明夷 → 艮
Hexagram 36: Darkening of the Light → Hexagram 52: Keeping Still Mountain
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 6).
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 6
上六 不明晦。初登于天。後入于地。
Six at the top means: Not light but darkness. First he climbed up to heaven, Then plunged into the depths of the earth.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
鴟鴞取婦，深目窈身。折腰不媚，與伯相背。
The owl takes a wife; deep-eyed and slender-waisted. She will not bow or flatter; she turns her back on her lord.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire beneath the earth meets doubled mountain — Keeping Still, where the mind ceases its restless motion. 'The owl takes a wife — deep-eyed, with a slender body. She does not bend her waist to flatter, and so parts ways with her lord.' The owl (鴟鴞), a bird associated with the Duke of Zhou's ode about enemies threatening the nest, here takes a bride who refuses to submit. Her deep-set eyes and willowy form mark an unconventional beauty, and her refusal to bow — 'fold the waist to please' — signals moral backbone. From Darkening of the Light to Keeping Still, the transformation reveals that stillness is not always serene: sometimes it is the rigid uprightness of one who will not bend, even at the cost of the relationship. The mountain stands because it refuses to yield.
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