明夷 → 小過
Hexagram 36: Darkening of the Light → Hexagram 62: Small Exceeding
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 2 changing lines (lines 1, 4).
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 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.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
虎怒捕羊，猬不能攘。
The tiger rages and seizes the sheep; the hedgehog cannot fend it off.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire beneath the earth meets thunder upon the mountain — Small Exceeding, where modest overstepping is the only viable strategy. The verse is the most compact in the entire batch, just eight characters: 'The tiger rages to seize the sheep; the hedgehog cannot fend it off.' The tiger's fury is overwhelming; the hedgehog's defenses, formidable against lesser threats, are insufficient here. Unlike the 14-6 verse where the hedgehog subdued the tiger, here the scale of violence has tipped past what defensive armor can withstand. From Darkening of the Light to Small Exceeding, the transformation reveals the limits of modest means against disproportionate force. Small Exceeding counsels doing a little more than seems warranted — but when the tiger is this enraged, even exceeding is not enough.
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