明夷 → 師
Hexagram 36: Darkening of the Light → Hexagram 7: The Army
Changing Lines
This transformation involves 3 changing lines (lines 1, 2, 3).
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 3
九三 明夷于南狩。得其大首。不可疾貞。
Nine in the third place means: Darkening of the light during the hunt in the south. Their great leader is captured. One must not expect perseverance too soon.
Trigram Changes
Yilin Verse
黃帝神明，八子聖聰，佚受大福，天下平康。
The Yellow Emperor, divine and brilliant; his eight sons sages all. They received great blessings in abundance; all under heaven was peaceful and well.
— Jiao Yanshou, Yilin (Forest of Changes), 1st century BCE
Commentary
Fire buried beneath the earth encounters water held within the earth — the Army, where disciplined force lies concealed beneath a calm surface. The verse celebrates the Yellow Emperor's divine brilliance and his eight sagely sons, who brought great blessings and peace to the realm. The 'eight sons' likely refers to the tradition that the Yellow Emperor's descendants branched into eight lineages, each governing a territory. This is governance through delegation — the sage ruler's intelligence distributed through worthy subordinates who maintain order without visible force. From Darkening of the Light to the Army, suppressed light is not lost but organized: it becomes the hidden reservoir of water within the earth, disciplined strength deployed through a chain of command.
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