingtiao. From Darkening of the Light to Pushing Upward, the transformation captures how a crushed people, driven underground by defeat, slowly re-emerge as a formidable power — wood growing silently within the earth until it breaks the surface.
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